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‘I will fix this.’ Sophie gripped her hands as she knelt before her. ‘You will not lose your home, I promise.’
‘You cannot promise me that, dear, and you know it.’ The bleak resignation in the older woman’s eyes broke Sophie’s heart. ‘As much as it pains me, we need to make plans because I sense my time here in this house is done.’
‘We are not beaten yet, Aunt. I shall think of something to save us!’ She had to. ‘Please try and have some faith in that. Conserve your strength and allow me to worry about this house.’
‘It feels like grief having to say goodbye to the place and so daunting to have to start again somewhere unfamiliar. But change is inevitable, I suppose, even at this late stage of my life.’ Aunt Jemima sighed as she glanced around the room she had lived in since the day she had been born, as if it were for the very last time and she was consigning it all to memory. ‘I always thought I would die here—in my own bed—especially as I haven’t that long left.’
‘I haven’t that long left’ had been a phrase uttered near weekly in all the time Sophie had lived here with her aunt. She usually ignored it, glossed over it with a dismissive flick of her wrist or roll of her eyes, but for some reason that did not feel right tonight. Not when it seemed a very real possibility.
‘Please don’t talk like that.’ Her aunt’s defeatist tone brought a lump to Sophie’s throat as she helped her up the stairs to her bedchamber.
‘Why? When it is the truth? I know my days are numbered and so do you.’ She paused halfway up to touch her chest. ‘This old heart hasn’t the strength to last much longer.’ Which was what worried her niece the most.
‘Nonsense! You have years in you yet and good ones too. Even the overly cautious and non-committal Dr Able said as much.’ To Aunt Jemima he had. To Sophie privately he had expressed his concerns about her aunt’s dizzy spells and increasing bouts of breathlessness.
In case her own concerns leaked, Sophie changed the subject while she prepared the icy room for her aunt, reiterating the success of today and reminding her of the villagers’ plans for a further but more subtle protest on the morrow with more optimism for its success than she actually felt. She knew it was unlikely that a few angry placards placed in windows and front gardens would have much, if any, impact in dissuading any potential buyers, but in her current depressed and fragile state she would not tell her aunt that. Or even admit it to herself because she had no better plan to fix things.
She continued a stream of cheerful chatter as she settled Aunt Jemima into the antique four-poster bed which was so large and so old this entire bedchamber had to have been built around it. Both her aunt and her father had been born in this bed. Her grandfather and great-grandfather too. It was as old as the hills, yet the carved oak bedstead was still as solid as a rock—unlike the cracked and crumbling plaster walls surrounding it. And unlike her beloved aunt who did not look the least bit convinced by her niece’s laboured buoyancy.
‘We need to make plans, Sophie.’
Tears of hopelessness pricked her eyes which she would rather die than allow her aunt to see as she tucked her in tight. ‘Tish tosh.’ She flapped the truth away as if it were of no consequence. ‘Even if the worst happens, we still have a bright future ahead of us. I am an educated woman who is not without skills and will easily find work.’ Or at least she hoped the years of teaching the poor children of the parish their letters and assisting some of the less educated farmers with their monthly accounts and correspondence would be useful attributes in the big, wide world. ‘So we shan’t be homeless or penniless and we certainly won’t starve. I shall find a carpenter to dismantle this ungainly monstrosity of a bed and reassemble it in our nice new home somewhere close by where we shall both have a grand new adventure...’ Onwards and upwards. Always onwards and upwards. No matter what.
‘We?’ Aunt Jemima cupped her cheek with her frozen bony hand. ‘You are a good girl, Sophie—too good, and that worries me as much, if not more, than losing this house.’
‘I am the last thing you should worry about.’
‘But I do, dear. Incessantly. I have worried about you and your future for years.’ The older woman gripped her hand, forcing Sophie to stop fussing and listen. ‘But only in the last few days have I come to the conclusion that my fate and yours shouldn’t be intertwined. It isn’t fair on you to feel bound to a silly old lady near the end of her days when you are so full of life and deserve so much better.’ Her aunt sighed. ‘That is why I am going to write to your father.’
A pointless waste of time as well as an unpalatable one. ‘He has made it crystal clear that I am dead to him.’ He would never forgive her, which was one enormous hurdle to any sort of reconciliation, and she would never forgive him either, which was an insurmountable one. Hell would have to freeze over before she ever spoke to that man again when she blamed him for all that had happened. ‘He will always be dead to me. I would rather live under a bridge than on his shilling.’ She tried to tug her hand away than discuss him or the reasons she despised him for a second longer, but her aunt would have none of it and patted the mattress. Insisting Sophie sit when all she really wanted to do was run out into the solitude of the woods and howl at the full moon and curse fate when it had already punished her enough. Already taken all bar one of the lives she had cared about the most.
