The Last Daughter Read online

  His criticisms had been harsh and, Serena thought, untrue. She’d worked really hard over the past five years to make her company successful. She and her friend Ella specialised in arranging bespoke historical tours and were starting to get the business on a sound footing at last. It was true that she had moved around a lot in the past ten years and she had lost touch with almost all the friends she’d had from her childhood and college years, but so did a lot of people. She had had a couple of unsuccessful relationships but again, that wasn’t unusual. It was only when she thought about Jonah, which she did less and less since the split, that a tiny doubt crept into her mind that on the issue of people, at least, he might have been right and that she didn’t really want to commit to anyone. Losing Caitlin, the person who had once been closer to her than anyone else in the world, had inevitably taken a toll in terms of how much she was prepared to invest in a relationship. She had the self-awareness to know that and absolutely no idea how to change it.

  The glass dining table was set with bright blue plates and crisp napkins. There was fragrant chicken with salad and a creamy herb dressing, chilled white wine… Serena relaxed again. She had another two weeks in California with Polly. Ella was handling the business with the help of a temp and sent her cheerful updates on how well it was all going without her. Tomorrow she and Polly were taking a trip to the Gaviota State Park and she’d also pencilled in a visit to some of the wineries and, most exciting of all, a day trip to Hearst Castle. Even though history was her job, she never, ever got tired of it.

  Her phone rang. She ignored it as she took another forkful of salad.

  ‘It’s your mother,’ Polly said helpfully, reading the screen upside-down.

  Serena felt two sensations hot on the heels of each other: irritation and a whisper of dread. Both were instinctive and both were unfair. She knew it wasn’t her mother’s fault that she found her needy and felt the pressure of being an only child.

  The only remaining child.

  ‘I’ll call her back later,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the early hours in the UK,’ Polly said. ‘Maybe there’s some sort of emergency?’

  The chicken seemed to turn to ashes in Serena’s mouth. She stared at Polly for what seemed like forever as the phone buzzed on and on. She refused to frame the thoughts that were hovering at the edge of her mind. Then the phone stopped abruptly and the silence sounded very loud indeed.

  ‘Serena—’ Polly said, but then her own phone started to ring with the same brash insistence.

  ‘Don’t answer it.’ Serena’s sense of dread increased.

  Polly looked exasperated and ignored her.

  ‘Hello, Jackie. You’re up late tonight. Is everything all right? How’s Paul?’ Polly always exaggerated her British accent when speaking to her sister-in-law. Serena was never sure whether it was deliberate or not. Her aunt and her mother did not get on particularly well, although they did a good enough job of pretending that they did for the sake of family unity.

  ‘We have nothing in common,’ Polly had said once when Serena had asked her about their relationship. ‘It’s not even that we dislike each other, there’s just nothing to build on.’

  Serena thought that like everything else, the differences, the cracks in their relationship, hadn’t been so obvious before Caitlin had vanished. Or perhaps she had just missed them. She had only been seventeen when she lost her twin and as far as she remembered, pretty self-absorbed. She could see that Polly, the independent, childless career-woman and her mother, the stay-at-home housewife who felt slightly defensive about it, might not have had that much in common.

  There was a tide of words from the other end of the phone. Polly was frowning. ‘Wait,’ she said sharply. ‘Slow down. I don’t understand…’ Then more quietly: ‘Yes of course. She’s here.’

  She passed the phone across the table to Serena who took it without a word. She already knew what it was that she was going to hear. Superstitiously she wondered whether it had been the mention of her sister’s name earlier that evening that had somehow invited Caitlin to invade her peace; invited her back into her life to banish the tenuous contentment she had found in the last couple of weeks.

  ‘Mum?’ she said.

  Her mother’s voice sounded crackly and broken over the vast distance:

  ‘The police have just left,’ she said. ‘They’ve found Caitlin. They’ve found a body. Serena, you’ve got to come home.’

