The Memory Palace. Christie Dickason

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      ‘It won’t work!’ At the foot of the ladder, Philip Wentworth stood panting and clinging to a rung as if holding himself upright. ‘Did you hear me? It won’t work! Not high enough!’

      She closed her eyes. ‘Go away!’

      ‘I’m coming up.’ Without waiting for her answer, he began to climb the ladder.

      Jump now! she warned herself. Or you’ll have to endure another night like last night, all over again. But if she did jump, he would now feel responsible.

      She sighed and leaned back. It was beyond belief that the old estate hermit should choose now, of all times, to turn sociable. She heard him stop on the way up to puff and wheeze. Then his head appeared above the parapet. She looked away, pinched with desperate fury. He heaved himself onto the roof and settled beside her on the edge. After a moment, his breathing eased and he gave a little cough.

      They sat in silence. The intense greens and yellows of the beech hanger began to bleach in the growing brightness of the sun.

      ‘So?’ she asked at last. She still could not look at him.

      Silently, he tossed a fragment of moss out into the air and watched it fall into the garden below. ‘You’re waiting for argument?’

      ‘I’m not a fool.’

      ‘But I understand the pull of the edge. If you’re secretly hoping to be dissuaded, I’m not your man.’

      ‘Then why did you climb up?’

      ‘If you wish it, I will, of course, be glad to argue that you’re young, beautiful and much needed on this estate. I will even, if you like, add that the world is precious, that despair is a sin and that taking your own life is a worse one.’ Another clump of moss arched through the air. ‘I’ve always wondered what fool decreed that suicide was a crime to be punished by death.’

      She finally turned to look at him. ‘Why come up?’

      ‘To advise you the best way to do it.’

      ‘You’ve come to help me kill myself?’

      ‘You sound outraged.’

      She shrugged, then shook her head.

      ‘Don’t mistake me. Nothing would please me more than to talk you out of dying.’

      ‘Hah!’ she said with grim triumph.

      ‘Is there no other way? At seventeen you haven’t begun.’

      ‘I knew you were lying.’

      ‘I need to be certain,’ he said quickly. ‘And don’t be a fool! This roof is not high enough for a clean death.’

      She leaned. Closed her eyes.

      ‘Oh, go to the devil, then!’ he said sharply. ‘But I tell you, you will survive! Most likely crippled and helpless as a babe, depending on others to eat, to dress…even to change your soiled clout. I know, I’ve seen it.’

      She opened her eyes and looked down. ‘What else do you suggest, then? Must I drown myself in one of the fish ponds? Or impale myself on a hook?’

      ‘There are other ways.’

      ‘Believe me, I’ve considered them all.’

      ‘I very much doubt that.’

      ‘What can you know, living here…? Forgive me, I’m too desperate to be civil.’

      ‘I’m not in the least offended.’ He stared at his hands while he opened and closed them five times. ‘I understand, madam, that this is difficult for you. But it is not altogether easy for me.’

      ‘All it will cost you is words of advice.’

      ‘But my advice involves confession, you see.’ He fell silent and stared moodily across the valley to the slopes of Hawk Ridge.

      She studied him sideways with a surge of curiosity. He had come with the estate, like its fields and trees. A rent-paying, gentleman sojourner, already in residence when she had arrived as a fourteen-year-old bride.

      ‘I can’t,’ he said suddenly, with decision. ‘Forgive me. But I had sworn never to reveal myself to anyone here.’ He prepared to rise.

      ‘Even when it concerns her life?’

      ‘Even then.’

      ‘But if I am dead, I will have to keep your secret. Your confession will cost you nothing while it will oblige me.’

      He sighed and looked at her at last. She saw a profound uneasiness in his eyes. ‘Very well. You prevail.’ He levered himself to his feet.

      ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

      ‘With your permission, I would like to continue this discussion at a lower altitude.’

      ‘If СКАЧАТЬ