The Woman in the Mirror

by Rebecca James

Genres: Gothic; Historical Mysteries; Ghost; Mystery

Synopsis

Haunting and moving, The Woman in the Mirror is a tale of obsession tinged with suspense, perfect for fans of Tracy Rees and Lulu Taylor.

You’ll be the woman of this house, next, miss. And you’ll like it.

1947

Governess Alice Miller loves Winterbourne the moment she sees it. Towering over the Cornish cliffs, its dark corners and tall turrets promise that if Alice can hide from her ghosts anywhere, it’s here.

And who better to play hide-and-seek with than twins Constance and Edmund? Angelic and motherless, they are perfect little companions.

2018

Adopted at birth, Rachel’s roots are a mystery. So when a letter brings news of the death of an unknown relative, Constance de Grey, Rachel travels to Cornwall, vowing to uncover her past.

With each new arrival, something in Winterbourne stirs. It’s hiding in the paintings. It’s sitting on the stairs.

It’s waiting in a mirror, behind a locked door.

Release date: March 17, 2020

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter 1

London, 1947


“Alice Miller—for heaven’s sake, wake up.”

It might be Mrs. Wilson’s uppity remark that jolts me out of my eleven o’clock reverie, or else it’s the warm muzzle of the Quakers Oatley & Sons’ resident Red Setter as it nudges hotly against my lap, for it’s hard to know which happens first.

“I’m awake,” I tell her, finding the dog’s warm ears under my desk and working them through my fingers; Jasper breathes contentedly through his nose and his tail bangs on the floor. “Can’t you see my eyes are open?”

Mrs. Wilson, the firm’s stuffy administrator, draws deeply on her cigarette, sucking in her cheeks. She dispels a plume of smoke before grinding the cigarette out in an ashtray. She pushes her glasses on to the bridge of her nose.

“I wouldn’t suggest for a moment, Miss Miller, that your eyes being open has the slightest thing to do with it.” Her fingers clack-clack on the typewriter. “It doesn’t take a fool to see that you’re miles away. As usual.”

If I were able to dispute the accusation, I would. But she’s right. There is little about being a solicitor’s secretary that I find stimulating, and my memories too often call me back. This is not living, as I have known living. Haven’t we all known living—and dying—in ways impossible to articulate? But to look in Jean Wilson’s eyes, just two years after wartime, as flat and gray as the city streets seem to me now, it’s as if that world might never have existed; as if it had been just one of my daydreams. I wonder what Mrs. Wilson lost during those years. It is easy for one to feel as though one’s own loss overtakes all others’—but then one remembers: mine is a lone story, a single note in a piece of music that, if played back many years from now, would be obscured by the orchestra that surrounds it.

Jasper pads out from under the desk and settles on a rug by the window. Through it, I hear the noisy brakes of a bus and a car tooting its horn.

The telephone rings. “Good morning, Quakers Oatley?”

We are expecting a call from an irksome client but to my surprise it is not he. For a moment, I hear the crackle of the line and the faint echo of another exchange, before a smart voice introduces itself. My grip tightens. I’m quiet for long enough that Mrs. Wilson’s interest is aroused. She glances at me over the top of her spectacles.

“Of course,” I say, once I’ve taken in all that he’s said. “I’ll be with you right away.”

I replace the telephone, retrieve my coat and open the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Wilson.” I put on my coat. “Goodbye, Jasper.”

It is the last time I will see either of them.

* * *

The Tube still smells as it did in the war—fusty, sour, hot with bodies. Next to me on the platform is a woman with her children; she smacks one of them on the hand and tells him off, then pulls both to her when the train comes in. I imagine her down here during the Blitz, when they were babies, holding them close while the sky fell down.

I take the train to Marble Arch, repeating the address as I go. The building is closer than I think and I’m here early, so I step into a café next door and order a mug of tea. I drink it slowly, still wearing my hat. A man at the table next to me slices his fried egg on toast so that the yolk bursts over his plate and an orange bead lands on the greasy, checkered oilcloth. He dabs it with his finger.

I’ve kept the advertisement in my handbag for a month. I didn’t think anything would come of it; the opportunity seemed too niche, too unlikely, too convenient. GOVERNESS REQUIRED, FAMILY HALL NR. POLCREATH, IMMEDIATE APPOINTMENT. I spied it during a sandwich break, in the back of the county paper Mrs. Wilson brought home from a long weekend in the South West.

I unfold it and read it again. There really isn’t any other information, nothing about the people I would be working for or for how long the position might be. I question if this isn’t what drew me toward the prospect in the first place. My life used to be full of uncertainties: each day was uncertain, each sunrise and sunset one that we didn’t expect to see; each night, while we waited for the bombs to drop and the gunfire to start, was extra time we had somehow stumbled into. Uncertainty kept me alive, knowing that the moment I was in couldn’t possibly last forever and the next would soon be here, a moment of change, of newness, the ground shifting beneath my feet and moving me forward. At Quakers Oatley, the ground sticks fast, so fast I feel myself drowning.

The tea turns tepid, the deep cracked brown of a terracotta pot, and a fleck of milk powder floats depressingly on its surface. The man next to me grins, flips out his newspaper: India Wins Independence: British Rule Ends. I sense him about to speak and so stand before he can, buttoning my coat and checking my reflection in the smeared window. I pull open the café door, its chime offering a weak ring.

