‘Edmund! Come back here now!’
But how will he know where we are? How will he see me?
‘EDMUND!’
‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ says Constance, her little-girl voice light and singsong. ‘He’ll be all right. He knows Winterbourne better than you, remember.’
All at once the very sound of Constance, my sweet, sweet Constance, turns on me. I cannot see the child’s face, only the pale grip of her small hand in mine, and our joined palms appear ghostly, dismembered, horrifying. All at once I remember that other hand, her hand, years ago, in the water, reaching for mine, and for a shocking instant it could be hers, her clammy grip, rigid with fear, threatening to drag me in!
‘We both know Winterbourne better than you.’
Why does she talk to me in that tone?
‘EDMUND!’
‘Don’t be silly, Alice. You are being silly now.’
I release her hand, drawing mine sharply away as if something black and slippery has crawled over it. Constance starts crying.
‘Oh, my Constance!’ I kneel to her, find her face with my hands and embrace her. Suddenly she is my Constance again, the strangeness dissolved. She is but a child! ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I’m worried for your brother – that is all. We must find him. Do you know where he is? Do you know where he might have run to?’
The girl sniffs. She wipes her eyes. Her features soften and morph in the eerie half-light, and for a second she looks canny, before her innocence resumes.
‘What are you looking at, child?’ For Constance’s gaze is trained over my shoulder. I turn but see nothing. ‘What are you looking at?’
And then I see her. The mist spools patiently across the cliffs and in one glimmer of clarity I see her. There is a woman. She is facing the sea. She wears all black, head to toe, like a widow. I squint, trying to draw her more sharply into focus, but the more I look, the more she escapes my definition. She flickers and fades, in moments as real as day and in the next a mere black shape, impossibly still and impossibly menacing. What is she doing there? She is right on the bluff; she must be mere inches from its edge. Who is she? ‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Is somebody there?’
Constance has my hand again, and her thumb tickles mine for an instant, as if she is stroking it, as if she is the one replying, Yes, somebody is. The vision itself does not reply. The woman does not move. I have the blinding, improbable notion that she has taken Edmund, stolen him and flung him over the edge into the roiling swell…
She’s come back for you, Alice.
You always knew she would.
I cannot bear for Constance to witness her. Whirling back on the girl, I capture her in my cloak, shutting out our dark companion.
‘Alice, Alice, I can’t see a thing!’
I crouch to her, my eyes wild. ‘I don’t want you to see, my darling.’
‘Why?’ She snivels, wipes her nose, at once a little girl again, my harmless child. ‘I’m scared, Alice – you’re scaring me!’
I turn my head to the cliff edge but the woman has disappeared.
‘She’s gone,’ I say, searching left and right. ‘Where did she go?’
‘Who?’ Constance is crying again now, gripping my cloak with one hand but seeming to pull away at the same time, as if she can’t be sure where the danger lies. But I know where it lies. It lies with that spectre, which, now vanished, seems all the more looming for its absence. There is nowhere the woman can have gone. The mist churns silently across the landscape, exposing the hill as it goes. If she had moved off, I would have caught her by now. She is nowhere. Not unless…
Beneath us, out of sight, the tide rolls on, a thunderous crash of waves.
‘Didn’t you see her?’ I shiver, pulling the girl close. ‘She was right there!’
‘I didn’t see anyone.’
I crouch to her again and search her face. I want to tell Constance that I saw her looking, I saw her, before I turned to the phantom myself – but the words dry on my tongue. Constance’s lip is trembling, her eyes wet with tears. Am I mistaken?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I manage, and pull her towards me. I must get a hold on myself. This sweet girl is my charge. Her arms wrap round me and her hair is fragrant gold: once again she is my angel, and we neither of us saw the devil on the cliff.
As we pull apart, her hands cross over my elbow. I feel pressure on the bruise inside my arm, as if her tiny fingers have pressed it.
I stand and call his name. Nothing. The whistle blows, short and shrill.
*
Tom is with us quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammer, ‘he ran off. Edmund ran off. Didn’t he, Constance, darling? He just let go. I don’t know where he is. Oh, help us, Tom!’
The houseman looks to Constance, who neither supports nor denies my claims. ‘It’s all right,’ he puts a hand on my shoulder, ‘we’ll find him.’ He steers me over the hill and then I see the house emerge from the fog – it must be clearing now, daylight beginning to break through – far closer than I had expected.
‘Go back indoors,’ he says, ‘and wait for us there.’
We obey. My fingers and toes are numb with cold, or fear. Mrs Yarrow meets us and gives us mugs of warmed milk, but I can’t drink mine while I’m thinking of Edmund out in the wild, frozen and alone. I feel disgraced by my idiotic confidence, stalking out into the savage mist as if it posed no threat whatsoever. I feel dismayed by my failure to speak to the captain in person about our endeavour, and the vanity that had coaxed me into it, enjoying the captain’s trust in me and wanting to see that trust rewarded. ‘Mrs Yarrow,’ I splutter, once Constance is safely by the fire and out of earshot. ‘Were you out there just now? Were you out in the fog?’
‘Certainly not, miss!’
‘I saw a woman. She was standing on the cliff.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Perfectly. She was… Oh, she was horrible!’
‘The fog plays tricks on us, miss,’ says the cook. ‘There’d be nobody foolish enough to go walking alone on a morning like this.’
‘I swear I saw her. Constance did, too, but she won’t admit it.’
Mrs Yarrow washes out the milk pan. ‘Constance saw her?’
‘Yes. I might not have noticed this fiend were it not for her.’
The cook puts the pan on the draining board to dry. ‘This was after Edmund ran away from you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Children like to play games.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Especially with a new prospect such as yourself, miss.’
‘Please be frank, Mrs Yarrow.’
The cook appears undecided as to whether to speak further. She peers past me to check the hallway is clear, before: ‘Ever since I can recall,’ she says, ‘those twins have had a mischief to them. Goodness knows I struggled to cope with them on my own, before you arrived. Always playing pranks on me, they were. Hiding my belongings. Tricking me into believing I’d said words I hadn’t. Knocking on my door late at night and then running away, so that I became convinced of some ghoul! Once, the boy even