BELLA

After the shock of the talking board, Ellen decided to abstain from spiritualist activities for a while. She spoke only to Harriet about the events in the parlour, but the looks cast in her direction when it was thought she wasn’t watching suggested that others had not been so discreet. In this regard she believed Grace more reliable than Frances and Adelaide, so she did not blame her for the spread of the story. Indeed, Grace did not mention Bella even to Ellen, for which Ellen was grateful albeit a little nonplussed. She had been certain Grace would challenge her in some way.

She attended the public meeting on Sunday, but refused a seat at the table and took Sarah’s place at the piano, allowing Sarah to join the circle herself. There were two strangers at the meeting—it was their loved ones the seance focused on, which came as a relief to Ellen—and the meeting passed without incident, as did the next few days in the house. Wednesday was unseasonably warm, and Ellen used the sunshine as an excuse to take Prince on a long walk in the early evening, a walk that just happened to take them past the Whitfields’ cottage at a time she knew William was likely to be at home.

She did not know yet whether she would tell William about the talking board. She felt foolish even to be entertaining the idea that the spirit had been anything other than a cruel trick on Adelaide’s part. But Adelaide had given no hint of either amusement or remorse, and had shown only concern for Ellen. Frances, too, had been nothing but caring. Sympathy came more naturally to her than it did to Adelaide, so from her there were offers of tea and conversation rather than awkward pats on the shoulder. Ellen accepted both, but did not speak at all of the talking board. Not even a second time to Harriet. Her friend believed the message had truly come from Bella, and Ellen found her conviction unnerving. She wanted—needed—an earthly explanation.

She was still undecided about how much to reveal by the time she reached home, but she had neglected to allow for the fact that William knew her better than anyone. He saw from the moment she entered that something was weighing on her mind.

‘Go on, then,’ he said once they were seated. ‘Tell me what’s up. Are you missing your own bed?’

‘A little,’ Ellen admitted, ‘but that’s not the thing that leaves me wakeful half the night.’ There was no point in keeping the tale to herself, she realised. Silence had brought her no answers. She told William everything, her voice catching only a little when she spoke Bella’s name. He listened quietly and, when she finished speaking, he neither laughed nor mocked her, but took a further moment to consider all she’d said.

‘You don’t believe in spirits,’ he said finally.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I know it’s all nonsense. Logically.’

‘Logically?’

‘It’s that house, you see. All those women believing . It confuses a person. And then something happens and you try to explain it with science but nothing fits. At least not perfectly. And you can’t help but wonder whether it’s just because you’re missing something or whether…’ She grimaced. ‘Oh, it’s all so ridiculous. Go on, Will; tell me I’m being a fool.’

‘You’re being a fool,’ he automatically replied. His eyes, however, were thoughtful and, when he spoke again, his words were considered. ‘It seems to me that it matters less whether the spirit was real than it does that it’s caused such consternation—and in a woman who likes to think herself immune to any kind of doubt.’

‘Of course it matters whether it was real.’

‘Does it? What difference does it make?’

‘If it was real, I—No.’ She caught herself before she could give voice to such insanity. ‘It’s as you said, Will: I don’t believe in spirits.’

‘Then there’s no need to trouble yourself further.’

It was clear to Ellen that he didn’t entirely believe her, but she had no way to convince him; not when she lacked conviction herself.

The following morning, Caroline found her in the library. The fine weather had broken and the fires had all been lit. The change was typical of a Melbourne autumn, but it nonetheless felt strange to be shivering when only the day before she had been basking in the sun. At each gust of wind, a burst of raindrops smacked against the window like fingers tapping on the glass and Ellen thought, each time, of the chorus of raps at a seance. Yet she could see the moment each drop of water hit the pane, could follow its branching trail downwards until it was consumed by another rivulet and washed away. The spirit raps left no such traces. They simply sounded and were gone.

