The House of Brides Read online

  “Her?” My voice sounded high. Unhinged. “What would she be doing working here? I’m sure she’s tucked away somewhere with plenty of money and is waiting for the whole thing to blow over.” Because that’s what they were saying about me online, and I didn’t have another credible option.

  “You look like her, don’t you? I suppose you hear that all the time! Hardly an ideal person to be compared to! Everyone hates her! After what she told that woman! And with no medical background. It’s criminal.”

  It wasn’t. My lawyers, after much deliberation and even more billable hours, had decided that the complainants didn’t have a case. If I refunded the money from sales of the app and suspended my social media accounts, then that would be the end of it. Except it wasn’t. I was kidding myself if I thought it was.

  “I don’t think she ever made any claims about cancer,” I said, desperately. “That was that other girl.” I hadn’t. In my darkest hour, that had been some consolation to me. That others had been worse. That others had done more damage.

  It had started on Instagram. Sharing photos of healthy food. Rainbow salads, açai bowls, bliss balls. It was just a hobby to begin with, while I was at uni, but my timing was right. My followers grew and grew. I did a photo course, a digital media course.

  People started to invite me to wellness seminars. There were enormous rooms of women who wanted to hear what I was saying, who took photos of me. They cheered when I spoke and reposted my photos, commented on posts. Companies paid me for product placement. I started to believe I was special. That this was the extraordinary life I was destined for.

  Some people my dad knew in the media approached me to put together an app. It was an instant success. The seven-day detox and the clean-eating month were the biggest sellers. They paid for my car, and I was able to move out of home.

  Maybe if I’d just stuck with that, it would have been fine. But one day a woman contacted me and told me she had been trying to have a baby, struggling to conceive. And then she had followed my diet and gotten pregnant. It put an idea in my head. A new app, a diet to enable and encourage fertility. Mother Miranda.

  “Mother Miranda! That’s it. It is you.” The telltale glow from her smartphone screen shone out from above the door. Her voice became certain and accusatory, just like they all were online. “You’ve got a bloody nerve. My sister bought your app—”

  “Most people say I look like a young Julianne Moore.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but for the first time in days, my body temperature rose. The woman wouldn’t stop talking. Even Rosie on the register was listening.

  Blocking the door with my body, I twisted the lock, leaving the woman trapped inside, still talking about what a horrible person I was. Am. I slipped out the door to the stock room, fumbled in my locker for my bag and my keys and my phone. I took off my lanyard and swung it from an overhanging rack.

  I was almost out the back door when something gold caught my eye. Somehow my fob chain had become tangled up with my lanyard and was hanging, still swaying slightly from the motion of its speedy removal. Snatching it back, I held it tight in my hand. It was still warm from my skin and seemed to transmit a sense of calm. Like it somehow connected me across the years and the oceans to my mother’s family. Like maybe it offered me a chance to be a different person.

  There was nothing for me here. The banging from the change room made that almost certain. I opened the heavy back door, ignoring the alarm triggered by my exit, and felt the heat of the midday sun warming me. A deep breath. The blank screen of my phone was less of a shock to me these days. Once it was a deluge of messages and notifications; now it simply showed the date, the time. An innocuous background with a standard-issue screensaver.

  I brought up the Qantas home page, convinced that if I did it quickly, it wouldn’t feel so bad. That I wouldn’t have a chance to change my mind. It took longer to calculate the flight times and prices than I expected. At any time, I could have closed the browser, written it off as a bad job, and gone back into the store with my tail between my legs. But I didn’t. The price, when it came up, took my breath away. Christmas was coming, and there were only business-class fares available. They were way more than I had in my bank account, way more than I would have spent at the height of my success.

  There was only one option. He answered on the first ring, but he always did for his daughters. Whatever our differences, he was always available to me. He didn’t talk straightaway, finishing off his conversation before acknowledging me. I hoped he had forgotten about our conversation the other night.

  “What’s up?”

  Each phone call was a reminder of the one I had made to him months before, in tears and overwhelmed. The panic in his voice hadn’t quite gone, but it was less now.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, poppet.” Frustration mixed with the relief that it wasn’t urgent. That I wasn’t sobbing like that other time.

  “I just saw an amazing book for Fleur. For Christmas. I’d love to get it for her, but . . .” I let my voice trail off.

  “But what?” Definitely more frustration than relief now. He muttered something to someone, away from the phone.

  “It’s expensive.”

  A sigh.

  “It’s about the gardens around Lake Como.” It was a low blow. Dad had taken Fleur to Italy for their honeymoon, and they often talked about how they might return once the girls finished school. I tried not to think how this little jaunt of mine could set them back a couple of years.

  “Can’t this wait?”

  “It’s the last one. They’re from an overseas supplier, and they can’t get any more before Christmas. I just want to get her something nice to say thanks. For everything.”

  Shame rose up like bile in my throat, and I swallowed it down. It was getting easier to deal with over time, like I’d had exposure therapy to bad behaviour. Still, this was as bad as it had gotten for me. Despite what people said about me, everything I had done was done with good intention. I genuinely thought I was helping people. This time I was under no such illusion. I forced myself to remember my father’s face in the study the other night. The way he clammed up and wouldn’t tell me any more about my mother. The way he kept secrets. The way he was lying to me.

