know where she and Arthur went from here. It had all been so intense, so wrapped up with what had happened to Johnny, that now that was all over it felt as though her relationship with Arthur was finished too, before it had properly started. Her night with him, so emotional and right at the time, so much a part of the connection she had thought they had, now seemed almost incomprehensible for someone as guarded as she had always been.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, getting up and wishing the pastry and the misery together were not weighing so heavy on her stomach.
‘Would you like me to come with you tomorrow?’ Jules asked. She looked suddenly anxious, and Lizzie felt a rush of affection for her. She went over and hugged her cousin. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You’ve done so much already; you’re the best. I’ll come and see all of you soon, and we can get together in London as well and I’ll treat you to the Mayfair Chocolate Tour as a thank you.’
‘The kids will love that,’ Jules said.
‘Me too,’ Lizzie admitted.
After Jules had gone, she went upstairs and took a long hot shower. It did nothing to banish the shadows that clung to the edges of her mind like cobwebs. She realised that she would need to hire a car to get to Oakhangar Hall. It felt good to grasp some sort of practical plan rather than let her mind meander through all the puzzles and confusion, so she turned out all of her bags looking for her driving licence, eventually finding it in the pocket of one of her jackets. She put it on the bedside table so she wouldn’t forget it in the morning, and in doing so she caught a flash of silver illuminated in the lamp’s glow.
She stooped to pick it up. It was a thin silver chain with a little silver phoenix symbol dangling from it. She remembered seeing it in the Land Rover when Arthur had given her a lift home. It had hung from the driving mirror, sparkling in the light. Turning it over in her hand Lizzie saw the initials JG engraved on the reverse. The chain had snapped. She touched the misshapen links.
Immediately her mind clouded with images, blurred by sun and water droplets and a sort of dizziness that filled her up and made her feel languid and warm and slow. She could hear loud music and laughter but it was eclipsed by the roaring of water in her ears. Panic and fear edged out the warmth in her mind, like a cloud across the sun, but it was too late, too late to start fighting, too late for the struggle. She burst through the surface and heard the sound of screaming – and Dudley’s name. And then the water closed over her head again and it was easier to let it take her, to sink beneath the surface where it was gentle and dark…
She came to herself kneeling on the floor, gasping and retching, as though her lungs were full of water. In the palm of her hand it felt as though the phoenix burned against the scar. She dropped it sharply and it clattered against the base of the cabinet.
When she got her breath back, Lizzie hoisted herself up onto the bed and sat there for a little, waiting for her spinning thoughts to settle. The phoenix charm had belonged to Jenna, Arthur’s fiancée. She had known that, felt it as soon as she had touched the silver links. But if the phoenix had been Jenna’s then the watery plunge and the hideous death by drowning were also hers, and Dudley had been there at the time too…
She hugged herself close. She was sure that Kat had told her that Jenna had died from anorexia so perhaps the vision had been wrong. Yet it had felt so vivid, exactly like Amelia’s fall had.
Lizzie remembered the story of Amy Robsart’s spirit being trapped in the waters of the Citrine Pool, that descent into darkness, the binding of her soul. There were so many parallels and so many echoes. Could they really be no more than coincidence, and Johnny’s disappearance had no link to it at all? There had been his notebook, full of the ancestry of the Robsart family and his research into Amy, Robert and Elizabeth. He had even checked out stone tape theory and she was certain that at Baynard’s Castle he