With a fire casting its copper glow over the furnishings, the library felt more welcoming. The books themselves were no less disappointing, but their leather bindings gleamed as though they were new again and Ellen could almost imagine the words within them reawakening as well. Even the air was fresher. Someone had arranged a posy of gold and pink roses in a squat pewter vase, and the warmth of the room heightened their scent. It was not this that had caused Ellen to linger in the library, however, but rather the gift of a few blessed minutes alone.

In the end, she spent almost an hour with no eyes upon her and no conversations to attend. She had read very little, but she had rested, and she felt no resentment when Caroline arrived.

‘I hide in here too, on occasion,’ the medium confided. ‘If you’d rather I left you alone…’

‘I’m not hiding. At least, it wasn’t my intention.’

‘A welcome accident, then?’

Ellen smiled. ‘Something like that. You’re welcome to stay, however. I have a limited need for solitude.’

‘A fortunate attribute in this house.’ Caroline walked over to the bookcase nearest the fireplace, her back to Ellen as she ran her fingers over a row of spines. ‘I’ve never been much of a reader. Grace takes after her father in that regard.’

‘I’m not at all bookish myself.’

She turned, regarding the book in Ellen’s lap with undisguised amusement. ‘No?’

‘It’s only because I’m here,’ Ellen admitted. ‘At home, I keep busy. I’d rather take a long walk.’

‘As you did last night. It was late when you returned.’

She didn’t continue, but Ellen understood the admonition that had been left unsaid. ‘I took a cab back to the house,’ she reassured Caroline. ‘My brother would never allow me to walk alone after dusk.’

‘I didn’t realise you were with your brother. I shouldn’t have worried if I had known.’

‘It wasn’t a planned visit.’ It wasn’t a secret, either, although Ellen had thought it better to speak of it only if she were asked. She thought the church unlikely to look kindly on time spent with outsiders. ‘I found myself in the area and eager for his counsel.’

‘I see.’ Caroline ceased her inspection of the bookcase and took a seat facing Ellen. ‘I can’t help but wonder whether your questions were provoked by your experience with the talking board.’

Ellen had known this discussion was inevitable, but that didn’t make her any less reluctant to have it. ‘Grace told you everything, I take it?’

‘Grace?’ Caroline’s frown seemed genuine. ‘Was she there too? No, Frances spoke to me, and only because she was concerned for you. Rightly so, but not in the way she imagined.’

‘In what manner, then?’

‘You’re clearly unsettled by what happened.’ Moments ago, Caroline’s eyes had been so dark a shade of blue that they were almost as black as Grace’s, but now they shone with reflected light: the sky bright with gold at sunrise. ‘Most people are, you know. Few come to the spirits easily. Fewer still accept the gifts they offer—and I don’t blame them for that. Gift that it is, the life of a medium can also be terribly hard.’

Ellen wondered how much she should reveal to Caroline. It still seemed unwise to admit too much doubt. ‘I didn’t think anything would happen. Adelaide said it rarely does without your influence.’

‘And yet something did happen. Something that frightened you.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to see that name.’

‘Expecting it, no; but dreading it…?’

Ellen felt as though Caroline’s gaze was piercing her flesh and drilling through to the buried core. How else could she see the things that Ellen kept hidden, even from herself?

‘The spirits speak through me, but also to me,’ she said, as if she had read Ellen’s mind. ‘One in particular reaches out to you, but you turn from her. She is anxious for you and wants only to reassure you.’

Ellen tried to hold the question within her, but it burst from her all the same. ‘Did she tell you her name?’

‘Why ask when you already know the answer?’ Caroline rose from her chair and turned towards the door. ‘Join the circle on Sunday,’ she said, voice gentle. ‘Until then, I’ll leave you to your book.’

She was gone before Ellen drew breath to reply.

Ellen held Caroline’s words within her until evening, but the strain of it proved unbearable. As soon as Harriet closed their bedroom door, Ellen found herself relating the conversation, every word. Harriet listened without interruption, although she took Ellen’s hand and squeezed it whenever her voice faltered.

‘I’m frightened,’ Ellen admitted.

‘Frightened that it might truly have been Bella who spoke to you, or frightened that it might not have been her at all?’

