Ghostbird Read online

  All over the village, the blossom on the hawthorn trees trembles, and in the morning, carpets the ground like the first snow of winter.

  Lili said nothing.

  ‘She never talks to me about anything. Neither of you do.’ Cadi persisted. She wanted Lili to own the collusion – to know how her dreams of Teilo and Dora were scattered with empty spaces.

  ‘You have to be patient, Cadi. Try and understand how muddled your mother’s mind must be.’

  Cadi pushed back her chair. ‘My mind’s full of holes, Lili. And you and Mam – you make sure it stays that way.’ Turning for the door, she lifted the latch, her eyes fixed on Lili’s face.

  ‘Don’t go, cariad,’ Lili said.

  Cadi shook her head. ‘What’s the point in staying?’ She wanted to ask Lili why on earth both of them continued to deceive her. On the threshold, between staying and leaving, she felt the air in the room shiver. ‘I don’t even know how my parents met. Or where. Imagine that?’

  Lili shifted in her chair unable to meet Cadi’s eye. ‘It doesn’t do to clutter your head with stuff from the past.’

  ‘It’s not your past though, is it?’

  Seven

  Violet Lane had been the love of Teilo Hopkins’ life.

  The moment he set eyes on her pale beauty he lost his heart. He saw her as he came into the room, smoke from her cigarette threading through her hair like a fractured halo. Standing against the French window, leaning into the frame, her black frock rippled against her legs.

  Violet seemed like no other women he had ever met. She possessed a look of otherness, as if her eyes saw too far. She smelled of roses and secrets and he mistook her vulnerability for shyness. Tripped up by unexpected emotion, he could not have known she too was flawed, or that they were on a collision course.

  He smiled his lopsided smile. ‘Teilo Hopkins: passing through and pleased to meet you.’

  ‘That makes you sound like a travelling circus,’ she said. ‘I’m Violet Lane.’

  ‘And that makes you sound like where I live, cariad.’

  Violet, slim as a reed, made more slender by her mother’s frock, stared back. Teilo, eleven years her senior, ought to have known better. Seeing a vision as beautiful as wildflowers, he was overcome by the notion he could offer her something no other man could. She too smiled, a small movement of her mouth, and the future was set. She held out her hand and he took it as if it were a gift.

  Teilo possessed a charm not wholly without sincerity. He stole hearts – treating them as carelessly as a child given too many birthday presents. His smile cut through resistance; he appeared in the shape of dark good looks and flattery. He travelled the country trading cars at auction, cutting deals for his boss and a few on the side for himself. A classic Rover had made him a tidy profit, an invitation to a party with the possibility of new contacts was a bonus.

  Teilo Hopkins was used to getting his own way. Behind his wide, beautiful eyes lay the conviction most women were easily fooled. (His mother had known better. She would have told him some women chose to be fooled.)

  His seduction of Violet, Teilo would have claimed, had been born of love. He loved women in the way certain men do who view them as a challenge, and at the same time, place them on pedestals. He had yet to learn the wisdom of looking a woman in the face not at her feet.

  And so the dance began, tentative steps drawing them toward horror. Later, Teilo suspected she had tricked him with her fey beauty. At the time, he needed no urging, knowing only that Violet’s kiss tasted of honey and promise.

  Out on the terrace, under a cloud-laced moon, he fell for Violet and she, her judgement hopelessly flawed and longing to be rescued, colluded in her own fate.

  ‘This is Violet,’ he said to Lili, the smile splitting his face. ‘We’re getting married.’

  Lili had taken her proffered hand and shivered, taking in the fine-boned face, and long hair the colour of dove’s feathers. She saw a woman with an allure capable of arousing desire and suspicion.

  Lilwen Hopkins felt the icy chill of a damaged heart in the palm of Violet’s hand. She knew instantly that this pale woman represented chaos. Some need in Violet had drawn Teilo to her and Lili saw their future laid out like a quilt, tiny scattered scraps of cloth. Lili looked at her brother’s dark-eyed, handsome joy and she was afraid.

  ‘Hopkins don’t get married,’ she reminded him, deliberately forgetting it was only the women.

  ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything. And it’s what Violet wants.’

  Throughout the following weeks, Lili warned him. She knew beyond any doubt that Teilo, with his selfish disposition would never satisfy this child-woman. It wasn’t the fact he was marrying her – Lili could live with that. In Violet she sensed a dormant wilfulness, shaped like hurt. When it surfaced, she might well despise a life of subservience to a traditional Welshman with a jealous nature.

  ‘Can’t you see how ill at ease she is?’

  ‘Don’t be soft, Lili. She’s fine. We’re fine.’

  Lili knew her brother. And she knew about magic. She knew love was the most powerful spell of all.

  Teilo wanted Violet and he would have her. The last thing he needed was his sister dripping poison in his ear.

  ‘Look in her eyes, Teilo,’ Lili said. ‘It’s not her way. We are not her way.’

  He refused to listen and for a while wouldn’t even speak to her. To Violet he laced his description of the life before them with promises he could never hope to keep. He wooed her with flattery and flowers, and in his stubborn haste, married her in August, when it rained so hard the drains overflowed, good dreams were washed away and no one could tell if you were crying.

  ‘It’s the middle of August, Teilo,’ Lili said as the rain beat down. ‘Rain like this makes holes in stones. Mind the magic, cariad. It’s what Mam would have told you.’

  Teilo didn’t care about the rain and called his sister a superstitious idiot. He laughed away her misgivings and on their wedding day, sheltered his bride under an oversize umbrella and drove her off to a fancy hotel in a limousine he borrowed from Joe.

  Marry in haste and your future will make its own arrangements.

  On the day after his wedding, Teilo took several telephone calls, a sure sign he had other things on his mind. He dreamed about his mother, taking him by the arm and pulling him into the woods, never loosening her grasp, deeper and deeper until it was so green and dark he couldn’t have found the way back if he’d tried.

  She let him go then.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ she whispered. ‘Safe now, boy bach…’

  Her wings are beginning to grow.

  Her skin itches – under her flesh the jagged angriness is worse.

  If she sits in the tree, she can see into her sister’s bedroom; see her at the window, sense a connection to this strange world.

  I know you… I followed you…

  Learning to fly – unsteadily at first – makes the ghost a little braver.

  Why can’t you see me?

  She flies down, in through the open window, and tries to write a message on the wall. Her fingers feel clumsy and clawed, the marks make no sense. Her mother, who is so sad her heart has turned to gravel, stands outside the room and the ghost, wondering if she might see her, tries to pass through the door onto the landing.

  Can you hear me?

  She discovers the door of her sister’s bedroom is the limit of her territory in the house.

  Her mother walks away. Violet’s sorrow ebbs and flows behind her, swishing through the tiny specks of sand and pebbles making up her heart: swish, swish, back and forth. The ghost hears it. Her claw fingers feel sharp, and so does her heart.

  Back in the tree, her amber eyes widen and she waits for her wings to finish growing.

  Eight

  Cadi found the stone on her pillow.

  It brushed the cut on her cheek as she woke, making her wince. Opening her eyes she saw a small piece of jasper, dark as an old bl
oodstain, on the pillow. She was young enough to be enchanted by the idea of magic, and old enough to understand it happened for a reason. Placing the stone on the palm of her hand, she curled her fingers around its smoothness. In the soft light it appeared alive. As the last remnants of sleep fell away, she saw the lake shimmering beneath a sun so bright it hurt her eyes. The scent of meadowsweet filled her nostrils and she thought someone called out to her.

  Footsteps sounded on the landing – her mother on her way downstairs. Cadi held her breath, willing Violet not to come into her room.

  Less than a minute passed and she heard it again, a tattered fluttering and something else that wasn’t quite her name. In the corner of her room stood a thin figure with wild, colourless hair and a trace of white flowers scattered through it. Before Cadi could move, or say anything, the figure disappeared.

