Unforgettable (Gloria Cook) - By Gloria Cook Page 0,18
been crushed, Verity, darling. You must be thankful that you’ve had a very lucky escape.’
‘I am, Aunt Dor, believe me. The thing is, I mean, haven’t you noticed Mother and Father haven’t rung to ask me how I am? I fibbed to you and Uncle Greg that I rang them to say I’d arrived safely. They’ve disowned me. I mean really, really disowned me. Father was raving mad when I told them the engagement was off and Mother said I was the biggest disappointment of their lives. When I refused to apologize to Julius and try to win him back they were even more furious. Father insisted that I at least apologize to Sir Thomas and Lady Urquart but I adamantly refused. Father and Mother wouldn’t listen to my side of things, to see that I had done nothing wrong. So they told me to leave, and that they’d washed their hands of me for good.’
Verity’s trembles became feverish and her voice was edged in fury. ‘All they care about is their damned position. I hate them for it. What sort of parents are they? You or Uncle Greg would not do such a thing to your child. They said they would never forgive me for letting them down. Well the feeling is mutual. I hate them with all my heart and I’ll never ever forgive them!’
Five
Belle Lawry could not prevent a shiver jerking along her spine as she walked up the rough path to Merrivale. The place was unbelievably bleak and dark, the stuff of eerie dreams. Her son Sam, presently working with her husband Charlie, had played here with his friends during the property’s empty years and been frightened by the apparent hauntings. ‘I swear on my life, Mum, some of us saw this huge looming shadow and Jenna Vercoe swears she heard a voice.’ Sam, until then a dedicated scoffer of all things supernatural, had looked warily over both shoulders as if the spooks had followed him home. ‘There’s something bad lingering there. We shan’t go there again.’ But he and the others had gone back, playing games of dare but always soon scarpering away with more scary tales.
Charlie had laughed at Sam. ‘It’s all in your imagination, you’re all frightening yourselves.’
‘I don’t know so much,’ Belle had reacted by chewing her lower lip. ‘There’s many a thing under sun and moon that can’t be simply explained away. I’ve read accounts of people seeing their loved ones, even though they were off fighting in both wars, and then learning their son or husband had been killed at the exact same time they’d seen them. They’re spiritual messages. There’s nothing stronger than the bond of love. And there’s always evil lurking about . . .’
‘Oh, don’t tell me you think all those rumours are true, my little darling, dearest.’ The ever jocular, tactile Charlie had grabbed Belle and squeezed her affectionately. ‘You’ve got your serious face on. Whoo-ooo. Let’s go up there and have a seance.’
‘Don’t even joke about it, Charlie,’ Belle had returned sternly, but she was happy to stay in Charlie’s embrace, her favourite place to be since their courting days seventeen years ago. Their love had been instant and passionate, and quickly followed by a hurried wedding and Sam’s birth. ‘There’s God and there’s good and evil forces. It’s not at all fanciful to believe that the evil and madness that provoked those dreadful murders is still lurking there. I hope one day the place is demolished.’
When news reached Belle that Merrivale was inhabited again, by a mystery woman and her son, of Sam’s age, Belle had felt sorry for them. Dorrie Resterick had paid them a visit and received no reply, although she was sure someone had been at home. No one else had bothered to go to Merrivale, not even the vicar, but he maddened most of the parishioners by his stance that people knew where to find him if they wanted him.
Then unexpectedly, the boy from Merrivale had turned up at The Orchards looking for work. At the time Belle had been at the village school, teaching the children country dancing in readiness for the annual village Summer Fair, which would be held at nearby Petherton, the semi-grand home of the doughty and gritty Mrs Mitchelmore. During the war, the much-married, bottle-blonde Honoria Sanders, the younger sister of Mrs Mitchelmore, had offered to take over the burden of the Summer Fair and hold it at her more modern home, Sawle House, to