‘I don’t know.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Helpful, yes? If it was her, everything I’ve ever believed becomes uncertain. And yet…’

‘Yet how wonderful to be proven wrong if the truth could bring you this.’

‘What made you believe, Harriet? It can’t only have been Caroline calling you Poppy. You’re not the cynic I am, but you’ve never been gullible, either.’

‘It wasn’t one thing on its own. The name, yes, but more than that. You’ll scoff, but there was a…a feeling. When my mother came to me, it felt like the air sparked with energy—as if she was there beside me, and if I reached out my hand I might feel the warmth of her skin. And when she left, the room grew colder.’

‘When you say she came to you, do you mean through Caroline?’

‘Through Caroline, yes. And once through the talking board.’

The very name of it made Ellen’s throat tighten. ‘You’ve not told me that.’

‘There was not a lot to tell. A greeting and little else. Like you, I found it disconcerting. To think that one’s own body could be used like that, well, it makes me shudder. I don’t know how Caroline bears doing what she does.’

‘I shouldn’t like to do it myself.’

‘No; it’s why I’m so grateful to her. It exhausts her terribly—you’ve seen that—and yet every week she returns to the table for our sake, and to spread the Lord’s message. And for no reward.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that.’ Ellen spoke carefully. ‘There is the house, after all.’

‘The same house that Margaret offers freely to all of us? Hardly a great prize.’

‘True.’ There was more to it than that, of course. The other women were devoted to Caroline. She was the church’s leader, yes, but…something greater. If it truly was a family, then Caroline was both mother and father. Like children, her congregation looked to her for praise and for comfort, and like children, they did all she asked of them. No monetary value could be placed on that, but it was undeniably a kind of reward. One that some would covet more dearly than coins or gold.

‘Would you like my opinion?’ Harriet asked, and it took Ellen a moment to realise that she was no longer speaking about Caroline.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’m struggling to form one of my own.’

‘I think you should join the circle on Sunday. This will continue to irk you if you don’t. If Bella doesn’t come, you can be done with it. And if she does, then perhaps speaking to her will finally release you from that terrible guilt you feel. Murderers feel less remorse than you do!’

‘I’m not so far removed from them.’

‘It was an accident, Ellen, and you were a child.’

Ellen could feel tears beginning to prick at her eyes. She couldn’t discuss this now. Not when the house and its spirits had unearthed a ghost of her own.

‘We should sleep,’ she said.

Harriet sighed. ‘Sunday,’ she repeated, but then let the subject lie.

The weather on Sunday was as turbulent as Ellen’s thoughts. The day had dawned clear and sunny, but by mid-morning the light breeze had built into a gusting wind that drove low grey clouds across the sky. The first heavy drops of rain began to fall not long before the drawing-room sofas were pushed back and the table brought forth for the meeting. Ellen had hoped she would be spared from participating by an influx of strangers, but the likelihood faded with the arrival of the storm. Who would brave the weather to join the spirit circle when they could easily delay until the following week?

The solid front door remained closed. When the church members gathered, the room was filled only with familiar faces. As always, Caroline was one of the last to arrive, dressed today in a lush blue velvet in a style that had become popular only recently.

As far as Ellen knew, Caroline had no means of her own. Someone must have bought the dress for her. It didn’t reflect Adelaide’s flamboyant taste, and it was clear that Margaret cared little for fashion; but any of the other women could have had it made. None were as wealthy as Adelaide, but all, Ellen had learnt, had access to significant bequests. Even practical Frances could support herself for life with her inheritance—a fortune from the goldfields, she told Ellen, where her father had enjoyed uncommon luck. It might be true that Caroline made no money from her mediumship, but why would she need to if her congregation fulfilled all her wants?

Ellen had to admit that the dress had been an excellent choice. Caroline was always handsome, with her tall, well-shaped figure, upturned mouth and arresting eyes, but today Ellen found it difficult to look away. Not for the first time, she found herself searching for the subtle signs of Caroline’s kinship with Grace. The nose, she decided, was one of them. Both shared the same straight, wide-bridged nose, but it looked different on Grace’s long face than on her mother’s, which was much plumper. It was a good nose, Ellen thought. She had always thought Harriet’s a fraction too small.

