“Did you speak to her?”
I hesitate. “No.”
She turns to me, and I think she’s going to accuse me of lying, but she steps closer with an expression I’ve never seen before, as if she’s fighting a swell of panic. She twists her rings around and around in front of her chest.
“Seraphine, listen to me. That girl almost destroyed our family. I wish to God Ruth had never employed her. Don’t talk to her, Seraphine, please. I can’t bear it. I’ll answer anyquestions you have about your birth, about your mother, about anything. Just please stay away from her.”
“Oh, Gran, I didn’t mean to upset you.” My hand hovers over her arm for a moment. I weigh up her words, and then I step back.
“Actually, there is something else I’d like to ask you,” I say. “It’s nothing to do with Laura.”
She returns to her seat, easing herself down with a huff. “Go ahead then.”
“What are your plans for Summerbourne?” I ask. “In the long run?”
Her eyes widen. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t we just talk about these things, Gran? I don’t mind either way. But who will get it? Danny or me? I just want to know.”
“Seraphine.” She pulls a handkerchief from the bag at her side and dabs it around her mouth. “My goodness. What’s got into you today?”
I press my lips together and look at her, and she’s the first to break eye contact.
“There will always be more than enough money for you to buy your own house,” she says. I sway slightly and grasp the back of a chair.
“Are you saying that Summerbourne will go to Danny?” I ask.
She watches me. She gives the smallest of nods.
“Why?” I whisper.
She opens her mouth, but the sudden flash of pity in her eyes makes me recoil.
I can’t bear to be near her any longer. I have a sudden desperate need to see the sea. She calls my name, but I stride across the lawn without looking back, breaking into a run when Ireach the cover of the trees, curling my fists as I pound toward the back gate. Summerbourne is my home.I’mthe one who loves it the most.
When we were young, Danny used to run away from home periodically, triggered more than once by one of his favorite nannies leaving. He would pack a bag with provisions, and sometimes make it as far as the village before he was missed. Dad used to say Danny was ready to go off exploring the world before he even started school.
I, on the other hand, resisted bonding with our nannies because I understood from a young age that sooner or later they would all leave us. Just like our mother had left us.
People were unreliable, but the house I was born in was a safe, solid constant. I used to pester Dad and Vera for tales of Summerbourne’s history, frustrated that Dad knew so little and that Vera seemed so irritated by my questions. I drew pictures of “my” house obsessively, and dreamed of being its queen and making all the rules. One of Dad’s favorite tales was of finding me, aged five, crying with a cut finger—“not because it hurt,” he used to tell people, laughing, “but because I’d told her Summerbourne was in her blood, and she’d been peering into her wound and couldn’t see any yellow brickdust.”
I think of Danny now, my laid-back brother, and a loud, harsh laugh escapes me, because I know already what he will say when he hears Vera’s decision about Summerbourne:We can share it, Seph. You can have it, Seph.The same as he’s always said about everything our whole lives.
As ever, the view from the top of the cliffs soothes me. Gulls soar and swoop farther along the coastline near the boatyard, but their cries are drowned by the hiss of the waves here on the beach below. The breeze dries my tears, and I turn my attention to the stone tower by the top of the cliff steps: theSummerbourne folly, built by one of my ancestors, used nowadays to store our deck chairs and windbreaks for the beach. I potter around, tugging up a few weeds from the low wall that encircles the tower, bundling the prettier ones together into a bouquet. I run my fingers over the chiseled Latin words by the tower door, and then I sit in my usual spot on the scratchy grass inside the enclosure and rest my back against the warm stone wall.
I think of my grandmother’s face as she looked at that photo, and as she told me that Summerbourne will go to Danny. Despite her faults, I struggle to believe that Vera would favor a male heir for the sake of it. Has she made this decision because Danny has always been her favorite? Cheerful, biddable Danny, who never argued with her or resented her claustrophobic care the way I did. Or could it be something else—could it be related to there just being one baby in that photo? Could it mean she has doubts about who I really am?
I know that Dad was in London on the morning we were born, that he didn’t get here until after Laura had helped my mother deliver her babies. We weren’t expected until the following month, and there was nobody else in the house apart from four-year-old Edwin.
I push myself up, and take my bunch of wildflowers back to the house, dropping them into an old glass vase on the kitchen table. Vera has gone, presumably in a taxi back to the station. There’s a note on the hall table saying,Please don’t be cross, Seraphine. I’ll see you next weekend. V x.I scrunch it up and toss it into the trash can before dialing the number for Winterbourne.
I need to talk to my brothers. I grit my teeth against the tiny voice that scratches inside my skull:But are they your brothers?
4
Laura
September 1991
