little that night and despite all of Molly’s pleas, was unable to eat a thing. The next morning she set off back to The Folly bright and early, and the first thing she saw as she approached the house was the familiar sight of the doctor’s pony and trap. When she entered the hallway she found him there talking to the master, whose face was grave.
‘I’m afraid my mother has suffered another seizure,’ he told her gently. ‘Mrs Forrester and Adam are with her now, but do go up. She has been asking for you.’
Amy silently nodded and when she entered the old woman’s room minutes later, Josephine and Adam rose quietly and tiptoed away, closing the door softly behind them. Amy sat down gingerly on the side of the bed as the nurse looked on and as the old woman’s eyes flickered open and came to rest on her, she smiled with her crooked mouth and squeezed her hand with her good right one.
‘I’m so glad you came.’ Her voice was weak and indistinct and Amy had to bend low to hear her. ‘There’s been too much sorrow in this house but you have brought joy back into it and I thank yer for that.’ The woman’s breath was coming in quick short gasps now, and the tears that had been trying to choke Amy suddenly gushed from her eyes and coursed unbidden down her cheeks. Willing the old woman to live, she gripped her hand tightly.
Now, as the pain subsided, Mrs Forrester’s eyes, that had always seemed so bright and alert, were clouded and she seemed to be looking beyond her.
‘Jessica … I knew you would come!’ A look of incredible joy played across her face, and perplexed, Amy looked towards the nurse for help. The woman ran from the room, her starched white apron rustling, and seconds later she returned with the old woman’s family, who crowded around her bed. Amy left the room, not wishing to invade their privacy, and once out on the landing she buried her face in her hands and sank on to the windowseat. And there she waited. Occasionally maids flitted by as they went sombrely about their duties, the only sound they made being the swish of their skirts as they passed. Below in the hallway she could faintly hear the tick-tock-tick-tock of the grand-father clock, and the urge came on her to rush down and stay its hands, for she was aware that it could be measuring the beloved old mistress’s last minutes on earth.
The minutes stretched into an hour and then two, but the bedroom door finally opened and Samuel Forrester appeared, his face deathly pale and his arm tight about his sobbing wife’s shoulders. Seemingly oblivious to Amy’s presence, he led her gently away and seconds later, Adam followed them from the room. As his eyes found Amy’s he slowly shook his head and rising without a word being spoken she made her way downstairs, her steps heavy. Lifting her bonnet and coat she soundlessly slipped from the grieving house. Inside, her heart was crying but she was dry-eyed and pale, for the pain she was experiencing went beyond tears. After leaving the grounds she walked blindly across the fields that would lead her home. The River Anker, its surface frozen to ice, stretched away into the distance like a silver ribbon, but Amy walked numbly on, heedless of her surroundings, and by the time the familiar cottages came into sight, still not a single tear had she shed. For no reason that she could explain, her steps led her not to her own door, but to Bessie’s, and as she approached it, the one person she had need of at that moment came into sight.
Toby had just stepped into the lane and immediately he saw her, the closed look she had come to dread dropped like a curtain across his eyes. But then as he noted her ashen face and obvious distress, he stepped quickly towards her, his indifference forgotten and his face a mask of concern.
‘What is it, Amy?’
‘Oh, Toby,’ she sobbed, and suddenly the tears that had been locked in her heart gushed out of her, threatening to choke her. ‘Sh … she’s gone. The old mistress has gone.’ Her voice held such a wealth of sorrow that he instantly pulled her into his arms and soothingly held her to him, stroking her hair whilst she sobbed as if her heart would break. Just as