FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018

The brick path ends and there it is, rising up before her – an ornate gothic tower of dark stone, its windows mullioned, dead-eyed. Viola takes the mossy, flint-lined steps two at a time and arrives on a terrace where stout cannons nose out of a parapet. The place is not forbidding as such, just eerily familiar, like the setting of a long-forgotten dream. Then she remembers – she has seen the Big House before, in the black-and-white photos on the wall of the Customs House. Here is the place in full colour, though mostly it is shades of grey.

She runs headlong at the huge, braced wooden door, chopping at the latch with the edge of one palm. There is no time for the pleasantries of knocking; the pale sun is beginning to mount the treetops in her wake, making it ten o’clock, half-past perhaps, Viola can’t be sure. She has never been able to understand the adult fascination with wearing a watch – the time is always right there, on your phone. Now she gets it.

Viola throws open the door into the stillness of a hallway, silent but for the rasping of her own breath. It is windowless, all darkness, and she falls momentarily blind as the door clunks back on its latch behind her. Her eyes grow accustomed, and into view comes the face of a tall and decorative clock, a mechanical sun ready to take the place of a cloudy, painted moon. There is no tick, no movement; both hands rest at twelve. Ahead of her are bookshelves, rows of untouched encyclopaedias, the alphabet portioned out in gold foil on their spines.

To her right, a stairway.

She grabs the post, its finial carved into the shape of a pomegranate, and launches herself at the steps. Above her comes the tsk-tsk-tsk of feet striking stone – someone alerted to her presence.

‘Hello?’ calls a female voice.

They meet on the half-landing, almost bump chests. The woman is short and sturdy, mother-aged, black-haired. She wears a striped linen dress, covered over with an apron.

‘Can I help?’ she enquires tightly, not meaning it at all.

‘Where is the Earl?’ Viola demands, out of breath.

‘Who needs to know?’

‘Me!’

Viola ducks left, tries to slip past, but the woman is quick. In this half-landing of the stairway, she makes herself wide.

‘Eh-eh-eh-eh!’ she admonishes, as if Viola is a small child or a dog. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Up! Viola thinks. I’m going up!

She will prove that a red-haired girl doesn’t mean bad luck, show everyone that the good angel speaks louder at her shoulder than the bad. Everything will come together as she has promised. There may be no detective inspectors on that incoming ship, but there will be a ship, a shaft of light in the gloom, and it will herald the arrival of reason.