She shakes her head.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she cries. ‘I haven’t done any of that yet, and even when I do, it won’t be because I’m betraying you. If I wanted you dead, I’d pick off your hosts before they ever woke up. You wouldn’t see me, and I certainly wouldn’t work with a man guaranteed to turn on me once we’d finished.’
‘Then what were you doing there?’ I demand.
‘I don’t know, I haven’t lived that part yet,’ she snaps back. ‘You – another you, I mean – were waiting for me when I woke up. He gave me a book that told me to find Derby in the forest, then come here and save you. That’s my day. That’s everything I know.’
‘It’s not enough,’ I say, bluntly. ‘I haven’t done any of that, so I don’t know if you’re telling the truth.’
Putting the statue down, I walk past her, heading for the black curtain she emerged through.
‘I can’t trust you, Anna,’ I say.
‘Why not?’ she says, catching my trailing hand. ‘I’m trusting you.’
‘That’s not—’
‘Do you remember anything from our previous loops?’
‘Only your name,’ I say, looking down at her fingers intertwined with mine, my resistance already crumbling. I want to believe her so badly.
‘But you don’t remember how any of them ended?’
‘No,’ I say impatiently. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘Because I do,’ she says. ‘The reason I know your name is because I remember calling for you in the gatehouse. We’d arranged to meet there. You were late, and I was worried. I was so happy to see you, and then I saw the look on your face.’
Her eyes find mine, the pupils wide and dark and daring. They’re guileless. Surely, she couldn’t have...
Everybody in this house is wearing a mask.
‘You murdered me right where I stood,’ she says, touching my cheek, studying the face I still haven’t seen. ‘When you found me this morning, I was so scared I almost ran away, but you were so broken... so scared. All your lives had crashed down on top of you. You couldn’t tell one from another, you didn’t even know who you were. You pushed this book into my hands and said you were sorry. You kept repeating it. You told me you weren’t that man any more and that we couldn’t get out of this by making the same mistakes all over again. It was the last thing you said.’
Memories are stirring slowly and so far away that I feel like a man reaching across a river to trap a butterfly between his fingers.
She presses the chess piece into my palm, curling my fingers around it.
‘This might help,’ she says. ‘We used these pieces in the last loop to identify ourselves. A bishop for you, Aiden Bishop, and a knight for me. The protector, like now.’
I remember the guilt, the sorrow. I remember the regret. There aren’t images, there isn’t even a memory. It doesn’t matter. I can feel the truth of what she’s saying, as I felt the strength of our friendship the first time we met, and the agony of the grief that brought me to Blackheath. She’s right, I murdered her.
‘Do you remember now?’ she says.
I nod, ashamed and sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to hurt her, I know that. We’d been working together like today, but something changed... I became desperate. I saw my escape slipping away, and I panicked. I promised myself I’d find a way to get her out after I’d left. I couched my betrayal in noble intentions, and I did something awful.
I shudder, waves of revulsion washing over me.
‘I don’t know which loop the memory is from,’ says Anna. ‘But I think I held on to it as a warning to myself. A warning not to trust you again.’
‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ I say. ‘I... I let myself forget what I did. I held on to your name instead. It was a promise to myself, and to you, that I’d do better next time.’
‘And you’re keeping that promise,’ she says soothingly.
I wish that were true, but I know it’s not. I’ve seen my future. I’ve spoken with him, helped him in his schemes. Daniel is making the same mistakes I made in my last loop. Desperation has made him ruthless and unless I stop him, he’s going to sacrifice Anna again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth when we first met?’ I say, still ashamed.
‘Because you already knew,’ she says, wrinkling her forehead. ‘From my perspective, we met two hours ago, and you knew everything about me.’
‘The first time I met you, I was Cecil Ravencourt,’ I respond.
‘Then we’re meeting in the middle, because I don’t know who that is yet,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter though. I won’t tell him, or any of the others, because it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t us in those loops. Whoever they were, they made different choices, different mistakes. I’m choosing to trust you, Aiden, and I need you to trust me, because this place is... you know how it works. Whatever you think I was doing when the footman killed you, it wasn’t everything. It wasn’t the truth.’
She’d seem confident if it weren’t for the nervous throb in her throat, the way her foot worries at the floor. I can feel her hand trembling against my cheek, the strain in her voice. Beneath all the bravado, she’s still afraid of me, of the man I was, of the man who may still be lurking within.
I can’t imagine the courage it took to bring her here.
‘I don’t know how to get us both out of here, Anna.’
‘I know.’
‘But I will, I won’t leave without you, I promise.’
‘I know that too.’
And that’s when she slaps me.
‘That’s for murdering me,’ she says, standing on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on the sting. ‘Now, let’s go and make sure the footman doesn’t murder any more of you.’
44
Wood creaks, the narrow, twisting staircase darkening the further down we get, until finally we sink beneath the gloom.
‘Do you know why I was in that cupboard?’ I ask Anna, who’s ahead of me and moving fast enough to outrun a falling sky.
‘No idea, but it saved your life,’ she says, glancing back at me over her shoulder. ‘The book said the footman would be coming for Rashton around this time. If he’d slept in his bedroom last night, the footman would have found him.’
‘Maybe we should let him find me,’ I say, feeling a rush of excitement. ‘Come on, I’ve got an idea.’
I push past Anna, and begin leaping down the steps two at a time.
If the footman’s coming for Rashton this morning, there’s every chance he’ll still be lurking around the corridors. He’ll be expecting a man asleep in his bed, which means I’ve got the upper hand for once. With a little luck, I can put an end to this here and now.
The steps end abruptly at a whitewashed wall, Anna still halfway up and calling for me to slow down. A police officer of considerable skill – as he’d freely admit himself – Rashton’s no stranger to hidden things. My fingers expertly locate a disguised catch allowing me to tumble into the dark hallway outside. Candles flicker behind sconces, the Sun Room standing empty on my left. I’ve emerged on the ground floor, the door I came through already blending into the wall.
The footman is less than twenty yards away. He’s on his knees, jimmying the lock to what I instinctively know is my bedroom.
‘Looking for me, you bastard,’ I spit, hurling myself at him before he has a chance to grab his knife.
He’s on his feet quicker than I could have imagined, leaping backwards and kicking out to catch me in the chest, knocking the wind from me. I land awkwardly, clutching my ribs, but he doesn’t move. He’s standing there waiting, wiping saliva from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Brave rabbit,’ he says, grinning. ‘I’m going to gut you slow.’