Page 46 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

Edward didn’t interrupt her story. At first, he remained furious at the deceit.

How could Maude, or rather Mallory, have kept this incredible truth from him?

Especially when she knew he was investigating the disappearance of the circus.

But he soon felt a thawing as she relayed her tale because, as a freak himself, there was much he could relate to.

He understood now why she’d been so frightened these past four years. Someone, or several someones, from the village had poisoned the entire troupe. She must have been petrified that her real identity would be revealed and they’d come for her, too.

Perhaps he should have spotted that she was not the real Maude Grimmer sooner, though.

The clues were there from the beginning: her desire to give the bones a proper burial and keep them from washing out to sea; her sudden epiphany and decision to stop drinking; the tidy interior of the cottage and her kindness, so at odds with the stories he’d heard about the violent drunk.

And then she’d harboured Noah, not because she’d known the youngest Garrod since childhood, but because he’d been inhabited by Samson Ballard, the owner of the circus and a father figure from her previous life.

As she told her tale, she stared into the fire, as though the story was playing out in the writhing flames before her, and kept her face shielded from his.

It suddenly became imperative to Edward that they made eye contact so that he could seek out one further truth.

How did she really feel about him? Because since their earliest encounters on the windswept beaches of this North Norfolk village, he’d been falling, slowly, almost imperceptibly, for this woman, whatever the truth of her identity.

He slid from the bench and joined her on the floor, but still she wouldn’t look at him – her chin set defiantly forward. There was a beat, and then he reached over to touch her face and turned it towards his.

‘I’m sorry we got angry with each other,’ he said.

What colour had Mallory’s eyes been, he wondered, squinting at the mud-brown but endearingly earnest eyes that bored into his.

‘You’re right; I’ve lived a life claiming to have a gift that I do not.

My entire livelihood is built on deception and trickery. ’

She gave a small snort and raised an eyebrow.

‘I may not have guessed your albinism but I knew you were a fraud long before you admitted it. I’d heard rumours that Mr Shaw had summoned a medium, and it was why I ran from you on the beach.

I felt sure you’d know instantly that I wasn’t Maude Grimmer but a spirit inhabiting her body, and yet you sensed nothing. ’

A hundred questions were still circling his muddled brain, all fighting to be the first one out.

‘So how long have you been in the body of Mrs Grimmer? You said the bones only started falling recently.’

‘I wasn’t buried with everyone else.’ She shrugged and turned away, drawing her knees up to her chest and returning her gaze to the fire. ‘I was much nearer the cliffs, and when there was a huge landslide four years ago, my body fell to the shore and I was somehow released.’

He was confused. ‘But—’

‘One minute I was Mallory Hornchurch, the Toad Girl – the young woman with her face and limbs covered in unsightly bumps – choosing to bow out from this world on my terms. The next, I woke up on the stone floor of this cottage in a pool of vomit, exactly as I described. Nothing made sense until I remembered Hazibub’s bizarre ritual with the rat blood.

He was right – slipping into Maude seemed to bring a renewed energy and a certain degree of healing to her ravaged body.

I didn’t have to endure days of sweating to wean myself from the gin, as I previously told you, but didn’t want my recovery to sound suspicious. ’

He risked shuffling slightly closer to her.

‘Then, to be clear, you’re not a married woman?’

She shook her head. ‘But as I frantically pieced Maude’s life together, there was certainly a time I worried that her husband would return.

Apparently, he still has brothers living in Sheringham and I thought news of my recovery might reach him, so I carried on living her life to avoid being discovered.

Whilst I feel nothing but pity for what he went through when Maude was at her most violent, I was anxious that his reappearance would lead to…

expectations on his behalf that I wouldn’t be happy to fulfil. ’

He understood her meaning well enough and cast his eyes to the floor.

He also didn’t want Mr Grimmer back on the scene.

Maude would certainly no longer be able to entertain him, as a friend or otherwise.

He also acknowledged that the thought of another man touching her, kissing her, claiming her, was unbearable.

‘I had to work out who I was, where I was, when I was and how to survive. I knew so little about Thistlewick Tye or the people in it back then because I’d hardly left the camp.

But by scurrying around the edges of the village and listening to snatches of conversation, I worked out enough about her life to live it.

Ironically, being shunned by the villagers was in my favour and I’ve managed well enough these last four years, even though I’ve carried a lot of worry with me – worry that someone might discover who I really was, that Maude’s husband would return, or that I might die alone, never being loved by another person again.

Because I’ve been so desperately lonely, Edward, and then you appeared, making me feel things I thought I’d never feel again… ’

Finally.

She turned to face him, her bottom lip quivering in the flickering light.

A lone tear dribbled down her cheek, but she said nothing further.

The silence was excruciating and, in the end, he could bear it no longer and leaned closer, twisting his whole body towards hers, and grabbing her shoulders to pull her close.

He gave her plenty of opportunity to move away, if that was what she wanted, but she didn’t resist. His lips approached her face, tentatively at first, before he covered the salty droplet with his mouth, and kissed it away.

Her questioning eyes bored into his as he pulled back. ‘Would you have done that if my skin was a grotesque mass of lumps?’

She was challenging him and he understood.

When you were a freak, it was vital to establish that any kindness was not born of pity for the thing you couldn’t change.

A newfound desire to be completely honest with her from this moment on, until his last ever breath on this cruel and judgemental earth, swept over him.

‘It’s impossible to answer a “what-if”,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t even born when you were Mallory Hornchurch.

But if I’d been wise enough to get to know you, then unequivocally yes.