With no guests at the meeting, Ellen had no excuse not to join the circle, especially as Adelaide was already seated at the piano. Mrs Rutherford was still in bed, her rheumatism aggravated by the temperamental weather, which meant that even with Ellen reluctantly taking a seat at the table, one chair remained empty.

‘Ellen dear, would you mind finding Grace and asking her to join us?’

Ellen did mind, but it wasn’t as though she could say so. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘In Robert’s study, most likely. She prefers to keep close in case I need her.’

Ellen had not entered the study since her first tour of the house with Harriet. It seemed a peculiar place to spend one’s time: gloomy even on the brightest day and grey with dust. The last time she had seen the room, she had remained only briefly, glad to leave the chill behind her. Now, she noticed more of the details—the fine carving of the linenfold panel-ling and the rich leather upholstery of the matching chairs that sat at the desk and beside the window. It was in this second chair that Grace was sitting, her legs curled up beneath her skirts and a book lying, unopened, in her lap. Her eyes were closed and, for a moment, Ellen thought she must be sleeping. As Ellen drew nearer, however, Grace’s eyelids fluttered open. ‘What is it?’

Grace’s directness flustered Ellen every time. ‘Your mother asked me to fetch you.’

‘Let me guess: she wants me to fill an empty chair.’ Grace unfurled, her slippered feet emerging from beneath the grey wool of her skirts, her arms extending in a languid stretch. The movement exposed the snowy skin of her narrow wrists. ‘I told you once, I think, that I dislike seances.’

Ellen nodded.

‘It’s not that there needs to be eight, you know. Any fewer, however, and it’s more difficult to form the chain. If they simply used a smaller table…’ She smiled wryly. ‘But I’m surprised you’re taking part after what happened with the talking board.’

‘I’m rather surprised myself.’

‘Mother talked to you, I suppose. She can be very convincing.’

‘You think it a bad idea.’

‘I do. And I think you should go back to your brother and never return here.’

If only Grace knew that her warnings served only to make Ellen more determined to stay—even if that meant joining the circle for today’s seance.

‘I don’t answer to you,’ she said, aware that she sounded childish.

‘I’m not sure you answer to anyone,’ Grace said. A twitch of her lips suggested she was more amused than offended. ‘I, however, answer to my mother, who will be growing more impatient with every minute.’

Ellen had quite forgotten her reason for entering Robert Plumstead’s study, and she felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment as she followed Grace back into the drawing room, where the rest of the church members were waiting. The feeling of apprehension that had been building within Ellen all morning surged when she saw the two empty chairs were placed side by side. Was it too late, she wondered, to change her mind?

Grace, she noticed, had also hesitated; it drove Ellen forward. If Grace was so repulsed by the thought of touching her, then Ellen would take great pleasure from every moment she was forced to endure it. She nodded to Caroline and took the seat beside Harriet, who gave her a reassuring smile. From the corner of her eye, Ellen watched as Grace also sat, and silently rested her forearms on the tabletop.

‘Thank you, Grace,’ Caroline said. ‘The conditions are always much better when you join us.’

Grace mumbled something as Adelaide rose from the piano bench and lit the remaining candles, then drew the curtains and closed the door. When all was ready, she returned to the piano and those at the table formed the usual chain of hands.

Grace did not clasp Ellen’s hand but rested her own on top of it. Her palm was cool and slightly damp, and her long fingers were curved over to meet the wood. Ellen knew she could free herself with very little effort, but at the same time she felt trapped, the cage of Grace’s bones and flesh holding her still while she tried to remember how to breathe.

A hymn was sung and Caroline spoke the usual prayer, and throughout it all Ellen sat silently, staring at the flame of a single candle until the light and dance of it was burnt upon her mind. She was vaguely aware of Harriet shifting in her seat and someone coughing softly, but all this came to her as if from a distance. She could feel her own heart beating.

Bella . What would she do if Bella came?