  The fluttering resumed. She shifted against the pillow, her eyes wide open. She imagined wings beating, a bird trapped in a fold of the curtains. As she swung her legs out of bed, the sound stopped. Cadi went to the window and pulled open the curtains. Light flooded the room. On the floor, shifting in the breeze lay a brown and cream feather. And on the wall underneath the windowsill, three parallel scratches, as if a bird had drawn a claw across the surface of the wallpaper.

  The marks were faint; they were also quite clearly rips in the paper. Cadi moved closer peering at the thin lines. Maybe they’d always been there and she simply hadn’t noticed.

  Other than the bed, the only thing in the room that had belonged to her sister was a small rocking horse. Silver grey with darker grey dapples, it was a gentle looking thing with a white mane and black detail around its mouth, eyes and hooves.

  Cadi looked at the marks on the wallpaper, at the rocking horse, unmoving in the sunlit room. They’re only scratches. They could have been there for years.

  The rocking horse gazed back.

  Cadi opened her hand and stared at the stone. Her heart began to beat a little faster. What the hell is going on?AmI imagining things or just going mad?

  In her heart Cadi knew neither of these things was true. ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’ She knelt by the window, the stone clutched in her hand. Her words hovered like invisible clouds before vanishing into the air. She tried to picture Dora on the rocking horse. It stared back at her, riderless and silent.

  Downstairs, the air smelled of decay and irritation. Cadi inhaled it all: her mother’s disapproval and the musty scent from a vase of wilting flowers on the table.

  ‘Throw those things out, Cadi,’ Violet said. ‘I don’t know why you bother. You know I don’t like flowers in the house.’

  ‘Well, I think they’re pretty. It’s so dull in here.’

  On this side of the wall, what light made it through the windows seeped into the stone, leaving the rooms gloomy and tired. Violet’s house had a pinched feel. Even the air seemed mean. Draughts found their way through windows and under doors and if you listened hard enough, you could hear the whispers of ghosts hanging in the corners like cobwebs. From time to time, Cadi would feel a touch on her hair; swear she saw curls of dust rising from the carpet. The ghosts in her mother’s house weren’t a bit like the ones in Lili’s.

  She wondered if her mother ever thought about them. What would she say if I told her what’s been happening?

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Mam?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ Violet shuddered, as if the thought might conjure one.

  You’re scared of them though. Cadi rubbed her neck under her hair, uncertain if what she sensed was real or imagined. She tried to catch her mother’s eye but Violet had turned away. Looking around, she tried to picture spirits behind the motionless curtains, between the books standing on the mahogany bookcase.

  They were Teilo’s books: thrillers, adventure stories and car manuals, Welsh myths and legends. None of them interested Cadi. Her father’s books struck her as dour; as if they might fall to dust if she removed them from the shelf.

  ‘We ought to give those books to Lili.’

  Violet opened the door of the washing machine. ‘You still haven’t explained about your face.’

  ‘I told you, a branch flipped back and caught me by surprise.’

  A ghost followed me home and I think it’s my sister. Behind her eyes her head began to ache.

  ‘I know that, Cadi. You haven’t said what you were doing on the path in the first place.’

  Cadi shrugged. ‘Walking, hanging out.’

  ‘And why would you be hanging about on the lake path if you weren’t going to the lake, after I expressly forbade you?’

  ‘Why would you be walking down the road if you weren’t going to the village?’

  ‘Don’t be flippant, Cadi. It doesn’t suit you.’ Violet pulled a laundry basket in front of the washing machine. ‘I don’t understand why you carry on defying me over this.’

  ‘And I don’t understand why you won’t talk to me about my father.’

  Violet began unloading the washing, snapping towels so hard Cadi thought they might tear in two. ‘I do not talk about it. And you do not ask.’ She spoke slowly and with such deliberation, Cadi felt like a rebuked child.

  ‘You’re ridiculous, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I am your mother. Don’t speak to me like that.’ There was an edge of violence to Violet’s voice. ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘Sorry, keep your hair on.’

  Violet pulled more washing from the machine. Between her words, her breathing sounded ragged. ‘Do you have any plans for today?’ She crouched over the basket. ‘I’m going to work in a while. Lili will give you lunch. I hope you show her a bit more respect than you show me.’

