ELEVEN

Twice her wheels bumped across catseyes as if she had fallen asleep at the wheel. Late afternoon, but her journey home resembled a familiar route retraced in darkness. The fugue of the great house’s interior remained thick inside her mind. Her place in the world felt odd too, as though she was returning to an old neighbourhood where she was no longer remembered.

Beyond the meadows of the Red House the world suggested only the bland and temporary to her imagination. The city she returned to seemed predictable and disappointing. The British Museum had a similar effect upon her heart, during all of those Sunday afternoons she spent there to escape the dismal rooms she’d rented in London.

Adjusting to the sight of dual carriageways, and their service stations, and garden centres near Worcester, required a conscious effort, that seemed more about regaining familiarity with the terrain than her experience of the Red House should warrant.

The impact of the house’s strangeness and the incongruity of her place inside it combined uncomfortably with her memories of alienation as a child in Ellyll Fields. Feelings she didn’t want stirred tugged at her heart again. Near Hereford, she even entertained the idea of never returning to Magbar Wood and the neighbouring Red House. She tried to think of excuses she could make to Leonard. In a spurt of sickly panic that surged from a defensive instinct she’d been trained in therapy to repel, she briefly considered running somewhere new and not coming back. But where was left?

Parked outside her flat in Worcester, getting out of the car was like waking from a deep sleep only to leave part of herself inside a dream. A physical reassembly of herself seemed necessary before she could climb out of the car. Inside her flat, finding affection for her furniture and belongings was a struggle.

She had been uncomfortable and struck dumb in either shock or wonderment for the entire duration of her visit to the Mason house, but had left eager to return and see more. Until Maude gave her the note. The note was the trigger.

She left the note inside her bag. She didn’t want to see the handwriting again. It was bully writing. Blunt, direct, designed to upset, unnerve, and linger long after the perpetrators had fled the scene. She’d show it to Edith. Or should she not?

The note could be nothing more than territorial spite directed at an imposter. Maybe she had been a glaring and awful reminder of out there, a thing creeping inside to cheat an old lady. Or was the note a warning? But of what? A ninety-three-year-old woman?

You don’t have time for this now.

Catherine identified the cognitive root of where the imagined persecution bled. Some days everything was a trip-wire to set off paranoia. She derailed the irrational train of thought before it left the platform to shriek though her mind at InterCity speed.

An auction fraught with pressure, expectation, and a high profile she might be unequal to awaited, as well as her having to manage a difficult character. There was no escaping that. The note from Maude didn’t help matters, and visiting the Red House was hardly a common experience. So it was natural to feel strange, disorientated. That’s all it is. Relax. See things as they actually are.

Mike didn’t like her in this mood either. He found her ‘exhausting’. The last therapist’s exercises worked if she made an effort. But only the excitement involved in getting ready to meet Mike succeeded in finally acclimatizing her to the world she’d stepped entirely away from, on the lane before the great house of M. H. Mason.

Joan Baez on the stereo, a glass of chilled chardonnay on the dressing table. The pencil skirt and satin blouse from Karen Millen, new stockings with seams from Agent Provocateur that Mike had given her for her birthday, all made her feel a bit vintage. And she realized that through her outfit she might even be trying to catch a tendril of what had curled out of the Red House behind her.

The place wasn’t even remotely sexy, though it possessed mystery and elegance in abundance. But the professional opportunity the auction offered was sexy. Very sexy. If she could keep that at the forefront of her mind, she’d get through this job. And she gleefully imagined the outraged faces of her ex-colleagues, the bitches back at Handle With Care in Soho. If Edith hired her, the auction would make a few Sunday broadsheets, lifestyle magazines, and the national broadcast news channels. Handle With Care would crawl to her on their knees to produce a documentary about Mason’s treasures. Catherine Howard, the misfit the quick girls hounded out of her job, and the city, would smile at them from a wreath of glossy pages, and as a talking head from local television studios. Lost Treasures of M. H. Mason: War Hero, Taxidermist Extraordinaire, Puppeteer. Represented by Valuer and Auctioneer, Catherine Howard of Osbernes. The Red House. The Treasures of . . .

She’d have the rooms of the Red House lit properly for the catalogue. Best to capture them in that setting. Mike could do the photos. God knew he needed the work, as well as cheering up. She also had catalogue copy to consider; the press release was even more of a priority. She’d get up early on Saturday and make a start. No, she’d start on a draft of a contract first. If she could pull this off, there would be a new car in her future, and she could buy her own flat in the development for young professionals, overlooking the river, or maybe take a house in Hallow.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

She checked her outfit in the full-length mirror at the end of her bed. She looked good. Was the beauty spot too much? Edith would be aghast at the sight of her scarlet Kiss me lipstick, and Maude would probably grimace at the intensity of the colour against the pale skin of her face. Jam tarts, that’s what girls were called who wore make-up at her secondary school in Worcester. At least the lipstick was red. She let her hair flop down and was reminded of a doll.