cottage. One weekend there was a hotel in Brighton where we booked in as brother and sister with adjoining rooms and he spent the night on my side of the connecting door. There were trips to the cinema, walks on beaches, out of the way music recitals or concerts where I watched him become so enthralled by the performance he almost forgot I was there. Once we even went to the Albert Hall where his uncle was conducting Handel’s Messiah and his mother was singing soprano. They didn’t know we were right up in the gods and I could hardly see them, but knowing they were his family and that he wanted me to be with him while he watched them perform, told me again how much he loved me.
I was never in any doubt of that.
He didn’t allow me to be.
Do you know what he said, later, I mean much later? He said, ‘She was very young, and yet not young at all – and I was so captivated by her that I could think of nothing else but making her mine.’
That was what he said.
He never denied he loved me.
He would never have done that.
Joely stopped typing and stared down at her now silent recorder. There was no more, only the echo of Freda’s voice as she’d ended their last discussion with the words He would never have done that. Her tone had been low and reflective, even faintly incredulous, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it. Joely remembered feeling moved at the time, and she did again now. Wherever this was going she was in no doubt that they’d loved each other then.
Looking up from her laptop she gazed out at the bleak landscape stretched out before her, swathed in turbulent shadow, impervious to the gusts that were howling and sighing all around it. She watched the sea swallowing up white horses and pushing out more, and after a while she became aware of music playing somewhere in the distance.
Realizing it must be coming from inside the house she made her way down to the library and listened. It had stopped, and as seconds ticked by she wondered if she’d imagined it. She turned back to the stairs to return for her phone and laptop then she heard it again, low and melodic, a single hand playing Mozart’s A Little Night Music.
The hand of young Freda in her private piano lesson all those years ago.
Joely stared at the book-filled wall that separated this room from the studio where David Donahoe had produced his copies of the great impressionists. Was there a piano in there? There must be, because someone was playing it. The notes were being picked out carefully, sometimes incorrectly, and the longer she listened the more she realized how easy it would be to believe that it was the ghost of a young girl bringing those long-ago moments to life.
The playing stopped and silence followed.
Joely remained where she was, sensing someone was still in the studio. She wondered about calling out, but as she took a breath she noticed that the books on the wall in front of her were moving towards her.
Shocked, she stepped back, not sure if she was imagining it, until realization dawned. It was a hidden door and someone was coming through.
‘I – I’m sorry,’ Joely tried to laugh, as Freda came through and regarded her with wintry eyes.
‘What for?’ Freda demanded.
Joely had no idea. ‘I didn’t – I didn’t know there was a door. You startled me.’
‘Then I’m the one who should apologize. Are you all right? You’ve gone quite pale.’
Joely might have asked her host the same question, for she was as white and oddly opaque as a sea mist. ‘I’m fine,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve just finished for the day. I haven’t printed anything out yet, but I can do it now.’
‘I won’t read it tonight so there’s no rush.’
Joely watched as Freda walked to the door that led down to the kitchen, but when she tried to open it she couldn’t.
‘Blasted latch has jammed again,’ Freda snapped irritably. ‘You must pay attention to that. Make sure the door isn’t fully closed or, like once happened to me, you’ll end up locked in here until someone comes and lets you out. Wait there, I’ll go down to the kitchen and come up the stairs to sort it out.’
She disappeared back through the bookcase door so swiftly that it was already shut before Joely realized that she was now