The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [3]
By seven-thirty everything that could be prepared for the next day’s dinner was ready. Mrs. Marsden untied her apron with a flourish and wished me Merry Christmas.
“Where are you going?” I said stupidly.
“Home. I have to get ready for tomorrow.”
“Can’t you stay?” I imitated Veronica, opening my eyes wide and clasping my hands. “We can play cards, or watch television. You could have a drink.”
Mrs. Marsden stopped buttoning her coat at my second suggestion—she did not have a television—but at my third she continued. On several occasions I had overheard my aunt complaining to her that a newly purchased bottle of gin or sherry was almost empty. Once Mrs. Marsden had rashly retaliated by mentioning Will. Now she told me not to talk nonsense and picked up her handbag. With a creak of the door she was gone.
Alone I tried to settle to patience at the kitchen table, but I could not keep my attention on the cards. When Will’s rowdy friends came over, Yew House seemed small, but now the empty rooms stretched around me, too many to count. And the dogs, the affable but dull William and Wallace, were no help. I put the cards away, let them out, and then shut them in the cloakroom. Taking advantage of my solitude, I made a hot water bottle and climbed the stairs to bed. Through the window on the stairs I saw the first snowflakes falling.
Until last summer my bedroom had been next to Louise’s. Then, on the pretext of redecorating, my aunt had moved me to the maid’s room under the eaves. In the warm months I had enjoyed my eyrie, sitting for hours looking out at the treetops and daydreaming. But in winter the ice on the inside of the windowpane thickened by the day. “Heat rises,” my aunt said when I asked for an electric fire. I had learned to undress, pull on my pyjamas, and jump into bed at top speed. There my teeth chattered until the sheets grew warm and I could lose myself in the pages of a book. Even this pleasure was often curtailed by my aunt’s command to turn off the light. I would lie in the darkness, listening to the noises from below: Louise and Veronica talking, Will playing his radio.
On Christmas Eve I had tried to enjoy the luxury of reading undisturbed, but the house was full of other, more sinister sounds: rustling, gnawing, pitter-pattering. That weekend the newspaper had reported the abduction of a girl from her home in Kinross. Even in the murky photograph it was obvious that she was the opposite of me, fair-haired, rosy-cheeked, the sort of child anyone would want. Still, a villain might make a mistake, especially in the dark, and William and Wallace were notoriously friendly.
Picturing my bedside lamp like a beacon signalling my solitude, I set my book aside and switched it off. At the first sign of an intruder I would run down the backstairs and hide behind the curtains in my uncle’s study. The idea of being trapped in my small room made my stomach ache. In the darkness, the noises at first grew even louder, but after a while, when there was no breaking glass, no footsteps, I forgot to listen for my kidnapper and turned to more realistic fears. I knew from my uncle that in Scotland one could go to university at seventeen, and I had come to think of this as the age at which I would, magically, become an adult. But how was I going to endure the next seven years, and how, when I left Yew House, would I earn my living? In Veronica’s comics girls ran away from home and discovered long-lost relatives and unexpected talents. I had none of the former and doubted the existence of the latter. I was good with numbers, could recognise most common birds