The candle flame guttered, then sparked back to life. As Ellen watched, it stretched and quivered, the heat shimmer above it distorting the wallpaper’s pattern. She felt the urge to rub her eyes but her hands were caught and so was she.

Around the room, the other flames were teased by the breeze that had risen from nowhere, so that the light itself appeared to be moving. Ellen closed her eyes before it could make her dizzy. When she opened them, all had become still. She waited. And then, just as she thought it would never happen, the brass bell rose a full inch from the tabletop and rang: once, twice, then a final time.

‘Spirits, are you with us?’ Caroline’s voice was joyous: as if she already knew the answer, but was obliged to ask the question. ‘We welcome you into our home.’

Three raps sounded from the centre of the table, then three that seemed to come from the ceiling above Ellen. Three more from over by a window; three muffled by the carpet. Three and three and three and three, the usual chorus of taps turned into a chorus of yeses.

‘This is wrong,’ Grace murmured, barely loud enough for Ellen to hear.

She turned, but Grace’s head was lowered and her gaze fixed on the plane of cream damask in front of her. She did not look distressed or even concerned, but Ellen felt her pulse quicken.

‘I feel so many spirits surrounding us,’ Caroline said. ‘I’ve rarely known the energies to fill the room like this. Spirits, I see you! Come closer so that I may see the detail of your faces.’ There was a look of ecstasy on her own face, which shone from her eyes and gave a feverish blush to her cheeks. She glanced about the circle, her gaze pausing first on Grace and then upon Ellen. ‘The veil is so thin today that I feel like others might see you. Margaret, your Robert stands at your shoulder.’

Margaret turned, but Ellen could see the moment her hope faded. ‘I don’t see him, Caroline.’

‘He sees you, and oh! the love in his smile.’ She turned. ‘And Sarah, here is your Millie. How she laughs to see you dressed in black when the Summerland is so colourful! She reaches out to you; can you feel her kiss your cheek?’

Sarah’s eyes fluttered closed, her lashes wet with sudden tears. ‘I think I felt her,’ she said, her voice thick with wonder. ‘I miss her so very much.’

Caroline continued to glance about the room but she did not identify any other spirits, and Ellen began to wonder whether her fears had been unfounded. Bella, it seemed, was not with them. The talking board had merely been one of Adelaide’s larks. It was a relief, she told herself. Any disappointment she might feel was shame at her own credulity, not sadness. She had known all along that the spirits were not real.

‘I sense the good reverend approaching,’ Caroline said now, her eyes trained on a point somewhere above and to the left of Ellen’s head. ‘But—wait!—there is another with him. A child, I think; she shines with innocence. Come, friends! You are welcome!’

A flurry of raindrops beat against the windowpanes, as if responding to her greeting. Ellen started at the sound of it and Harriet’s grip tightened on her hand. She had not noticed the wind or the rain since the meeting had started, but the storm, it seemed, had not abated. Now, she thought she could hear a distant roll of thunder, or perhaps it was just the wind grumbling beneath the eaves.

There were only cold ashes in the fireplace, but the room slowly grew warmer, and Ellen smelt a hint of jasmine in the air. It was a scent that reminded her of childhood and the patch of garden behind the farmhouse where her mother had planted her memories of England and her hopes for colonial life. The last time Ellen had visited with William, the beds were overgrown with weeds.

Caroline let out a moan and began to thrash around in her chair. Ellen felt Grace’s hand become tense. She was careful, still, not to cling to Ellen, but Ellen could sense the effort of it in the way her fingers trembled. She didn’t look at her mother, not even when Caroline cried out and her head jerked backwards. She stayed like that for several seconds and then she slumped forward, head lolling, as if the invisible strings controlling her had been cut, all at once.

‘Greetings from the Summerland,’ she said in the deeper tone that indicated her late husband was in control of her voice. ‘How wonderful to find so many believers gathered here and to experience conditions so conducive to drawing the spirits. There is power in the group that the individual cannot muster. The Lord has granted you the gift of family: the family that awaits you in the spirit world and the family those same spirits have brought to you. You are bound to this family by more than the circle of hands. This is the purpose the Lord has given you, and you will reap the rewards of your faith.’

