My mother is a newspaper journalist. As wonderful as she is, that officially makes her one of the most inquisitive people on earth. So there are few secrets in our house.
She knew that as much as I loved our home in London, I’d been looking forward to spending the summer at Orlaith’s house in Edinburgh, Scotland. She also knew that she’d been offered the chance to cover a great assignment in New York instead of going to Edinburgh with me, and that something had to give. Either that or we could agree to go our separate ways, at least for a midsummer holiday. So that’s what we did. And that’s why I was on a flight from London to Edinburgh with enough butterflies of excitement to make me feel like I could fly there on the strength of my own exhilaration.
I loved Edinburgh. I loved Orlaith’s house with its moon garden full of flowers and lantern lights that looked spectacular at night. It was her little piece of paradise in the middle of the bustling Scottish city.
Orlaith was one of my mum’s best friends; she was like extended family. We holidayed with her almost every year, and she came to visit us in London. She lived alone, except for a fluffy blue cat called Midnight.
As the plane flew over the city of Edinburgh at night I could see thousands of lights below. The streets were a glittering metropolis of traffic and activity, with beautiful historic spires stretching up into the skyline. The city of spires was great. There were plenty of historic monuments and cobblestone streets to keep the average tourist happy, but equally I’d always found it to be a modern city with a young population, alive with vibrant energy and excitement. It was wonderful to be back. I never imagined living anywhere except London, but there was something magical about Edinburgh that kept drawing me back to it.
I took a taxi from Edinburgh airport to Orlaith’s house which was an old townhouse tucked into the niche of a cobblestone alley. The garden, long and narrow, gave it its magnificence. The high walls on either side prevented those with a curious nature peering over, and most people wandered past unaware that it existed. It was almost a secret. Even the branches of the huge umbrella tree dipped unseen below the skyline.
The taxi pulled up in front of the house, and I noticed that the lights were on inside. A smiling face peered out the window, and then Orlaith came hurrying to the door to welcome me. With her fresh complexion, wide hazel eyes and shiny auburn hair pinned up in a loose chignon, she looked far younger than her forty years. She’d never quite got around to marrying the right man, something she had in common with my mother.
I was lovingly smothered, given something to eat and then we sat out back in the garden catching up on all the news. The garden was lit by solar lamps and neon fireflies entwined across the honeysuckle plants and night scented stock flowers whose scent I wished I could bottle. It looked totally magical.
‘Mum will be in New York by now,’ I said, checking the time on my watch. Her flight had been hours ahead of mine, and we’d arrived at the airport separately. At seventeen, the trip to Edinburgh was the first flight I’d taken completely on my own.
‘She called earlier. She says she misses you already, and she’ll call in a few days.’
I smiled.
‘Oh and this arrived for you.’ She handed me a letter. The envelope was lilac and my name had been written in deep inky purple. To Vesper, it said. Private and confidential. Do not open until Midnight.
‘Is this some sort of joke?’ I said, thinking it was a prank.
‘No. A young man delivered it himself this morning.’
I turned the letter over in my hands, tempted to open it right there and then. ‘Did he say who he was?”
Orlaith shook her head. ‘No, but he was a cutie. A real looker.’
We both smiled.
‘Perhaps you’ve got a secret admirer,’ Orlaith said, her Scottish accent adding a hint of intrigue.
The thought gave me a shiver of excitement, and then realisation sunk home. ‘No one knows I’m here, no one except us — unless you told someone. Gossip travels like wildfire.’
‘I don’t think I mentioned it to anyone. No, I’m sure I didn’t. I’ve been far too busy lately — and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been invited to Glasgow for a few days to exhibit my new paintings.’
‘That’s great,’ I said. Orlaith was a freelance artist who painted fantastic flowers and faeries. I wished I had her talent, which I didn’t. I reckoned I’d follow in my mum’s footsteps when I finished my education and become a journalist.
‘It means you’ll be on your own. I feel bad because your mother isn’t here to keep you company while I’m away.’
‘I’ll be fine. I know the city, and I’m sure you’ve got enough homemade dinners in the freezer to save me from starving.’ I was exaggerating about the starving, although cooking’s not my thing.
Orlaith bit her lip. ‘I don’t know if I should go.’
‘I’ll eat out most of the time anyway. I really want you to have your exhibition, and I’ll have fun here.’
We finally agreed that everything would be fine and that tomorrow morning Orlaith would drive to Glasgow.
I was looking forward to coping in the city on my own. I thought it would be a great adventure.
We had another coffee, this time with a slice of home baked cake, and were chatting away, especially about the letter, which I was considering opening, but everything must have caught up with me because when I woke up, I was still sitting in the garden opposite Orlaith who was snoozing contentedly with the cat curled around her feet.
It was a warm summer night with hardly a breeze but I was shivering slightly. I checked my watch. It was after one in the morning. Where had the time gone? Had we really slept past midnight? In my mind I immediately blamed the relaxing scent of the flowers and tiredness from travelling. Then I remembered — the letter!
It was still in my hand but now it looked different. The purple ink had faded to sepia, as if it had been written a long time ago, and the lilac envelope was a similar shade. It was as if the colour had drained right out of it.
While Orlaith continued to snooze, I tore the envelope open. A letter was neatly folded inside. There was no message, no words that I could see, only the faded sepia signature that was barely visible.
I hurried over to one of the solar lanterns and studied it carefully. Nope, not one word of the message was readable. It gave me the strangest feeling, so I folded it again and put it back in the envelope. Whoever the guy was who’d sent it was clearly playing some sort of game.