  “I’ll put you on to Susie.” His PA. She ran his life. And his finances. She would give me his credit card details. I’d ask for the American Express, as I knew that had no limit, and well, at least he’d get some points out of it.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “And, Miranda?”

  “Yes?” I had him on speakerphone by that point, hastily refreshing the screen so that the ticket wasn’t lost.

  “I know I don’t need to say this.” I felt him hesitate. “Just the book, okay?” Shame again. Hot and acid. But by that stage I could barely taste it.

  “Okay.” He put me on to Susie, and she gave me the details. The transaction went through without a hitch. I was on the next flight to Heathrow, courtesy of my dad.

  As I said: rock bottom.

  7

  “Have you been in this part of the country before?” the taxi driver asked as we approached Barnsley for the first time. The entire countryside was bathed in tepid light, the day not quite sure if it had arrived or not.

  “No.”

  “You’re in for a treat.” The car eased off the motorway and onto a smaller carriage road.

  The land around began to open into fields, and beyond them, wild hills covered in bracken for which I had no reference point. The never-ending plane ride followed by a long wait at Heathrow for the bus and now a taxi from the nearest town: I had no idea whether it was day or night, let alone where on earth I was or what the local fauna was called. It was a far cry from the warm and fuzzy scene I had envisaged for my arrival at Barnsley. I knew it had been a fantasy, but in my jet-lagged and disoriented state I was beginning to rethink my plan to show up unannounced.

  In the distance, an unfamiliar animal stood frozen on a rocky outc
rop.

  The driver seemed to sense my confusion. “The edge of the moor,” he said. “We follow it all the way around to Barnsley now.”

  “What’s that creature?”

  “A stag. They’re rampant around here. There’s talk of culling them, especially after the accident, but you know, animal rights groups and the like . . .” He left the sentence unfinished and shifted in his seat.

  The accident?

  After a moment more, he added, “Do you have sensible clothes?”

  “Yes, I think so. I have a proper jacket, and boots—is that what you mean?”

  His eyes scanned my travelling outfit in the mirror. The cotton pullover and jeans that had seemed appropriate in the rising heat of an Australian summer were barely enough in the whipping cold that had confronted me when I left the bus. I saw his eyes glance over my mother’s fob chain around my neck. It shimmered in the last of the afternoon light, and I attempted to tuck it into my clothing.

  “You’ll need practical clothes down here. Wellingtons. Wet weather gear.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, sizing me up. “I don’t suppose you’ll fit into Daphne’s things.”

  My skin, below its layers of impractical clothing, prickled slightly. We sat in silence as the day resolved itself into evening, darkness settling quickly. Finally, a long way down a twisting lane covered on either side by scraggly hedgerows, the driver stopped the car in a small turnout.

  Alongside, I could make out the shape of an enormous pair of iron gates unequivocally fastened with a sturdy chain and lock. There was a sign, with gold letters announcing Barnsley House, but the light above was dark.

  “They don’t know you’re coming.” It was a statement, not a question.

  My confusion must have shown on my face. The driver didn’t look as if he believed me when I assured him otherwise. I hadn’t expected it to be so dark when I arrived. I hadn’t expected it to look so . . . abandoned. “Why don’t you give them a ring, love?”

  Yes—why don’t I?

  I thought quickly.

  “My phone doesn’t work over here. Is there another way of getting in?”

  “The family use the private entrance down the road.”

  “Yes.” Trying to sound more confident this time, I added, “That’s what they said, I remember now.”

  I waited. The driver hesitated, and then sighed. He pushed the hand brake down and eased the car back out onto the road.

  “Who did you say you were again?”

  “A friend. Of the family.” It had been a split-second decision to lie. Not sure why. Reverting to form. I hadn’t wanted this man to ask questions.

  “They don’t get many friends calling in these days.”

  He watched me carefully in the rearview mirror. I could only hope the surrounding darkness was disguising some of my nerves. The last thing I needed was questions. I had reclaimed Sophia’s letter from my father’s study; it burned in my jacket pocket. It was surely my imagination, but it seemed to radiate heat as we drove slowly along the tree-lined road, like it was picking up some kind of signal from the landscape.

  “Here it is. Barnsley House,” he said as we pulled in again, only slightly farther down the road.

  The gates were open. The driver hesitated before he decided to press on, an ever so subtle lurch that brought me against the tension of my seat belt.

  The driveway, now we were off the main road, was winding, and in some places it dropped right down to meet the rough grey sea. “You look familiar,” the taxi driver said, eyeing me in the mirror. “Have you been in the news?”

  I had, but it seemed unlikely that news of my misfortunes would have spread this far. Before everything that happened, I used to get a little frisson when people recognized me. I used to feel special. Even though it was rare, I liked it. It was one of the things I missed about my old life. “I don’t really follow the news,” I said, and it was true. Much to my father’s despair, I had never had the thirst for news he did. Like many people, I only found the news interesting when it had some bearing on my own life, and then in the last year, suddenly, my life became the news, and I lost all taste for it. I knew from experience just how destructive the news could be to a person.

