I did not even check him when he turned sharply to the left, though it was obviously a private drive. I could not find it in me to care. We went past a little lodge cottage and past the high wrought-iron gates. The cottage windows were dark and the drive was soft mud. We made no noise. We rode past like a pair of ghosts, a ghost horse and a ghost rider, and I let Sea go where he wished. It was not just that I was so weary that I was dreamy with tiredness, but I also felt as if I were in the grip of one of my dreams of Wide. As if all the dreams had been leading me steadily here, till I had nothing left of my real life at all, no ties, no loves, no past, no future. All there was for me was Sea’s bobbing head and the rutted drive, the woods and the smell of violets on the night air. Sea walked carefully up the drive and his ears flickered forward as the dark bulk of a building showed itself against the lighter sky.

It was a little square house, facing the drive, overshadowed by the trees. There were no lights showing at any of its windows, all the shutters were bolted as if it were deserted. I looked at it curiously. I felt as if the front door should have been open for me. I felt as if I should have been expected.

I thought Sea might check and go around to the stable block but he walked past it, as steadily as if he had some destination in mind. As assured as if we belonged somewhere, instead of wandering around in circles under a pale springtime sky. His ears went forward as we went under the shadow of a great spreading chestnut tree and I smelled the flowers as fat and thick as candelabra on the tree as he broke into a trot.

We rounded the bend of the drive and I pushed the cap back on my head a little, and leaned forward. After all these years of dreaming and hoping, of waiting and being afraid to hope, I thought I knew where I was at last. I thought I had come home. I thought this was Wide.

The drive was right, the drive where the man I called Papa had taken the little girl up on the horse and taught her how to ride. The trees were right, the smell of the air was right, and the creamy mud beneath Sea’s hooves was right. The horse was right as well. There had been other beautiful grey hunters here before. I knew it, without knowing how I knew. Sea’s stride lengthened and his ears were forward.

There was a great chestnut tree on the corner of the drive and I recognized it, I had seen it in my dreams for years. I knew the drive would bend around to the left, and as Sea drew level and we went around the corner I knew what I would see, and I did see it.

The rose garden was on my left, the bushes pruned down low and the rose-beds intersected by little paths all leading to a white trellised summerhouse, a smooth-cropped paddock behind it, and behind that a dark wall of trees which were the parkland.

On my right was the wall of the terrace. It ran around the front of the house bordered by a low parapet with a balustrade and stone plant pots with bushy heads of flowers, dark against the darkness. In the middle of the terrace was a short flight of shallow steps leading to the front door of the house. I checked Sea then; he was on his way around the house to where I knew, and he seemed to know, there was stabling and straw on the floor and hay in the manger; but I stopped him so that I could look and look at the house.

It was a lovely house, with a smooth rounded tower at one side, overlooking the rose garden and the terrace. Set in the middle of the façade was a double front door made of some plain pale wood, with a brass knocker and a large round ring door-handle. It was as if it spoke to me with easy words of invitation, as if to say that this was my house which I had been travelling towards all the weary journeys of my life.

There were no lights in the house, it looked deserted, but in measureless confidence I slid from Sea’s back and went stiffly up the steps and to the front door.

Out the back, from the kitchen quarters, I heard a dog bark, insistently, anxiously. I turned around on the doorstep and looked outwards over the terrace. I looked once more at the rose garden and beyond it the paddock, and beyond that the darker shadow of the woods, and high above it all the high rolling profile of the Downs which encircle and guard my home.

I breathed in the smell of the night air, the sweet clean smell of the wind which blows from the sea, over the clean grass of the Downs. Then I turned and put my small hand in the wide ring of the door, twisted the handle around, and leaned against the door so it slowly swung inwards and I stepped into the hall.

The floor was wood, with dark-coloured rugs scattered on top of the polished planks. There were four doors leading off the hall and a great sweep of stairs coming down into the hall. There was a newel-post at the foot of the stairs, intricately carved. There was a smell of dried rose petals and lavender. I knew the house. I knew the hall. It was as if I had known it all my life, as if I had known it for ever.