Orlaith blinked awake and thought it was funny that we’d fallen asleep, which took the edge off of my concerns about the letter.
‘If you’re going to be here on your own, you’d better know about the new flowers in the garden,’ she said. ‘See those little white flowers over there, the ones with a touch of pink? Those are fairy lanterns. I bought some bluebells and these were among them. I’ve also got white roses with very large thorns so be careful with those.’
‘I will,’ I assured her. Many of the flowers in the garden were hazardous. Among the beautiful and the dangerous, Orlaith had several new flowers to show me. She always had something different and was forever sending away for exotic plants from all over the globe. Tonight, in a corner of the garden near the huge umbrella tree were blue flowers on tall, silver–grey stems. I imagined I could take one of the slender stems, dip the tip in ink and use it as a long, exquisite pen.
‘They’re lovely. What are they?’ I said, bending down to touch one of the flower heads that resembled a cornflower.
Orlaith pulled my hand away. ‘Be careful. It’s a Cupid’s dart. If you believe the folklore, it could just make you vulnerable to someone’s romantic wishes.’
Honestly, that didn’t sound too bad. Romance had been like ether in the air for me. Okay, so I’d had a few crushes that never ever materialised into anything other than longing from a distance at good looking guys who always seemed to think I was invisible. As if fate had a sense of humour, two boys at school had crushes on me, but I wasn’t interested in them. Sometimes I wondered how anyone would ever get together. We all had crushes on the wrong people. So that’s why Cupid’s dart was okay by me. That and the thought I may have a secret admirer, even though in my wildest imagination I couldn’t figure out who he could be. A summer romance was a thrilling thought, even if it was unlikely. I certainly didn’t know any guys in Edinburgh. Did I?
I was still raking through my memory archives of past trips to Orlaith’s house when a moth — and this moth was big — flew right past me, its wings almost touching my hair.
I let out a yell. Not that I’m scared of moths, but this thing wasn’t some fluttery little nondescript grey moth that you see zooming around a light bulb on a warm summer’s night. No, this moth had attitude. It had colourful translucent wings and very long antennae that sparkled like metallic bronze.
‘Ah,’ said Orlaith, ‘it’s a Fairy moth. I haven’t seen one of those in years. Maybe it’s the fairy lantern flowers that have brought it to the garden.’
‘It’s big,’ I said, on alert in case it took another fly–past.
‘I’ve got some wonderful moths that come to my garden. There are Grey Daggers, Alchymists, Death’s Head Hawk–moths as big as your hands —’
‘Okay, I get the picture,’ I said, before the thought of these gave me nightmares for a month. ‘Cutesy little moths I’m fine with. But moths that would have trouble fitting into my purse are a bit scary. Those with the ability to fly away with my purse are definitely off my cutesy radar.’
Orlaith laughed, and then she said, ‘Oh I see you’ve opened the letter.’
‘Yes, but I can’t read a word of it. And it’s faded. It’s really weird.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘perhaps it’s written in invisible ink.’ She got up from the chair, and Midnight the cat padded after her into the house. The patio doors were open wide and I saw her rummaging around in one of the desk drawers where she kept her artist pens and brushes.
‘What we need is a black light pen,’ she called to me. ‘I should have one around here somewhere.’
‘Black light?’
‘It’s not really black light. It’s ultraviolet light that makes the ink appear if you shine the light on it. Ah, here we are. I knew I had one.’
That she actually owned an invisible ink pen with a light on the tip that made the ink readable was one of the things I adored about Orlaith. She never ceased to amaze me.
‘I bought it for writing dinner menus for a restaurant I do artwork for from time to time. They like everything handwritten in calligraphy, and I thought it might be fun to have invisible ink menus where the words only appear when you hold them up to the table lamps.’ She seemed so enthusiastic about her idea.
‘Did they go for it?’
‘Nooo,’ she said. ‘No sense of adventure. Still, it’ll come in handy now.’ She handed the pen to me. ‘Click it on, it’ll light up.’
I pressed my finger on the top of the pen and it shone with a pale, violet glow. I held it near the letter. The message was still unreadable but the signature was now visible. It was a shadowy scribble with an old world flourish. I was sure it said — Sabastien.
Suddenly the cat’s hackles rose up. He prowled into the garden then stopped, ears flat, and spat with all the ferocity he could muster.
‘What is it?’ I said, keeping my voice down to a whisper so that whatever it was couldn’t hear.
Orlaith didn’t know.
The cat was still adamant about protecting us, even as Orlaith picked him up and carried him into the house. ‘It’s just the wind blowing the leaves,’ she reasoned.
I could tell by the look we exchanged neither of us believed that for a moment. There wasn’t a breeze; it was perfectly still.
I followed her into the house and cast a look back at the garden. Perhaps it was my imagination, but beyond the umbrella tree, I thought I caught a flicker of silvery lights darting about in the shadows.
I locked the patio doors securely, said goodnight, and then climbed into bed. The linen was fresh and clean and I pulled the duvet securely around me. The house had two spare bedrooms and this was the one I always slept in. It was cosy and comfortable, and until tonight, it had always felt safe and secure.
Moonlight shone through the window. It illuminated half of the room and highlighted the ancient spires in the night sky. I snuggled into the covers and wondered about the letter, what the cat had sensed in the garden, those silvery lights, and why I felt like I was being hunted . . .
