Free The Unseen by Katherine Webb Page A

coughs, but perseveres. The doctor whom The Gentleman took her to see upon her release encouraged her in the habit, told her that the hot smoke would help to dry out her lungs. The first taste of tobacco in weeks. She came outside to smoke it to be away from Mrs Bell, and to watch the storm. Never before has she stood beneath a tree whilst the wind throws it about with such violence. Never before has she heard the terrific roar that it makes – a hissing, rushing sound like waves crashing ashore. She shuts her eyes and listens, lets the sound swirl around her, until she feels like one more leaf on the tree, one more helpless, insignificant thing. Like she might fly away in the next second. When thunder hammers out, right over her head, Cat smiles in the dark.
    ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Mrs Bell snaps at her when she returns to the kitchen. ‘I’ve got the mistress clamouringfor a hot water bottle and cocoa and her wool bedjacket unpacked from the winter trunk, and you nowhere to be found!’
    ‘It’s a thunderstorm, not a blizzard. She hardly needs a bedjacket,’ Cat says, fetching milk from the cold store and pouring it into a copper pan. The white liquid looks gorgeous against the bright metal, and she swirls it around as she sets it on the stove.
    ‘Whether or not she needs it, she wants it, and who are you to argue, girl?’ Mrs Bell grumbles. ‘You go and find it – it’ll be in the trunk on the far landing – and be sure to find all the mothballs from it before you give it her. I’ll do that – move away before you scald the milk!’
    ‘Yes, Mrs Bell,’ Cat sighs.
    ‘Don’t you “yes, Mrs Bell” me …’ Mrs Bell says, but can’t quite put her objection into words. She falls silent, whisking the milk vigorously and shaking her head. The whisking shakes other things too – sets up a wobble that shifts her from bosom to thigh. ‘Take a lamp with you – he doesn’t like the lights on upstairs after she’s retired,’ she calls after Cat.
    ‘I don’t need a lamp,’ Cat calls back, as she makes for the stairs. Within a few paces of the kitchen, her eyes have adjusted to the dark.
    Hester sits shivering in bed, her toes and fingers tingling as the blood returns to them. Her head is aching after the frights of the evening. In spite of the lamps filling the room with yellow light, she thinks she can still see shadows, lurking figures in the corners of the room that vanish when she looks full at them. An evil force has entered one of our houses … Hester longs for Albert to come home and banish her fears with his calm faith and soothing presence. Gradually, she begins to relax, and has just picked up a book of homilies when a soft thump outside the room makes the breath freeze in her lungs. She waits, ears tuned for the noise to come again. And come again it does – a scuffle, a slight thudding. Hesterberates herself for her fears, for believing that anything ghostly has followed her home from the seance.
    ‘It’s probably one of the cats, you silly girl,’ she tells herself aloud, and the very ordinariness of her own voice gives her courage. To prove that she is rational and not afraid, she gets up and crosses to the door. But with her hand on the latch she pauses, and swallows. Her throat is entirely dry. She opens the door as quietly as she can. Outside the room, the corridor is in complete darkness, and a noticeable draught noses along it, east to west. Hester makes a show of looking to either side, though her eyes see nothing but pitch blackness, an emptiness from which anything might spring. Her skin crawls and she turns to go back inside, and as she does, a figure appears right by her elbow. Hester screams, then sees the glint of dark eyes and dark hair in the light from her bedroom door. ‘Cat! Why, you scared me half to death!’ She laughs nervously.
    ‘Sorry, madam; I didn’t mean to. I’ve brought you your bedjacket,’ Cat says, holding out a knitted cardigan