  Or a family.

  Which is why I had stopped googling Barnsley and the Summer family soon after I started. Certainly, I had enjoyed an initial frenzy of gorging myself on the history of the house and reading about the restaurant, but there were some links I couldn’t click on. Some publications I couldn’t read. After what they had written about me, I had sworn never to read anything written on their pages again.

  “You look like that actress, that’s it. Thought I knew you for a second.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  There were gaping holes in my knowledge, but I preferred it that way. I was going to find out firsthand or not at all. I wasn’t interested in someone else’s trial by media.

  As if he read my mind, the driver said, “The internet down this way isn’t terrific.”

  “It’s okay, I can find somewhere in town if I need to go online,” I said, not really sure which town I was referring to, hoping that somewhere in this isolation lurked a town, preferably one with a cozy café and free Wi-Fi. As much as I was enjoying being offline, it was still somehow comforting to know it was there.

  Just call me Patty Hearst.

  “Which town is that, love?”

  “The one where I got off the bus, South Bolton.”

  “Did you get a look at the place?” He laughed. “That’s it, a bus stop on the main street. There’s no internet cafés tucked away, you know.”

  “Is there a library?”

  “No. Not the sort you mean. Jean Laidlaw runs a library, but it’s more of a historical society. And it’s in Minton, not South Bolton. It’ll be Minton you’re after, not South Bolton.”

  “Right.” That might come in handy down the track. I made a note to keep an eye out for Minton. And Jean Laidlaw.

  Low clouds, barely visible in the dark, moved towards us, and the first drops of rain landed on the windscreen. “Right on cue,” the driver said from the front seat, giving me yet another curious look in the mirror. There was something else in the look this time as well. A warning.

  I chose to ignore it as we rounded the last bend and emerged from under a canopy of trees, and I saw the house for the first time. The magic of Barnsley entered my bones from that very moment.

  It was not what I was expecting. It looked different from the back. Smaller, more like a house than the colossal fortress I had conjured up in my mind. I didn’t know the darkness was concealing the vast bulk of the house, and that light shone only from the windows in the part of the house the family used, and that was a very small part. The house would reveal itself in increments, just like the family who lived inside it.

  To me, the dark trails of bare ivy vines framing the glowing windows and doors were beautiful, far lovelier than the sunlit images I had seen. But the place was deserted. We had stopped in a large gravel turning circle beside a small vestibule. There were no cars anywhere. I couldn’t see any guests. The garden was in darkness.

  If my intuition was right, I was the only person in the place. My plan of arriving as an anonymous hotel guest was on shaky ground.

  A black Labrador came racing out from the side of the house, and the taxi driver gave a cry of delight. He leapt from the car and let the dog jump all over him, not bothered by the muddy paws or the slow-falling drizzle. The wrestling might have gone on indefinitely had I not gone to fetch my rucksack from the boot. He extricated himself and intercepted me.

  The dog jumped around him, whipped into a frenzy and unable to calm down. His tail whacked into my leg, hard, and I cried out. The driver looked at me strangely and then patted the dog on the head reassuringly. “There you are, Thomas, there you are,” he said, his voice soothing.

  “Not a dog person, really,” I mumbled, as if it wasn’t self-evident. I paid the driver, carefully co
unting out the unfamiliar notes, uncertain whether I needed to tip him. I decided to give him five pounds, mostly for not asking too many questions. He seemed delighted with that and was about to go when he changed his mind and came up close.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, going in there?”

  “Fine. They’re expecting me.” Still the dog circled. There was no movement inside the house, no light switching on in the vestibule. Surely someone would follow the dog out any moment now, or else what was the point of him?

  In the small vestibule outside the back door was a rusty dog’s bed and piles of discarded shoes. Gumboots and trainers, flip-flops and school shoes, they were all tossed together in an indiscriminate pile. Everything about it said domestic bliss: a happy family lives within.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” I said, my hand instinctively going to the necklace, touching it through the light cotton of my jumper.

  The door in the vestibule opened, and a woman’s head popped out. A cat slunk out behind her. The dog barked, and the driver ducked quickly back into his car. He started the engine, and the wheels turned so quickly that small pieces of stone flicked up and hit me in the shins.

  It was only once the noise of the car had subsided that the woman spoke.

  “Have you come about the nanny job?”

  8

  “You’ll have to come and see Max,” she said, whistling to the dog immediately after.

  Thomas looked at the woman suspiciously and then barreled past, knocking her as he went. She blew her blond fringe out of her eyes, a gesture that seemed to convey both good-natured frustration and an ironic commentary on my arrival. “I’m Mrs. Mins. I hope I’m pleased to meet you.”

  She had gold hoops in her ears—larger than I would have thought appropriate for the countryside—and was wearing a wrap dress in a clingy jersey fabric. Brown was not a colour I would wear, but it suited Mrs. Mins very well. She was much older than I, perhaps in her early fifties, but she looked very good for her age. I felt dowdy despite being at least twenty years younger.