As Caroline spoke, Ellen had felt her anxiety lessening, but the next words set her pulse racing.

‘There is another who wishes to speak to you. A child in form, yet not in power, as she has spent some years now in the Summerland, learning and becoming more enlightened. My blessing will remain with you, but I bid you farewell.’

Caroline groaned and quaked in her chair, her trembling body mimicked in miniature in Ellen’s own shaking hands. Harriet’s grip remained a constant, reassuring pressure but Grace’s palm touched Ellen’s too lightly to still the tremors. In her alarm, Ellen tightened her fingers reflexively around the back of Grace’s hand. For a moment, Grace’s own fingers remained stiff and unmoving; then Ellen felt them slowly curve inwards until her left hand was held just as closely as her right. Ellen took comfort in the gesture, even as she understood that Grace acted not from sympathy but merely to keep her in the group.

Caroline stilled. A moment’s pause and then, slowly, she raised her head.

There was a gasp to Ellen’s right; Annie, perhaps, or Sarah. It seemed Ellen was not the only one who found the movement novel, although she doubted it chilled the other women in the same way. Caroline’s head turned until she was looking directly at Ellen. Or at least she was positioned that way, but her eyes were dull and lifeless, focused neither on Ellen nor on any point near her. They were no longer a deep blue, but instead looked faded: closer to the grey of Ellen’s own eyes. A trick of the light , Ellen told herself. It must be a trick of the light .

And then Caroline spoke and all else tumbled from Ellen’s mind.

‘Ellie?’ Her voice was higher, more childlike. ‘Why did you run from me last week?’

Ellen took a moment to find her voice. ‘I…I was startled.’

‘You always used to be so brave. Much braver than Will!’

It couldn’t possibly be Bella, she knew it couldn’t, but she ached to believe it was. She didn’t know how to answer when this could be nothing but trickery. It felt perverse to speak to Caroline as she would to her sister, but the only alternative she could think of was to admit her lack of faith. There was a part of her, too, that hungered for even a counterfeit exchange.

‘You were always the bravest,’ she said.

Caroline laughed as a child might when pleased. ‘Yes, but then I left and it was you who had to be brave for everyone.’

‘I wasn’t brave, then. I was miserable.’

‘Because you missed me, and the others were all different. And because you wrongly blamed yourself.’

Ellen’s cheeks were wet. When had she started crying? ‘It was my fault.’

Harriet’s hand squeezed harder. Even Grace held her a little more tightly. Ellen could feel her gaze upon her but couldn’t look away from Caroline’s deadened eyes.

‘It was an accident,’ said the voice speaking through Caroline’s mouth.

‘I was supposed to be watching you.’

‘And Will? Do you blame him too?’

‘He was younger. It was my responsibility, not his.’

‘So you forgive him, but won’t forgive yourself? Ellie, I forgive you. You did nothing wrong.’

Ellen heard herself give a loud, agonised sob. She fell forward against the tabletop so that her cheek rested on the thick damask, and if Bella—Caroline—said more to her, she was not aware of it. All she knew was the jubilation of having been forgiven followed by the all-consuming despair of remembering that none of this was real.

Later, she sat in the kitchen with Harriet and Prince, her hands warming around a cup of tea. This icy room was not at all like the cosy kitchen of the cottage, and yet there was a sense of familiarity that was absent in the other rooms. She needed it, that evening: needed to calm herself with a sense of normalcy when a part of her wondered if anything could ever be normal again.

Harriet did not push her to speak about the seance, but instead kept up a steady stream of inconsequential chatter that required no more of Ellen than an occasional murmur of acknowledgement. Ellen didn’t think it would be possible to appreciate Harriet more than she did in that first hour or so of companionship. She felt quite unable to converse like a normal person, but the thought of being alone frightened her. Alone, she would have nothing to distract her from her memories. She had spent so many years stifling them, and now they had been wrenched out of her.

Prince, sensing her unhappiness, had refused to leave Ellen’s side and was now hidden beneath the kitchen table, stretched out on top of her feet, the weight of him warm and certain. If only everything could be so wonderfully uncomplicated.

