“Would you really run?” he asked her, his smile faltering just a fraction. “Where would you run to? Back to London? Would you really walk out on a job, money, a place to live...”
“If I was scared enough,” she whispered.
“Do I scare you?” he asked, the smile almost gone now.
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “But this dressing up thing is, like, really weird and I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with it.”
“What could be uncomfortable about wearing expensive clothes...” he started.
“Because they’re your dead wife’s clothes,” Winnie blurted out. Part of her immediately wanted to clap her hand over her mouth and swallow those words, but that little part of her - the one that whispered sometimes - was glad she had said what she had.
“Then we’ll buy replacements,” Thaddeus said.
“And I bet they’ll be exact copies of what I’m wearing now,” she said.
“What of it?” he shrugged.
Then taking a deep breath and swallowing hard, Winnie said, “Thaddeus, I’m not Frances. I’m not your dead wife. My name is Winter McCall, I was born in the back of an ambulance during the middle of a snowstorm, I ran away from home and became homeless. I didn’t move here with you so I could pretend to be someone else.”
“With a backstory like that, I thought you’d be grateful of the chance to be someone else,” he shot back.
Hardly able to believe what he had just said, Winnie’s mouth dropped open. “You fucking nob!” she hissed, throwing the book on the floor and jumping up. “I’ve had enough of this bullshit!”
Winnie ran from the room and went to the front door. She reached for the handle, but before she had the chance to pull the door open, Thaddeus slammed his hand against it.
“Don’t go,” he said.
And just like she had seen the night before, Winnie saw that desperation in his eyes again.
“What, stay here and let you take the piss out of me?” she sneered. This time she was too angry to cry. “No thanks!”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that my whole life,” she snapped back. “It means shit!”
“Please just let me explain,” Thaddeus implored her. He reached for her hands, and she jerked them away.
“Don’t touch me!” she barked.
Then raising his hands in the air as if in surrender, he said, “Okay, but please just let me explain before you go. I think I owe you that at least.”
“Explain what, exactly?” she glared at him.
“Why I really invited you to come and stay with me,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
Winnie followed Thaddeus back into the lounge. He gestured for her to sit back in the chair by the window again. Winnie sat on the edge of the seat, not eagerly awaiting him to tell his story, but just in case she needed to jump up and leave quickly. Thaddeus sat opposite her on the sofa, pulling up his legs and crossing them. He sat forward, his wrists hanging over his knees, his head slightly forward. The wind howled outside and the windows rattled in their frames again. Thaddeus looked up as if glancing out of the window, then looked at Winnie.
“I’m sorry,” he stated. “You were right about me and I’m so very sorry. If you feel that you still want to leave after I have explained why I brought you here, you will receive no quarrel from me and you can leave when you wish.”
“What are you sorry for?” Winnie asked, her temper fading slightly.
Thaddeus stared at her through the glow of the lamp and said, “I watched you for seven nights. I saw you by chance one evening. After having dinner with my publisher, we went our separate ways. I had one night left in London and it wasn’t a particularly cold evening, so I decided to take a walk along the Embankment and watch the boats pass along the river. I sat for a while to smoke a cigarette or two, and it was then I saw you. You were sitting on the steps outside the Embankment Tube Station, and my heart almost stopped at once as I peered through the passing traffic at you. At first I thought I was seeing a ghost. I thought you were Frances.”
To hear him say this, Winnie shuddered inside and felt cold all over.
Thaddeus took a cigarette from the silver case in his pocket and lit one. Smoke curled up from the corner of his mouth, and he watched Winnie through the coils of blue smoke.
“I couldn’t move from that seat, Winnie,” he started to explain again. “It was like I was frozen in time somehow. This time last year, I had watched Frances be eaten away by cancer, only to see her again before my very eyes, sitting across the road from me. Was it some cruel trick, or my imagination? But as I sat and watched you, I realised that you were, in fact, not her. Your resemblance is uncanny – but there are subtle differences. With my heart heavy in my chest, and old feelings reawakened within me, I hurried back to my hotel. It was like my brain had a fever. I was almost delirious with madness. My brain had become haunted by memories of Frances. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was you, Winnie, sitting in the dark and cold, holding your hands out, begging strangers for money.