  Serena’s heart started to race. Her stomach knotted. How was it possible, she wondered, to have anticipated this, to have sensed that her mother must have devastating news, and yet still to feel so sick and hollow and unprepared? Over the past eleven years, not a day had passed when she hadn’t wondered when, if, they would ever know the truth of what had happened to her. Yet now that she stood on the edge of discovery, she felt as though the world had dropped away beneath her feet and left her in freefall.

  Her mother was still talking, the words tumbling over each other, interrupted by sobs. Serena didn’t stop her, didn’t really listen to the words, only the tone and the emotion. Her mind seemed to have frozen, stuck on that one thought:

  ‘Caitlin’s body has been found…’

  ‘You still there, love?’ It was her father now. He sounded exhausted, confused and old. Serena could hear her mother still crying in the background.

  ‘We don’t have many details at the moment, just that the police have identified your sister from her dental records. We don’t even know where she was found. How soon can you get here?’

  Serena swallowed hard, trying to focus. It seemed so difficult. All she could see in her mind’s eyes was a vision of Caitlin, blonde hair flying as she ran, arms outstretched, smiling and full of life.

  ‘I’ll come straight away,’ she said. ‘Tonight. Tomorrow. As soon as I can get a flight.’ She could see that Polly had already reached for her tablet and was searching for the next flight from Los Angeles to London. Serena’s mind started to race. She would need to hire a car when she got to Heathrow to take her from London to Gloucestershire. Could she do that now, or should she wait…? She felt a desperate impatience to be on her way home but at the same time, a sliding horror that this was happening again, the police, the questions, the tantalising and terrifying gaps in her memory…

  ‘Have you told Grandpa yet?’ she said.

  ‘No.’ Her father sounded shocked that she should suggest it. There was a pause. ‘We thought perhaps it would be better not to…’ His voice strengthened. ‘He wouldn’t understand anyway, not with the dementia.’

  ‘He might,’ Serena said. There was a very hard lump in her throat. ‘Someone is going to have to tell him, Dad.’

  There was silence at the end of the line, strong with denial. Polly put her hand over Serena’s, her gaze intent and concerned, and Serena unclenched her fingers from the tight fist they had formed. She smiled shakily at her aunt.

  ‘Well, we can talk about that when I see you, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go. I need to get a ticket, pack… I’ll let you know when I’m arriving.’ She tried, not entirely successfully, to stop her voice from wobbling. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Give Mum a big hug from me. I’ll see you soon.’

  She pressed ‘end’ and cut off the sound of her mother’s crying. The warmth seemed to flow back into the apartment, bringing with it the sunshine and the faint sounds of the world outside but everything was different now, out of reach. In her mind she was already on her way home, back to England and the horror that was waiting.

  ‘Shit,’ Polly said. ‘I’m so sorry, hon. How awful. Do you want to talk about it?’

  Serena shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Pol, I can’t. I don’t really know how I feel yet.’ She clenched her hands. ‘I just want to get on and do something.’

  ‘Of course.’ Polly sighed. She squeezed Serena’s arm and stood up. ‘There’s a flight leaving LAX at eleven that has some space. If we hurry—’

  ‘Great.’ Serena jumped up, aband
oning the chicken salad. She had lost her appetite completely. ‘I’ll get my stuff together.’

  Polly wrapped her in a hug. ‘I wish I could come with you, hon. I want to support you.’

  ‘You’ve got work,’ Serena said. ‘You can’t just drop everything, I know that. I’ll be fine. Really.’

  ‘You’ll be supporting everyone else,’ Polly said, suddenly fierce. ‘Your mother’s in bits and Paul never was very good in a crisis.’

  Serena tightened the hug for a moment before letting Polly go. She gave her aunt a watery smile. ‘Dad does his best,’ she said, knowing that Polly’s unsentimental assessment of her brother was right. ‘I’m sure he’ll be a big comfort to Mum, and I’m happy to talk to Grandpa. Actually, I’d rather I tried to tell him about Caitlin than them.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I’ll ring you every day, OK? That would really help.’

  The worry lightened a little in Polly’s eyes. ‘That would be great, hon.’

