“Some of it. Hang on…” Hal frowns, trying to pick out words, piecing together fragments of ink. This letter is clearer than the other ones – the paper has stood up to time better.
“‘It has always struck me as sad, somehow,’” he reads softly, translating the loops and curls aloud, “‘that the gardens are at their most beautiful when no one is there to see them. Only the ill-sleepers of the world would ever understand how the mist rises from the streams in the woods and clings to the trees like silk; how the deer move so gently and quietly that often they seem to glide through the bosky grounds like ghosts. How, in the summer, the moon balances on the west chimneys like a globe, and how, when the dew falls on the lawns, it looks like handfuls of diamonds thrown by a fairy queen.’”
“Oh, wow.”
“Hang on – there’s more. ‘I thought I was the only one who saw the world at this hour, when I ought to have been asleep. But now I discover you are there too. Perhaps I shall sleep more soundly knowing that someone else, after all, is there to see these things; that they are not just mine. Because what is the point of sights like these if there is no one with whom to share them?’”
My heart is beating faster with every word Hal reads. “Who’s this to? Does it say?”
He ignores me, skimming down to the last line of the page. “‘And more than any of this, I hope that next time I will see you again.’” He lowers the page, then lifts it again, almost waving it. “Look – he’s underlined the ‘you’. This is it. It is!” His voice is higher now, louder, the excitement in it matching the faint flush in his cheeks…which matches the pounding in my own chest. It is exciting. More exciting than I imagined it could be…Already I can see him, this Albie, walking through the gardens, through the woods and the deer park, as the sky lightens. I can see him stopping to watch the deer moving in the rising light…because I’ve done it too, from my bedroom window. On the nights when Manic Flora has decided that sleep is for normal people, something so far beneath her as she soars above the rest of the world, I’ve sat at my window and watched the sun come up on Hopwood.
Because what is the point of sights like these if there is no one with whom to share them?
The words settle on my heart like falling feathers. Of all the things that mania is – in all its terrifying brightness, its loudness, its speed and its dazzling colours – the worst of all is it’s lonely. How can anyone keep up with a mind moving that fast? How can anyone understand what you’re looking at when you see things in a million new colours – colours that don’t exist outside your own head?
It’s lonely when you’re standing in the middle of an exam room, and everyone is looking at you and leaning across the desks, whispering behind their hands…Or when you’re standing on the pavement near the college bus, outside looking in…It’s lonely when your worst enemy is inside your own head, and nobody else can hear it or see it – and even if you could somehow magically project it outside for the rest of the world to see, what could they do?
I drag my mind back into the room and into the moment.
“So he’s an insomniac. He’s wandering around in the middle of the night, going for a walk in the gardens – and what? He’s seen somebody? Who would be up at that time?”
“One of the maids. The maids were always the first ones up in the morning.” Hal is already spreading papers across the only clear bit of the table. “What did the book say Iris Campbell did?”
“Umm…” I leaf back through the pages of the housekeeping book. “Second housemaid.”
“Ha!” He brandishes yet another wedge of papers at me, these covered in horrible handwriting. Seeing as I don’t think they had biros in 1913, it must be some of his research. “Housemaids lit the fires. That was the first thing they had to do. Early in the morning, they had to clear out the ashes from the night before and light a fresh fire before the family got up.”
“I guess it’s not all that different to how guests here dump wet towels on their beds and come back to find everything tidied up, and a whole new set of dry ones by the bath,” I say, rolling my eyes.
Hal flips a couple of pages in the bundle he’s holding, then scribbles something across the top of one of them, not even looking up as he speaks. “That’s just how it was back then. It didn’t occur to most of the upper class that the fires had to be lit, because they just were. I bet half of them didn’t even know where the servants’ quarters were.”
“What, like you know where all the staff rooms are in your hotels?” I don’t mean to say anything out loud, let alone that. But it falls out anyway. This does make him look at me, one eyebrow arched, even as I wish I could somehow suck the words back into my mouth and parcel them up inside my head, where they were meant to stay all along.
“My family’s hotels. Not mine,” he says quietly. “Not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Even if you’re the one who’s going to take everything over in time? Like a…like an heir?”
“Whether I want to or not? Not every heir wants to inherit the estate. And not all of them carry on the family name.” Hal’s mouth twists as he says it. “Albert didn’t, did he?”
I shake my head. “You don’t think he did. Until there’s actual proof, you can’t say that for sure.”
“Even though we’re standing in his house, and it’s a hotel?”
“That doesn’t mean anything. It could be a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.” He folds his arms across his chest, like a little kid who’s about to stamp his foot.
“Fine, then. I guess we’ll have to keep looking, won’t we?” I growl back at him, folding my own arms for good measure.
But as he turns away and reaches for yet another box, I’m sure I catch the briefest flash of a smile on his face.
Luckily, with his back to me, he can’t see that I’m smiling too.
Nobody is more surprised than me when I find myself hurrying back to the Hopwood library the next morning. I barely even stop for breakfast – until Charlie flags me down outside the front door, shoving a piece of toast at me. Mira, halfway across the driveway at the front of the hotel, actually does a full double-take when she sees me, waving and shouting my name (after checking over her shoulder, just in case Mrs Tilney appears from nowhere – it’s a habit you get into very quickly working here).
“What’s the rush?” She reaches for my arm as soon as she gets close.
“No rush – I just want to get back to the research.”
“You’re not avoiding me?”
“Why would I be avoiding you?”
“You know why.”
Of course I know why. I could be avoiding her because I’m upset she’s planning on leaving – or I could be avoiding her because I’m upset that she didn’t tell me. Or it could be because I’m upset that she thought she couldn’t tell me in case it upset me. Even though I’m pretty used to untangling my thoughts, I’m not sure whether that one makes sense.