Your beauty is apparent in the way you live your life and your kindness towards me.

I, more than anyone, know that it is not fair to judge a person solely by how they look, and am absolutely certain that you deserved that kiss, whatever skin you are in. ’

Her mouth twitched and spread into a fleeting but genuine smile. ‘That may just be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.’ It appeared he’d given the right answer. ‘So, no more lies? No more hiding? Between the two of us, if no one else?’ she said.

It was as if the sparks of their earlier frustrations with each other, dancing around them like the angry embers from the fire, had now burned themselves out, cooled to grey, and drifted slowly to the floor, settling at their feet.

All was calm; all was bright. And, as they sat before each other, any pretence that there was not an overwhelming attraction between them dissolved into the sour smoke of the room.

Rising to her knees, she bent over his snow-white head and planted a gentle kiss on his short-cropped hair, her lips playing with the velvety nature of it.

To be loved for what he truly was – Edward felt a wave of rogue emotions wash over him.

He swept his arms up to her hips and buried his face in the cushion of her bosom, losing himself in the soft folds of the fabric and inhaling the scent of her.

Her arms wrapped themselves around his shoulders and he heard her contented exhalation.

Had anyone ever touched this poor woman in a sexual way?

He doubted it. Certainly not in the time since she’d become Maude, because after the husband had left, no one had dared approach her for fear of being attacked.

‘No more lies,’ he muttered. ‘Because you, Mallory Hornchurch, are incredible and deserve nothing but love. You’re strong, intelligent and kind. Your compassion humbles me.’

He deliberately used her real name and didn’t mention her physical attributes, even though he’d be a liar to deny that there were things about Maude’s body that attracted him.

But, he acknowledged to himself, it was the way Mallory was touching him – her fingers tracing swirls and circles across the goosebumps of his skin – that was truly sending electric pulses through his body. Not the way she looked.

She pulled back and smiled, dropping down in front of him once more, before lifting her hands up to the row of tiny cloth-covered buttons that ran from the neck to the waist of her worn wool dress.

He was mesmerised as she began the tantalisingly slow process of pushing them through the snug buttonholes.

The fabric parted, and more and more of her flesh was exposed.

Impatient, he got to his knees and placed his hand over hers, momentarily halting her disrobing, and leaning forward to claim her mouth with his own.

Their kisses quickly established the hunger they both had for each other and she tugged at his cotton shirt with equal urgency, sliding it upwards, being mindful of the bandage as she pulled it over his head.

For only the second time in his life, he wasn’t conscious of his body.

Much like the day he’d fallen on the rocks, he had no desire to hide the snow-coloured hairs that clustered in the hollow of his chest, or the line that ran from his naval and down to another, intensely private, thick tangle of white.

There was no doubt where this was leading now and he felt the strain of anticipation in his trousers.

He couldn’t remove them fast enough, almost as if her acceptance of his albinism gave her the right to access every part of him.

This is who I truly am, he was repeating in his head, the physical effect their shared kisses and caresses were having on his body now blindingly obvious. And she still wants me!

There were very few times in his thirty-six years he’d felt truly powerful, apart from possibly when he was commanding a roomful of desperate and hopeful grieving relatives, but in this small flint-built cottage, on the ravaged and windswept North Norfolk coast, with this innocent young woman, he felt like a god.

Surely, even the huge Samson Ballard, as he stood in the centre of the ring, introducing his Circus of Astonishing Spectacles, had never felt this potent?

He bent forward to trace a line of kisses from the nape of her neck, across her collarbone, and then burrowed his lips between the dress and her skin.

‘I miss my old body,’ she admitted, from above. ‘It was letting me down and caused me so much pain, but it was mine. I felt comfortable in it.’ She stretched her arms out in front of her and he felt them brush past his ears. ‘Who even am I?’

‘You’re still Mallory, just wrapped up in different paper,’ he mumbled, between kisses.

‘But let me help you learn to love this body, too.’ He undid the remaining buttons and slid both the dress and cotton chemise from her shoulders, over her hips and down to the floor, before burying his face once more in her breasts.

This time, however, he could taste the salt on her flesh and feel the warmth of her skin on his lips.

Those arms that she was struggling to accept, instead accepted Edward, pulling him tightly to her nakedness.

They tumbled to the thick knotted rug, all intertwined limbs and frantic kisses, and he manoeuvred her body so that she was beneath him, steadying himself by placing his hands either side of her.

And then, gently at first, he entered her.

Their eyes locked together, and the world lost all focus as the sensation of being connected to this brave and beguiling woman, in the most intimate of ways, usurped everything else.

Maude was not his first, but the woman concerned had been paid handsomely for her services and her discretion.

She’d never called him beautiful and certainly never compared him to an angel.

She’d also kept her eyes closed every time, doubtless treating the whole experience as nothing more than a job.

But he could never bring himself to visit those establishments where disease and desperation were rife.

Nor would he spoil the purity of someone who had hopes that the physical act might lead to love.

Because, he realised with astonishing clarity, that’s exactly what he felt for the amazing woman beneath him, her eyes boring into his, as though she was afraid she might miss some important cue, as his hands explored the most intimate parts of her.

This was love.

And, even though he could not admit it to Mallory, maybe a small part of that was because she was a freak like him, and she understood him nearly as well as he understood himself.

She trembled at his touch, bucked as she reached her release, and let out an animal moan. Limp from the overwhelming wave of intense sensations, she lay spent, as he coupled with her once more, focused on everything and nothing, and found his own nirvana.