  As she threw her holiday clothes haphazardly into her suitcase, Serena started to feel more grounded again. It was a relief to have something practical to concentrate on. She was always able to ward off the dark, Caitlin-shaped thoughts with action. In the aftermath of her sister vanishing she had talked to everyone – to family, the police, counsellors and psychologists – and tried so hard to recover the memories of that night that she had lost through cognitive amnesia. The psychiatrists she had seen had told her that her memory could return at any time or not at all. Dissociative amnesia was completely unpredictable, and in the event, no treatment had made any difference at all. No memories had come back to her and she had ended up exhausted and emotionally battered by the endless effort at recall. Not only had it felt as though she had lost those hours, more potently it had felt as though she had completely failed her sister.

  For a second, she froze, her hands still full of T-shirts and shorts, possessed by the agonising thought that she had in some way betrayed the trust that Caitlin had placed in her. She had always been the stronger one.

  ‘You should have found me, helped me, saved me…’

  She squashed the rest of her clothes into the bag and forced the zip to close. There would be questions, memories and hard truths to face up to now She was not at all sure she was ready but she had no choice.

  Chapter 2

  Anne

  Ravensworth Castle, Yorkshire, January 1465

  In the winter of the year fourteen hundred and sixty-five, when I was five years old, my uncle, the Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, came to Ravensworth one night, and set my life on a course I could never have imagined. It was late and the torches were lit in the courtyard and the fires hot in the hearths for there was deep snow on the ground. I was asleep when he came and the first that I knew of it was when my elder sister Elizabeth shook my arm roughly to awaken me. There was an odd expression on her face, of mingled envy and pity.

  ‘Mother wants you,’ she said. ‘You are to go to the solar.’

  ‘Go away.’ I burrowed deeper into my nest of blankets and furs. Beside me my other sister Alice turned over in her sleep pulling the covers away from me. I pulled them back.

  Elizabeth was having none of it. This time she poked me in the ribs, hard enough to banish sleep completely. ‘Our uncle is here,’ she hissed. ‘Get up!’

  ‘I need the privy now you have woken me,’ I grumbled. I slid from the bed and scurried across the chamber, the cold stone of the floor chilling my bare feet before I had taken more than a couple of steps. The icy draught in the dark little corner garderobe was vicious, straight off the snow-covered fells outside. My teeth were chattering as I came out and stumbled back towards the sanctuary of the bed. I had no intention of going to find mother in her private rooms; it mattered little to me that Uncle Warwick was here. I was a child and I wanted to sleep.

  ‘Anne.’

  It was my father’s voice, soft and warm. A candle flared and then he was scooping me up and wrapping me in a fur-lined cloak, carrying me out into the corridor. I heard Alice’s sleepy voice:

  ‘What is it? What’s happening?’

  And Elizabeth’s short answer. ‘They want Anne. They always want Anne.’

  My father smelled of his familiar scent and the cloak was soft and warm. I slid my arm about his neck and clung closer. I adored my father, so equable and indulgent in comparison to my high-tempered mother. But mother was a Neville born, which was to be special and important. This we all knew and understood, just as we knew she was stronger than my father, whatever men say about the wife being subject to the husband’s authority.

  The adult world after candles were out in the nursery was a strange and dazzling place. There was noise and light, the bustle of a castle awake whilst we, the children, slept. It made me feel both very grown up and at the same time, at a disadvantage. I wriggled in my father’s arms, suddenly wanting my independence.

  ‘I can walk,’ I told my father. ‘I’m not a baby.’

  He laughed but there was an edge of regret to it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are a Neville.’ He placed me on my feet as we reached the door of the solar, carefully wrapping the cloak about me so that it trailed behind me like a train. It was a rich azure blue and I drew it close as I entered and felt like a queen.

  My mother and her brother were standing, heads bent close together, as they talked at the fireside. They drew apart as we entered the room, giving the impression of two conspirators. The room was hot and bright, and the air smelled of wine and spices, making my head spin a little. The sense of a strange, adult world grew stronger. I had no place here and yet I had been summoned.

  My mother’s blue gaze was sharp as it swept over me as though looking for fault but my uncle smiled.