By the time she had made her way through two cups of tea and a thick slice of lemon cake, Ellen felt recovered enough to speak. ‘I made a fool of myself this morning, didn’t I?’

Harriet adapted well to the swift change from earnest avoidance to head-on confrontation. ‘How? By showing that you’re not the unfeeling automaton you’d like the world to believe you are? It’s not shameful to admit you have emotions.’

‘In such a public manner, though…’

‘Public?’ Harriet smiled. ‘Only you would consider something that occurred in your own home—and among members of your own household—public.’

‘They’re not…I don’t like crying in front of people. It makes me feel weak, like all the things men say about women being irrational and fragile are true of me.’

‘Ellen, your problem is that you’re too rational, if anything. You consider feeling things a failing. Which is why, I might say, this is all so difficult for you. You’ve refused to think about it for almost two decades and now that you’ve no choice, you don’t know what to do.’

‘I’ve thought about it,’ Ellen protested.

‘You’ve certainly not talked about it. Every time Bella’s name is mentioned, you change the subject.’

‘I don’t see the point of discussing something that happened eighteen years ago; that’s all.’

‘But it’s all right to blame yourself for something that happened so long ago? When you were a child ?’

‘I was twelve, Harriet. Hardly an infant.’

‘A child,’ Harriet repeated. ‘Who wasn’t even at fault. William told me the whole story, you know. Your parents left the two of you in charge of Bella, yes; and you were looking after her. How many times had you played hide-and-seek with her before—and never once had she left the house. You couldn’t have known that day would be different.’

‘I should have.’

‘How? You’re not a mind reader.’

‘Says the woman who believes in spirits.’ Ellen managed a shaky smile. ‘I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off her. She felt so grown up that day, so excited that she’d been allowed to stay on the farm, one of the big kids, instead of being dragged about on errands with my mother. And big kids don’t have to stay in the house. If I’d thought…but I didn’t think. I didn’t think, and she slipped into the waterhole and drowned.’

‘An accident.’

‘—that was my fault.’

Harriet reached across the broad table to grasp her hand, but could only reach as far as Ellen’s fingertips. She covered them with her own. ‘She doesn’t think so.’

‘Harriet, I’ve never wanted to believe anything more than I wanted to believe it was Bella speaking through Caroline this morning. But…I can’t. That’s not how the world is.’

‘If not Bella, then who? Caroline? How would she know about Bella when you never speak of her?’

‘You’ve mentioned her a few times. At least once in front of Grace.’

‘And you think Grace told her mother, just so Caroline could, what, convince you the spirits are real?’ Harriet shook her head, her exasperation evident in her voice. ‘Honestly, Ellen, sometimes I wonder if you’re capable of trusting anyone except William. Caroline has nothing to gain by tricking you. And do you really think Grace follows you about waiting for you to say something she can pass on to her mother?’

‘I wouldn’t put it past her,’ Ellen muttered. After all, Grace did tend to lurk in the background as if she wished not to be noticed. How many things had the residents of the house said to each other in confidence, unaware of Grace standing nearby in the shadows? The way she moved so quietly, slipping in and out of rooms like an apparition, those black eyes always watchful even if she rarely spoke…she was the ideal accomplice. No wonder she made Ellen uneasy. That kind of behaviour would unsettle anyone.

‘Fine. We’ll pretend for a moment that you’re not being entirely ridiculous and that Grace really does eavesdrop on every conversation you have. What, exactly, do you think she told Caroline? The fact that you had a sister? She would have heard little else because—as we’ve already discussed today—you refuse to speak of it. And yet Bella knew so much more than that, didn’t she? Things neither Grace nor Caroline could ever have known because you hold them so very tightly. If you ask me, that’s as close as you’ll ever get to proof that Caroline is exactly who she says she is. Who we—I—believe she is. If there’s no rational explanation, then perhaps it’s time to rely on faith.’

And if only, Ellen thought, it were that simple. To know that there was life after death, to know that she was forgiven…The world would be so much easier to bear.