But Aunt Jemima held her fingers tight and tried to have some of the conversation which Sophie hadn’t ever been strong enough to have. ‘When you first came here, you needed me so very much, Sophie.’ Just that subtle reminder robbed her of all breath, so she turned away and determined not to listen. If she refused to listen, then she didn’t have to remember. ‘And because I liked being needed after so many years alone, as one month turned to twelve and the years rolled by, I convinced myself that you still needed me. But I knew, deep down, that I was being selfish in not encouraging you to spread your wings and find your own path the moment you were healed. It was wrong of me not to do that, and I am sorry—but now it is time. Your future and mine should not be intertwined for ever when you deserve to forge your own path.’
‘I have and it is with you.’ She wanted to flee. Wanted to cover her ears with her hands and sing to block out all the words. All the memories. The soul-crushing awfulness that had almost killed her too.
Because she knew that, Aunt Jemima’s fingers tightened about her wrist. ‘It isn’t, dear, and it never should have been. You were always meant for more than this.’ She gestured to the room. ‘The dull, impoverished existence we currently suffer is not the future I want for you, and I will not allow it to be so.’ She stared deep into Sophie’s eyes to let her know that her next words would be the most stubbornly profound. ‘To that end, I have decided that I shall throw myself at the mercy of my brother, remind him that he promised our parents he would take care of me to the bitter end and insist on his charity—alone.’
‘You are overwrought, Aunt.’ She smiled kindly to dismiss that outrageous nonsense, even though her heart was racing nineteen to the dozen at the bombshell. Like so many things she could not bring herself to talk about, they never mentioned her father. Ever. ‘And clearly not thinking straight if you could possibly imagine that I would leave you to flounder alone with him while I...’
Her aunt silenced her with a chilled finger to Sophie’s lips.
‘If this last week has done anything positive, dearest, it has forced me to take stock of things properly, and I realise that somewhere in the last ten years, our roles have become reversed. For nowadays you no longer need me, but I seem to rely on you for everything. I have allowed myself to become a burden to you and because you are a kind and generous soul you have allowed me to make those demands upon you—and all to your detriment.’
‘I would never consider you a burden!’ Sophie shook her head, mortified that this kind, sweet angel would ever think such a thing. ‘After all you have done for me...all you have risked and sacrificed for me...’ Saying just that aloud made all the terrifying buried emotions churn. Emotions she had kept tightly bottled for a decade in case the full force of them destroyed the husk of her spirit which had survived. From the day she had arrived here, sodden to the skin and broken inside, they had never talked about the tragedy. Not in direct terms. They skirted on the periphery occasionally—tactfully—but never mentioned anything specific because Sophie could not cope with it. What happened had happened and that was that. Stoic avoidance was easier. Avoidance was what kept her sane. Kept her putting one foot in front of the other. Onwards and upwards. Always onwards and upwards!
Never look back.
‘Things I did gladly, child, as you have always been the daughter I never had—but I would never forgive myself if I allowed you to continue to sacrifice all your best years simply because you feel misguidedly beholden for something which happened so long ago.’
‘I am thirty, Aunt. My best years are long behind me.’ Panic swirled now. It’s tentacles wrapping around her throat and choking all her organs.
‘If I were thirty again I wouldn’t waste them on the rigid strictures of spinsterhood or be curbed by society’s expectations. I would be more like Mrs Fitzherbert. I would have adventures. Live my life exactly as I wanted. You are a clever girl, Sophie. Sharp as a tack and resourceful. The world could still be your oyster so go grab that chance with both hands. Without me holding you back, you could start afresh somewhere new. You could become a governess or become a well-to-do lady’s companion. Free of me, you might even meet a nice man and have a family all of your own. There is still time for that too.’
The pain was swift and devastating but there was no skirting around the unpleasantness this time. ‘Never mind that I am soiled goods and not at all the sort of woman a nice man would ever consider.’ That ship had long sailed. Sailed and sunk to the bottom of the ocean with all her youthful hopes and dreams and she had made a pact with herself never to trawl those murky depths. There were monsters there. Man-eating monsters who had no mercy.
‘Not all men are your father, Sophie. Some would see beyond your past. If you went somewhere new, nobody would even know what happened to you and you could reinvent yourself as you see fit. Start afresh.’
‘I couldn’t lie about what happened!’ The flash of temper was instinctive as the past threatened to smother her. She sucked in a calming breath and fiddled with her aunt’s bedcovers until the wave of grief and anger subsided, forcing it all back inside where it could do no harm. Dead and buried.