“You seemed to be so alike in looks that I even began to wonder if Frances had had some secret sister, a relative that she had failed to tell me about. In my heart, I knew that not to be true. I telephoned the hotel lobby and told them that I would be staying several more nights,” he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette.
“Why?” Winnie asked him.
“I didn’t know at the time,” he said, glancing back at the window as rain now beat against it. “I spent the day beneath the covers of the hotel bed, fearing to shut my eyes in case you were there again. Then, whether through tiredness or madness, I decided to take another walk along the Embankment again that night. I didn’t know why, I had no plan, other than I needed to see you again. I had to make sure that you weren’t really Frances, however insane that seemed. After a very light evening meal, as I felt too sick to eat, I made my way back to the Embankment. I sat on the bench on the opposite side of the road and watched the entrance of the station. After the time it took for me to smoke almost half a pack of cigarettes, you appeared. Again, I spied on you as you begged those people in their expensive suits for money. It almost broke my heart to see you doing that.”
“Why?” Winnie cut in. “You didn’t know me. I meant nothing to you.”
“It was Frances I could see begging,” he said, crushing out his cigarette and lighting another. “It wasn’t you I could see in that scruffy sweater, filthy jeans, and trainers. It was like I was watching my Frances shuffling back and forth, starving, cold, and hungry. It almost tore my heart in two to watch you night after night.”
“So you came back every night?” Winnie asked, not feeling creeped out, but kind of sad for him. She pitied him.
“Every night,” he said, and then looked away as if in shame. “But what was I to do? I knew in my heart that you weren’t Frances – I had accepted that by night three, I think. I didn’t want to leave you there. It was like I owed it to Frances in some way not to leave you behind. To return to my home and its fineries would have driven me half mad. How could I have rested or settled knowing that someone, who so reminded me of the person I loved more than anything, was living such a pitiful existence? Was I to snatch you off the street? I was not prepared to commit a crime. Approach you, explain everything, and then ask you to come and live with me? You would have thought me mad. As I watched you rebuke those men who approached you, I knew how I could get you to leave London.”
“How?” Winnie asked him, sensing that she had now been manipulated in some way and feeling uncomfortable about it.
“I could see that you had your dignity – your pride,” he explained. “People like that don’t accept charity, and it was then the idea struck me. I would offer you a job. A job brings pride, a sense of worth – it has honesty about it. It was a deal that we could both benefit from.”
Staring at him wide-eyed, Winnie said, “The job, the wage, and a roof over my head is how I would benefit, but how would you?” she asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.
“I got to be reminded everyday of Frances,” he said, looking away again in shame as his true motives were revealed. Then, with his head still turned from her, he added, “I wouldn’t blame you for thinking me mad, even sinister perhaps, but there you have it – you have the truth.”
Winnie drew a deep breath, and although her suspicions had been proved right, it did nothing to silence the growing disquiet she felt inside her. “I don’t think you are mad or sinister,” she finally said. “But you are grieving, and perhaps you should go and talk to someone about it. What you’ve done, and what you are doing, by asking me to dress like your dead wife so you can remember her, isn’t exactly normal.”
“I’ve read many stories where those who have lost loved ones have never been able to throw away their clothes, possessions,” he said, as if trying to justify his actions. “Some people have even left their loved ones’ rooms exactly as they were on the day they died.”
“And those people, I guess, lead incredibly sad lives,” she said, the anger and frustration in her voice now gone. She found it hard to muster any anger towards Thaddeus as he sat opposite her with sadness in his eyes that she knew she had seen before. Ruby Little had often had such a haunted look when she returned from the alleyways – from being with those men. It was like a piece of her soul was missing. Just as those men had taken a little piece of Ruby’s soul, Frances had taken a piece of Thaddeus’s the day she died. “The people you describe, Thaddeus, never move on with their lives.”
“Run away, you mean?” he said looking up at her. “Because that’s what you do, Winnie. You don’t confront your problems, either.”
“Perhaps not,” she said thoughtfully.