  Cadi felt her face flush. ‘I said I’m sorry. I’ll be okay. There’s some stuff I want to look up on Lili’s laptop.’

  ‘No little friends to play with?’

  ‘We don’t play, Mam, we’re not children. And in any case, Cerys has gone on holiday. I told you.’

  Violet slammed the washing machine door shut. ‘Well, do as you please. Make yourself useful and don’t spend all day on the computer.’

  ‘I only want to check something for school.’

  ‘I may work an extra shift. I’ll ask Lili if she can give you supper too.’ She paused. ‘I need to have a word with her before I leave anyway.’

  Cadi shifted in her seat. What now?

  ‘I can give her a message.’ She wanted to tell her mother not to be stupid. Lili didn’t need asking to make her supper. And Cadi needed to delay her mother, deflect her from talking to Lili.

  ‘Mam,’ she said. ‘Have you thought any more about me having a dog?’

  Violet picked up the laundry basket. ‘Oh, Cadi, not this again.’

  ‘I saw a lovely Jack Russell the other day, outside the church, with this man.’

  ‘What man?’

  Cadi narrowed her eyes. ‘Just some man hanging round the churchyard. The thing is…’

  ‘Did you recognise him?’

  ‘No, was I supposed to?’ Cadi waited. Violet seemed lost for words. ‘He was a random bloke with this sweet little dog called Gertie.’ Cadi sighed. ‘Why can’t I have a dog?’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘A Jack Russell, I told you.’

  ‘Not the dog, Cadi, the man. You know what I mean.’

  ‘He wasn’t a pervert, Mam. He was ordinary, okay? Tall and dark, a bit thin, jeans and a leather jacket. I think he was wearing cowboy boots.’

  Violet’s fingers tightened on the basket, her face a mask.

  ‘You know him, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course I don’t.’

  You’re lying. Cadi wanted to challenge Violet but the look on her mother’s face disturbed her. ‘What’s wrong, Mam, you look weird?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. I don’t like the idea of you talking to strangers, that’s all.’ Violet dropped the laundry basket and grabbed the vase, flinging the dead flowers
into the compost bin.

  This wasn’t the reaction Cadi expected. A warning not to talk to strangers maybe, not this frantic agitation. ‘I didn’t talk to him. And since when did you care who I speak to? You’re as bad as Miss Bevan and Mrs Guto-Evans.’

  ‘Did they see him?’

  ‘Yes. And they told me not to talk to him as well. But I didn’t, honestly. I spoke to the dog.’

  Violet put the vase in the sink and reached out her hand for Cadi’s cereal bowl. ‘Finished?’

  Cadi slid her bowl across the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ Violet said.

  Cadi could see the effort she was making.

  ‘If you go out, make sure you stay away from the lake. That is no longer a suggestion or a rule, Cadi, it’s an order.’

  I’m still going. Cadi realised that whatever had scared her now seemed easy to forgive. I belong there.

  Her mother watched her, as if she might say something else. Instead of speaking, Violet picked up the basket of washing and vanished through the kitchen door leaving Cadi alone.

  Nine

  If Cadi persisted, Violet thought she might go mad.

  I hope you never have to know the things I know. She stood outside the door shaking her head as if she might dislodge the past. I have no memories I want and too many I would gladly trade.

  Transported into the past, she felt a wave of nausea. Had it really been a chance that brought her and Teilo together that night? Are things, as Lili was so irritatingly fond of saying, usually the way they’re meant to be?

  I didn’t even want to go to that party. Violet recalled her old boss, a well-off woman who ran an exclusive shoe shop. I couldn’t stand her.

  Nothing would normally have induced her to accept a half-hearted invitation from a woman she didn’t like. It wasn’t fate, whatever Lili might say. It was coincidence. Hestepped into that room at random; I just happened to be there.

  And now it looked as if Owen Penry might be back.

  If it’s true, what could he want? Violet felt the village closing in on her.

  Violet Lane came from nowhere. Her father disappeared before her first birthday. An only child, she had lived in the shadow of her mother’s resentful defeat and it had shaped both their lives.