‘I did not!’ Amy cried, then took a deep breath to help calm her rising temper. ‘I merely intimated that love stories aren’t usually to my taste.’
‘That’s because you still consider yourself too cool and clever for them,’ said Sam, sounding utterly sure he had her number. His voice was tinged with something like disappointment– as though he’d been hoping she might have got past her teenage narrow-mindedness.
The thing was, hedidn’thave her number. Even if a part of Amy had traditionally sneered at romance novels because she thought them basic, her lifelong aversion to this stuff had far deeper roots than intellectual vanity.
There was danger in absorbing, inbelievingthe message that love could conquer all– that everyone had a soulmate, that your happiness could depend completely on being adored by an ‘other half’. Being a romantic had hampered rather than enhanced her father’s happiness; he’d never married, never even had a serious partner after Lily left him. And then he’d died young. His life hadn’t been miserable, but it had frequently been painful and, in some ways, lonely.
‘No, it’s because—’ Amy began, not at all sure where the sentence she’d started would lead her. Before she could worry about whether these stinging memories of her dad’s heartache were written all over her face, she was interrupted by Mr Bradley, who loudly cleared his throat as if to remind both her and Sam that there were other people in the room.
Everyone seemed to be swivelling boggle eyes from her to Sam and then back again, like they were spectators at a tennis match. Amy sagged in her seat, heavy with embarrassment.
‘Andthat, ladies and gentlemen,’ Mr Bradley said, ‘is merely a taste of what I had to deal with for the full academic year I spent teaching these two. Never before or since have I met two students who so wildly disagreed overeverything. Really, it’s no wonder at all that I went for promotion. Being principal of the entire college was, quite frankly, less stressful than getting them through their second year of A levels would have been.’
There was a ripple of grateful laughter from around the circle– a palpable sense of relief that this witty intervention had defused a potentially explosive row. If anyone in the group suspected there was more to Amy and Sam’s clash than a desire for robust academic debate, they were British enough to pretend otherwise.
Within a few moments, genial conversation about the novel had resumed. Amy half-heartedly participated in discussion of Lady Sarah’s heroic character arc, the role of privilege in the story and its surprisingly dark, unflinching portrayal of poverty in Georgian England.
She remained tight-lipped during scrutiny of the central relationship between Sarah and Thomas, and determinedly resisted catching Sam’s eye when the chat moved on to key romantic moments.During a long back-and-forth on the fiery sexual tension that drove the two apparently mismatched protagonists towards their happy ever after, Amy stared at the floor.
‘Well, thanks to all of you for an evening of scintillating conversation,’ Mr Bradley said, casting his eyes around the room as the rest of the book club finished their drinks and the meeting wound down. ‘Do we have any nominations for our next read, before we all head home?’
‘How about something a little darker, in the interests of balance?’ Sam asked. ‘There’s a thriller that came out a couple of weeks ago,The Loner Next Doorby Alex Swift. I’ve heard good things.’
Amy glanced at him. He could have used this as another opportunity to needle her, but he hadn’t. She wondered why.
There were no objections to Sam’s idea, so members of the group began saying their goodbyes and departing.
‘Is it okay for me to use the loo before I head home?’ Amy asked, not quite knowing or caring whether she was addressing Sam or Meg with this question. In truth she could probably have coped without going to the loo, but Simon was watching her, gimlet-eyed, and she knew he’d insist on giving her a lift home if she didn’t scramble out of his way fast enough.
‘Of course,’ Sam said. ‘Head through the door over there and then up the corridor. Bathroom’s the fourth door on your left.’
‘Thanks.’
Amy left the room through a different exit to the rest of the group, heading in the opposite direction to the entrance hall. As soon as she was alone, she let go of a deep breath that she hadn’t even realised she was holding.
She made her way up a dimly lit corridor that seemed to go on for miles. It had doors to left and right, then a pair of double doors set into the far wall at its end. This place was dizzying– like something out ofAlice in Wonderland, Amy thought. How many years must it have taken infant Sam and Meg to learn their way around it?
Suddenly aware she’d lost track of how many doors she’d gone past, Amy stopped.Shit. From here, it wasn’t even possible to work out which one she’d originally come out of. She’d have to take a punt– try the next door on the left and, if that was wrong, the two on either side of it.
She felt uneasy as her hand closed around the heavy brass handle– almost as if she were snooping, though that wasn’t her intention. Wandering around Sam’s family home without a guide felt a little like spying on him.
As she pushed into the room Amy realised within seconds that she was in the wrong place. This wasn’t a bathroom, it was a … Whatwasit? Nothing in here made any sense. Furniture, much of which was dusty and damaged, was piled haphazardly into a corner. The carpet was grey with grime and the cream wallpaper– some Victorian-style pattern with bluebells– was peeling.
There was a greenish-black stain spreading outwards from one corner of the ceiling, and a musty smell of damp that Amy assumed must be emanating from it. On a table beneath the cobwebbed sash window sat boxes of ancient-looking taxidermy: everything from birds to butterflies, suspended in time for study or sport but long since abandoned.
Heart beating fast, Amy backed out into the corridor again and closed the door gently behind her. She tried the next door along and immediately understood that she’d made the wrong decision. This was another forsaken, mildewed space, stuffed to the gills with random objects that clearly hadn’t been touched in decades: books, mirrors, candlesticks, a shotgun … Even a children’s doll’s house complete with miniature beds, wardrobes and chairs. There was something almost spooky about a toy that looked as though it had been left mid-game, then never played with again. It made Amy think of Miss Havisham’s stopped clocks and rotting wedding breakfast.
Horror-struck, Amy rushed back out into the corridor. She felt almost sick with shock. How many of Rowton Hall’s rooms were like this? The contrast between them and the spectacular entrance hall wasn’t so much a gulf as a yawning chasm. Their crumbling condition certainly threw Roger Ainsworth’s approach to estate management into sharp relief– though if large sections of Rowton Hall were in this sort of state, the place was surely a money pit with little hope of restoration, no matter how much land and property he sold off.
The door she’d just crashed back through swung flush into its frame, closing with a soft click that made her shiver. From this side of it, you’d never guess at the mess within. There was something tragic, as well as sinister, about this secret side to the house: a sense of beauty going to waste, of history being allowed to moulder and decay. While Amy didn’t believe for a minute that anyone needed tolivein a building like this, letting something so elegant and lovely fall apart for the sake of not sharing it seemed utterly shameful.
Trying to steady her breath, Amy resolved to turn around and try one of the doors further back towards the room where they’d held book club– though even locating that would be a challenge now she was so disorientated.
‘Amy …?’
Sam was behind her, his voice low and cautious.
‘Sam! Oh my God, I wasn’t poking around, I swear to you– I—’