He unlocks the door and opens the hatch, drawing down an aluminium stepladder. He stands aside so I can go up first and I am suddenly sure that this is the place where I will die. About us that strange smell that has haunted all my days here is rising, rising like the mist. Like rolling dunes at the bottom of the ocean where a body may be buffeted by the tide for long months, flesh stripped from bones, seaweed threaded through empty eye sockets.
I start to climb up into the darkness. I can hear him below, telling me there is a light switch to my right, and I grope for it with fast, frightened breath. I find the switch. I turn it on, cry out. There is someone up here with me. A woman.
‘Marco!’
‘Isn’t it great?’ He is smiling, delighted. ‘Do you like it?’
It’s a mannequin. I can see that now that my eyes have adjusted to the thin light. She wears a wig, softly curled at the edges, and a dress of sickly jade-green with a long sash wound about the waist. Marco pulls himself up through the hatch and closes it quietly behind him. Now it is the two of us, here in this tiny low-ceilinged room. I look around. There are boxes and an old vacuum cleaner shoved into the far corner, thick with dust. To my left are several bulky shapes shrouded in dust sheets. A low futon, the mattress old and fusty-looking, sunken in the middle, has been pushed against the wall. It is dappled with stains. I can’t imagine sleeping there, where the roof meets the eaves. In the thick darkness it must be like being in a coffin.
‘You know what it is, right?’ He is looking at me eagerly. ‘Come and see it. Come and feel it. It’s silk.’
I walk forward stiffly and dutifully stroke the fabric. ‘Soft.’
‘It’s perfect, isn’t it? Look at the buttons, the detail is amazing.’
I look at them and it drops into place with such gravity my stomach rolls. The buttons are round and golden and big as coins. The shoulders puff at the sleeves where little ribbons are knotted in oversized bows. There are Chinese dragons stitched onto the hem. I have to put out a hand to steady myself. The room pinholes as though I might faint.
‘“Katie Marigold and the Chinaman”, right?’
‘Right,’ I manage, and then because he expects more, ‘It’s my dress.’
‘That’s right! It’s a perfect copy, just a little bigger. You did the song in this one, do you remember?’
‘Uh-huh.’
The wig on the mannequin is a carbon copy of my hairstyle all those years ago, Regency ringlets in a dark treacle colour. I touch it, moving it gently with my fingers.
‘Careful,’ Marco tells me, ‘that’s human hair.’
I pull my hand back as though stung and he laughs.
‘Silly. It’s from Russia. I had to pay a lot of money for that.’
He has pulled the dust sheet away from the object in the centre of the room and now I see it is a clothes rail, at least fifty dresses: ruffles and prints, crinoline and taffeta and stiff cotton. My head is spinning. I wish I could breathe properly. Marco is almost giddy with excitement, pulling out a red-and-white candy-striped smock and turning it on the hanger, holding it up to the light.
‘“In Your Dreams, Katie Marigold”,’ I say. ‘God, Marco. How did you make all of these?’
‘I don’t make them, Katie. I have a lady in Kent, a seamstress. She is very, very talented. Has been doing this for years. She thinks I’m a cross-dresser and that suits me fine if it gets the clothes made.’
‘You’re not?’
He pulls a face. ‘Of course not. What kind of question is that? These aren’t for me to wear. They’re for you.’
I have to be very careful here, I tell myself. ‘Marc-oh.’ I am speaking very carefully, very slowly, the way I had with Beverley Dalton at first. ‘“Uncle”. That’s you, isn’t it?’
He laughs jerkily – heh, heh – it doesn’t sound like him at all. Then he exhales, just once, and there it is. That phlegmy, wet rattle. I feel sick.
He looks up at me. ‘You’re so funny on the phone. I can hear the way your voice trembles. It’s exciting.’ He has been rummaging beneath the futon and now he finds what he is looking for. ‘Ah – here it is!’
Marco pulls out a box and places it on the floor. Inside, shoes. Little buckled-up Mary-Janes, in patent black and red. Just like the ones he’d given me to wear to the party in Essex. My pulse throbs just once, hot jets of blood.
‘I have to get out of here. I can’t breathe.’
‘God, you are spoilt, aren’t you? Even now. Joey Fraser said it and your Aunt Jackie said it and Daddy Marigold called you a high-handed little bitch to the Daily Mirror in 1988 and that was the end of his career. You know what? They’re right. Every one of them. Look around you. Have you any idea of the amount of effort I’ve gone to for you? Each sequin is individually sewn. Every fabric swatch was sent for my approval. One dress took ten months to get right. All for you, Katie.’
‘What about Ellie?’
His face changes suddenly, becoming a cold fury which frightens me. His eyes glitter in the darkness. ‘What about her?’
‘I mean, did she wear these clothes too? Was she Katie Marigold, at least for a little while?’
‘She tried her best. She was a poor imitation. You though, you’re the real thing.’
He is grinning at me, exposing gums the colour of liver. Outside I can imagine the fog pressing close to the house, isolating us, turning the cottage into an island on which I am marooned with my past, and a little further away the wreck of the car and the body of Frankie, breathing in that slow, rapturous way. How long does he have? How long do I have, stranded up here with someone whose love is a poisoned arrow? I can see the shape it has burned into him, all those years of pining and wanting, the fierceness of it.
‘I need to get out. Please, Marco, please. I can’t breathe in here.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
His voice is clipped and cold and he doesn’t look at me as he opens the hatch. I see that he means to leave me up here and I open my mouth to scream but the only sound which comes out is a reedy whisper, something choked. No, no. Then it closes with a soft thunk and the scraping sound of the padlock being fixed into place and that’s when my knees give way.
A little later, perhaps, I don’t know how long. I have been shouting for a long time and banging the palms of my hands on the floor. Now my throat is raw and my eyes sting. The darkness up here is thick and pressing, even with the light bulb overhead. It smells too, something musty and slightly spoiled, like milk left too long in the sun. I am sitting on the edge of the futon with my knees drawn up to my chest. I found a box beneath the bed, an old-fashioned wooden one with a brass clasp. Inside it is make-up – some face powder and a creamy blusher and a little bottle of perfume which smells of grit and violets. I can’t stop thinking I can’t afford the luxury of waiting too long. I wonder if it is getting dark out there yet. I wonder if Frankie is afraid.
I dress slowly, carefully, ignoring the horror crawling up my throat. I leave my crumpled jeans and bra on the bed and slip the green dress over my head. It rustles like dry leaves. At the side a series of hook-and-eye fasteners draws the material together although it is still a little loose at the hips. I tie the sash as I was shown all those years ago, on set on Hastings Pier, the wind teasing my skirts, the smell of face powder and hairspray and the sea. The sea. I can smell it in here as I slip the wig over my hair, securing it with pins from the make-up box. Sea mist and cool air, a dank perfume, rising, rising. I think, just for a moment, that I see something moving in the dark, just ahead. A shadow seeming to detach from the gloom. It is cold in here, and the air is close. Like before a storm.