  ‘My daughter Anne, my lord.’ My father was suddenly formal. Holding his hand as I was, I could feel something tense in him. He might be lord here at Ravensworth but in this company he would forever be an outsider. He had been chosen as my mother’s consort; an ally, a liegeman to the Neville clan who were the growing power in the North. Vaguely I understood this although I was too young to grasp the complexity of it.

  I wondered whether I should curtsey to the Earl. It felt odd when I was in my nightclothes but I did it anyway, drawing back and settling the cloak about me again so that it covered me modestly and warmed my bare feet.

  My uncle Warwick seemed charmed. He crouched down beside me. I had never been so close to him before, for he had paid previously no particular attention to his sister’s brood of children, particularly not the girls. He was too busy, too important.

  Like my mother – like me – he had the clear blue eyes of the Nevilles, but the rest of his face reminded me of a hawk, it was so fierce and predatory. People accused the Nevilles of pride and arrogance, and it was written there for all to see, in the hard line of his cheek and jaw and the cold, assessing gleam of his eye. He was a great man, second only to our kinsman King Edward, or he had been until the previous year when the King had married secretly and raised up a whole raft of his wife’s relatives to the nobility. Uncle Warwick hated the Queen because of the influence she held; this was something else that I knew because I had overheard my parents speak of it. People will speak freely before children, just as they will before servants, thinking us deaf perhaps or too young to understand.

  ‘How do you do, Mistress Anne,’ the Earl of Warwick said. ‘You have a great look of the Nevilles about you.’

  I was clever enough to recognise this as a compliment. ‘Thank you, my lord,’ I said.

  ‘What age are you?’

  ‘I am five years old, my lord.’

  He nodded. ‘Tell me, Mistress Anne, what do you know of marriage?’

  My father was standing behind me. I felt him make an instinctive movement and saw the moment my mother caught his hand and the words on his tongue died unsaid. I looked the Earl of Warwick in the eye.

  ‘Marriage is an alliance of wealth and power, my lord,’ I said, and he burst out laughing.

  ‘Wel
l said, little maid.’ He stood up, still smiling. ‘I like her, Alice,’ he said to my mother. ‘She is both comely and clever. You have chosen well.’

  My mother nodded. I could feel my father’s anger stiff within him but my mother ignored it. She too was smiling at me. Her approval, unlike my father’s love, was a cold thing, but still I basked in it for it was rare.

  ‘You are to wed, Mistress Anne,’ Lord Warwick said. This time he did not trouble to stoop to my level but looked down at me from his great height. ‘I have the King’s ward in my care, a boy of eight years or so called Francis Lovell. He is handsome and rich and kind, a good match for you. Would you like him for your husband?’

  I correctly guessed that this was not a question that required an answer since it had already been decided. I dropped another curtsey.

  ‘My lord.’

  ‘Good. So be it. We shall hold the nuptials next month—’ He looked at my mother. ‘At Middleham.’

  ‘Why not here at Ravensworth?’ My father spoke for the first time. Silence followed his words but it seemed to twitch with matters unsaid.

  ‘If you wish it.’ After a moment the Earl gave a careless shrug. ‘I thought to show my sponsorship of the couple’ – he smiled at me again – ‘by hosting the celebration.’

  Silence again, then my mother stepping smoothly in to break it. ‘We can discuss these matters in the morning. You’ll stay the night, Richard? It’s late and too inclement to travel back. Let me show you to a chamber.’

  My uncle inclined his head. ‘Thank you.’ He picked up his goblet. I saw his throat move as he finished his wine in one swift gulp. He gave my father a brief nod and followed my mother out. I knew then that he wanted to talk to her alone. My father watched them go. He did not move.

  I tugged on his hand to recall his attention back to me. ‘May I go back to bed now, father?’

  He smiled then and ruffled my hair. ‘Of course, sweeting. I’ll take you.’

  My sister Alice was asleep again as he tucked me in beside her and bent to kiss my brow. ‘Nothing will change,’ he said, and it sounded like a vow, but I was too tired to ask him what he meant.