Free The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse Page B

door.
    ‘I was in the nursery toasting bread. Cross-legged on the floor, a slab of butter ready on an old green china plate. It was September, but with the promise of autumn to come. The purple leaves on the copper beech were turning and there was condensation on the inside of the windows in the early morning. The fire had been lit for the first time since the previous winter and there was the bitter, musty smell of singed dust in the chimney.
    ‘On the wall above my bed was pinned a hand-drawn map of Europe printed by the Manchester Guardian . It was covered with red crosses, my attempt to mark each place the Royal Sussex Regiment had been - at least, where I imagined my brother’s division might be. Where George might . . .’ I stopped, the stab of memory too sharp.
    Fabrissa waited. She seemed to have no need to hurry me or require me to turn fragments into a single, clear narrative. Her patience rubbed off on me, and when I found it in me to continue, the sequence of events was clearer in my mind and the words I needed came, if not easily, then at least less hesitantly than before.
    ‘I didn’t hear the knock at the door. But I remember being aware of our maid’s footsteps on the flag-stones in the hall. Florence always did shuffle and fail to pick up her feet. I was aware of the door being opened and mumbled words, too faint for me to make out.
    ‘Even then, I think I knew. There was something in the quality of the silence which shouted out that this caller was unwelcome. I stopped what I was doing and listened, listened to the silence. Then my mother’s clear, shrill voice in the hall. At the door. Yes, yes, I am Mrs Watson. And, moments later, a single word, so much the worst for being spoken so softly: “No.”
    ‘The fork dropped from my hands. I can see it now, falling slowly down, metal clattering on the hearthstone, toe, heel, toe, like a tap dancer, before coming to rest. The bread, so perfectly burnt on one side and raw white on the other. I ran. Sending the door flying back against the wall, I ran down the nursery stairs in my stockinged feet. On the same old dangerous turn, I slipped and lost my footing, cracked my shin. Blood started to seep through my sock and, absurdly, I remember thinking how I would be scolded for being so clumsy.
    ‘Down to the first landing, along the passageway where the carpet began. From the hall below, a sound that tore through me like a butcher’s knife. Not screaming exactly, more a howling, a wailing, the same word repeated over and over, “no, nooooo”, becoming one, single note.’
    I stopped again, the memories too painful. I glanced at Fabrissa, seeking her reassurance and that she really did want to hear this.
    She nodded. ‘Please, go on.’
    I held her glance, then fixed my eyes back to the same spot on the table.
    ‘It was the fifteenth of September, did I say that? Almost two years to the day since George had enlisted. I had seen him once or twice, of course. He had been injured and sent home twice. A problem with his ears after a bombardment, not too bad. A bullet in his thigh the second time, again not life-threatening. ’
    I shrugged, a casual gesture concealing the anger I felt with the doctors, with my father, for letting him go back to the Front at all, though I knew it was what he had wanted. It was a thin line between heroism and arrogance, and George had always walked it. We were the Watson boys. Nothing could harm us. He had believed in the myth of his own invincibility, whereas I? I had always felt the world was a dangerous place, waiting to spring its traps.
    ‘Both times, they patched him up and sent him back. But we hadn’t had a letter in a while, not since May. He was due home for a couple of days’ leave, so I tried not to be worried. Also, that summer I’d been ill with a serious bout of influenza, so I’d not been able to follow the progress of George’s battalion in the newspapers so closely.’
    I stared at my hands, at the