There it is, then. No. 46. Across the road, the genteel townhouse bears down, its glossy black door and polished copper bell push like a delicately wrapped present that my fumbling fingers are desperate, yet fearful, to open. Before we begin, it has me on the back foot. I need it more than it needs me. This job is my ticket out of London, away from the past, away from my secrets. This job is escape.

* * *

“Welcome, Miss Miller. Do please sit down.”

I peel off my gloves and set them neatly on the desk before changing my mind and scooping them into my bag. I set the bag on my lap, then have nowhere to put my hands, so I place the bag on the floor, next to my ankles.

He doesn’t appear to notice this display, or perhaps he is too polite to acknowledge it. Instead, he takes a file from the drawer and flicks through it for several moments. The top of his head, as he bends, is bald, and clean as a marble.

“Thank you for meeting us at short notice,” he says, with a quick smile. “My client, as you’ll understand, prefers to be discreet, and often that means securing results swiftly. We would prefer to resolve the appointment as soon as possible.”

“Of course.”

“You have experience with children?”

“I used to nanny our neighbors’ infants, before the war.”

He nods. “My client’s children require tutelage as well as pastoral care. We are concerned with the curriculum but also with a comprehensive education in nature, the arts, sports and games—and, naturally, refinement of etiquette and propriety.”

I sit straighter. “Naturally.”

“The twins are eight years old.” His eyes meet mine for the first time, sharp and glassy as a crow’s.

“Very good.”

“I’m afraid this isn’t the sort of position you can abandon after a month,” he says. “If you find it a challenge, you can begin your instruction by teaching these children the knack of perseverance.” He puts his fingers together. “I mention this because my client lost his last governess suddenly and without warning.”

“Oh.”

“As a widower, he has understandably struggled. These are difficult times.”

I’m surprised. “Did his wife die recently?”

Immediately I know I have spoken out of turn. I am not here to question this man; he is here to question me. My interest is unwelcome.

“Tell me, Miss Miller,” he says, bypassing my inquiry with ease, “what occupation did you hold during the war?”

“I volunteered with the WVS.”

The man teases the end of his mustache. “Nurturing yet capable: would that be a fair assessment?”

“I’d suggest the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

He writes something down.

“Have you always lived in London?”

“I grew up in Surrey.”

“And attended which school…?”

“Burstead.”

His eyebrow snags, impressed but not liking to show it. I know my education was among the finest in the country. My mother was schooled at Burstead, and my grandmother before that. There was never any question that my parents would send me there. I tighten my fists in my lap, remembering my father’s face over that Sunday lunch in 1940. The ticking of the mantel clock, the shaft of winter sunlight that bounced off the table, the smell of burned fruit crumble … His rage when I told him what I had done. That the education they had bought for me had instead brought a nightmare to their door. The sound of smashing glass as my mother walked in, letting the tumbler fall, shattering into a thousand splinters on the treacle-colored carpet.

He clears his throat, tapping the page with his pen. I see my own handwriting.

“In your letter,” he says, “you say you are keen to move away from the city. Why?”

“Aren’t we all?” I answer a little indecorously, because this is easy, this is what he expects to hear. “I would never care to repeat the things I have seen or done over the past six years. The city holds no magic for me any more.”

He sees my automatic answer for what it is.

“But you, personally,” he presses, those eyes training into me again. “I am interested in what makes you want to leave.”

A moment passes, an open door, the person on each side questioning if the other will walk through—before it closes. The man sits forward.

“You might deem me improper,” he says, “but my inquests are made purely on my client’s behalf. We understand that the setting of your new appointment is a far cry from the capital. Are you used to isolation, Miss Miller? Are you accustomed to being on your own?”

“I am very comfortable on my own.”

“My client needs to know if you have the vigor for it. As I said previously, he does not wish to be hiring a third governess in a few weeks’ time.”

“I’ve no doubt.”

“Therefore, if you will forgive my impudence, could you reassure us that you have no medical history of mental disturbances?”

“Disturbances?”

“Depressive episodes, attacks of anxiety, that sort of thing.”

I pause. “No.”

“You cannot reassure us, or you can that you haven’t?”

For the first time, there is the trace of a smile. I am almost there. Almost. I don’t have to tell him the truth. I don’t have to tell him anything.

“I can reassure you that I am perfectly well,” I say, and it trips off my tongue as smoothly as my name.

The man assesses me, then squares the paper in front of him and replaces it in its folder. When he leans back in his chair, I hear the creak of leather.

“Very well, Miss Miller,” he says. “My client entrusts me with the authority to hire at will in light of my appraisal of an applicant’s suitability, and I am pleased to offer you the position of governess at the Polcreath estate with immediate effect.”

I rein in my delight. “Thank you.”

“Before you accept, is there anything you would like to ask us?”

“Your client’s name, and the name of the house.”

“Then I must insist on your signature.”

He slides a piece of paper across the desk, a contract of sorts, listing my start date as this coming week, the broad terms of my responsibilities toward the children, and that my bed and board will be provided. There is a dotted line at the foot, awaiting my pen. “I understand it is unorthodox,” he says, “but my client is a private man. We need assurance of your allegiance before I’m permitted to give details.”

“But until I have details I have little idea what I am signing.”

The man holds his hands up, as if helpless. I wait a moment, but there is never any hesitation in my mind. I collect the pen and sign my name.


Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca James