Free Kingdom of Shadows by Barbara Erskine Page B

caught his breath. He watched her, fascinated, unable to tear his eyes away, as the candle slowly died, leaving her sitting in darkness alleviated only by the thread of light thrown across the floor by the street lamp behind him, and it was only the sound of footsteps walking down the road behind him in the distance which made him straighten suddenly, realising how he must look to a passerby, doubled up with his eye to a crack in the curtain.
    Vaulting back over the railing, he stood uncertainly on the step, wondering what to do. Tentatively he knocked again, then, bolder, he rang the door bell. It pealed through the house, making him jump and he waited breathlessly. Minutes later a light came on in the hall and the door opened.
    ‘Henry?’ Clare stared at him, dazed.
    ‘Clare.’ He bent forward and kissed her cheek. ‘I’m sorry to call so late. If you’d rather, I’ll go away at once. Only Paul asked me to look in on my way home and see that you were all right. He has met up with a client, I gather, and he’ll be a bit late back – you know how it is.’ Paul hadn’t asked him to do anything of the sort.
    Clare bit her lip. She looked tired and strained in the harsh light of the hall.
    ‘That was good of you, Henry. You’d better come in.’ She backed away from the door.
    He followed her into the living room and he found himself looking at the rug where she had been sitting. There was no sign now of the remains of the candle, but he thought he could smell it, mixed with her subtle perfume in the air.
    ‘You’re sure you’re not too tired, Clare? Paul told me you weren’t feeling very well.’
    ‘No, I’m fine. Come on down and talk to me while I make us both some coffee. The lift at Coleman Street got stuck with me in it and I made a bit of a fool of myself, that’s all. I’m afraid it will be all around the bank tomorrow.’ She smiled wanly.
    ‘Oh Clare, how terrible.’ He followed her down the steep flight of steps.
    ‘I’ve been claustrophobic since I was a child. So silly really.’ She busied herself filling the kettle and plugging it in whilst he sat down on a stool watching her, his long legs folded under the breakfast bar.
    ‘Clare, I couldn’t help seeing, through the curtains, upstairs. What were you doing with that candle?’ He hadn’t meant to ask; hadn’t meant to admit to spying on her.
    She glanced up at him sharply, but she smiled.
    ‘Meditating.’
    ‘You mean like praying?’ He looked embarrassed.
    ‘Perhaps, a little. Although, not the way I do it.’ She was playing with her sapphire engagement ring, twisting it around her finger so that the facets caught the light. ‘It’s very strange, Henry. Something I started doing to help me unwind a bit.’ Suddenly she found she wanted to tell someone about it. ‘When I was a child I had a sort of imaginary playmate – I think a lot of children do. She was called Isobel.’ She paused for such a long time that he wondered if she had forgotten he was there.
    ‘Go on,’ he said at last.
    ‘My brother was four years younger than me, and we never got on, really. We still don’t –’ she smiled wistfully. ‘So, I was a lonely child.’ Isobel’s brother was four years younger and a posthumous child, like James. She had stopped speaking and was staring into space, recognising the strangeness of the coincidence for the first time. With a little shake of the head she went on. ‘I suppose that’s how children always react to loneliness: an imaginary friend.’ She paused again.
    Henry said nothing, afraid to interrupt her train of thought.
    ‘She was a real person,’ she went on, at last. ‘An ancestress of ours. My great aunt used to tell us stories about her. Long, involved, exciting stories. I don’t know where they came from, if they were true, or if she made them up, but they caught my imagination. I would act them out again and again in my head or in my games. Sometimes Isobel was my friend. Sometimes she was me