There were a few possibilities for this, but it was Amberwood and Twygrist that came strongly into her mind. Amberwood and the people who had lived and worked here. The Twygrist miller, whoever he had been, and Thomasina Forrester with that off-centre stare and uncompromising jaw, and the quirky little post of Clock-Winder of Amberwood. And this cottage.
She retrieved the leaflets about Quire House, and spread them out on the table. It looked as if Godfrey Toy might have had a hand in their compiling; they were neatly written, with little potted histories of some of the people who had lived in the house.
Thomasina Forrester appeared to have been something of a personality in Amberwood. She had administered the Quire estate and been involved in various charitable activities. Antonia supposed these would have been ladies’ committees for fund-raising events or sick-visiting, and turned over a page to see what Thomasina had got up to.
It had not been organizing charity concerts or sick-visiting at all. Thomasina Forrester had been a trustee of something called the Forrester Benevolent Trust–Antonia thought there was a disagreeable air of patronage about the name–whose purpose appeared to be the providing of comforts to inmates of the local lunatic asylum. The asylum itself had been called Latchkill and, according to the leaflet, it had been a dark byword for miles around.
Latchkill. It was a harsh, ugly word. Latchkill–the place where all the locks had been killed. Was that what the name was meant to imply? Do not risk coming here: this is the place where doors cannot be opened because there are no keys. Once you are in here, it is very difficult indeed to get out again.
The words scraped against Antonia’s mind, taking her back to another place where latches had been killed. A place where some of the females preferred their own sex and practised their own initiation rituals when the wardens were not around.
But she had survived it. She had even survived the night she was beaten up in the showers, when four of the women subjected her to rape. She had known, of course, that women could and did rape other women–she had had two girls as patients who had been the victims of female rape. But listening to a distraught patient describing the act was no preparation for the experience itself–for the glitter in the attackers’ eyes, or the smell of cheap soap in the shower stalls and the body scents of the women bending over her, or the feeling of their hands…
Afterwards she had pushed the memory down to the very deepest level of her mind, and it had stayed there until the word Latchkill touched a raw nerve, and a pair of skewed eyes looking out of a framed drawing brought back the fear and humiliation of that night. You never entirely erased any memory, but it was odd that the sketch of the long-dead Thomasina Forrester should have dredged up that particular one.
Godfrey had been inclined to discount Miss Weston as a possible new friend, so it was a nice surprise when she turned up just after eleven o’clock next morning, and asked if he knew of any sources she could explore to find out more about the Forrester family. She did not know exactly what she was looking for, she said, just general things: background, how they had made their money, why they had come to Quire House, what descendants there might still be in the area, Twygrist and its place in the scheme of things–it seemed to be bound up with the Forresters, what with the memorial clock and so on. No, there was no especial reason for her interest, she said, but the leaflets Dr Toy had given her had been interesting, and she would like to read up about local history and local personalities while she was here. Nothing very scholarly, only a bit of relaxation.