The dog from the kitchen at the back was barking louder and louder. Soon he would wake the household and I should be in trouble if I was found trespassing, my old boots on the new rugs. But I did not care. I did not care what became of me; not tonight, not ever again. There was a great bowl of china raised on wooden legs and I went over to it curiously. It was filled with dried rose petals and lavender seeds, sprigs of herbs, and it smelled sweet. I took up a handful and sniffed at it, careless that it spilled on the floor. It did not matter. I could not feel that anything mattered at all. Then I heard a noise outside on the terrace and the stone steps, and there was a shadow blocking the moonlight in the doorway, and a kind voice said softly:

‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

I turned and saw a working man in the doorway, blocking the moonlight, his face half in shadow. A rugged, ordinary face, tanned with weather, smile-lines etched in white around the eyes. Brown eyes, broad mouth, a shock of brown hair, ordinary homespun clothes. A yeoman farmer, not Quality.

‘What are you doing here?’ I replied, as if it were my own house and he a trespasser.

He did not challenge my right to ask.

‘I was watching in the woods,’ he said politely. ‘There’ve been some poachers, out from Petersfield I think. Using gin traps. I hate gin traps. I was waiting to catch them and see them off when I saw you riding down the drive. Why are you here?’

I shrugged, a helpless weary little gesture. ‘I’m looking for Wide,’ I said, too tired to think of a better story. Too sick at heart to construct a clever lie. ‘I’m looking for Wide, I belong there,’ I said.

‘This is Wideacre,’ he replied. ‘Wideacre estate, and this is Wideacre Hall. Is this the place you are looking for?’

My knees buckled a little under me, and I would have fallen but he was at my side in one swift step, and he caught me and carried me out to the night air and dumped me gently on the terrace step and loosened my shirt at the throat. The gleam of the gold clasp on the string caught his eye and he touched it gently with one stubby forefinger.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

I unfastened it and drew it out. ‘It was a necklace of rose pearls,’ I said. ‘But all the pearls were sold. My ma left it to me when she died, I was to show it when they came looking for me.’ I paused. ‘No one ever came looking for me,’ I said desolately. ‘So I kept it.’

He turned it over in his hands and held it close so that he could read the inscription. ‘John and Celia,’ he said. He spoke the names like an incantation. As if he had known what the inscription would say before he looked at it in the moonlight, as if he knew that was what he would see in the old worn gold. ‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe my ma knew, but she never told me. Nor my da. I was to keep it and show it when they came looking for me. But no one ever came.’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked. His gaze under the ragged fringe of hair was acute.

I was about to say ‘Meridon’, but then I paused. I did not want to be Meridon any more. Mamselle Meridon the bareback rider, Mamselle Meridon on that damned killer trapeze. I did not want the news of Gower’s Amazing Show to reach me here, I wanted to leave that life far behind me as if it had never been. As if there had been no Meridon, and no Dandy. As if Meridon were as dead as Dandy. As if neither of them had ever been.

‘My name is Sarah,’ I said. I cast about in my mind for a surname. ‘Sarah Lacey.’

18

The next few days were a blur, like a dream you cannot remember on waking. I remember that the man who hated gin traps picked me up in his arms, and that I was so tired and so weary that I did not object to his touch but was a little comforted by it, like a hurt animal. He took me inside the house and there were two other people there, a man and a woman, and there were a great many quick questions and answers over my head as it rested on his shoulder. The homespun tickled my cheek and felt warm and smelled reassuring, like hay. He carried me upstairs and the woman put me to bed, taking away my clothes and bringing me a nightgown of the finest lawn I had ever seen in my life with exquisite white thread embroidery on the cuffs and hem and around the neck. I was too tired to object that I was a vagrant and a gypsy brat and that a corner of the stables would have suited me well. I tumbled into the great bed and slept without dreams.

I was ill then for two days. The man who hated gin traps brought a doctor from Chichester and he asked me how I felt, and why I would not eat. He asked me where I had come from and I feigned forgetfulness and told them I could remember nothing except my name and that I was looking for Wide. He left a draught of some foul medicine, which I took the precaution of throwing out of the window whenever it was brought to me, and advised that I should be left to rest.