The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

He watches her depart, then hands me Evelyn’s lantern.

‘They’ll be looking for her, Aiden,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t trust anybody, and don’t let yourselves remember. At best the memories will cripple you, at worst...’ He lets that hang. ‘Once you’re released, start running and don’t stop. That’s your only chance.’

‘What’s going to happen to you?’ I ask. ‘I doubt your superiors will be happy when they find out what you’ve done.’

‘Oh, they’ll be furious,’ he says cheerfully. ‘But today feels like a good day, and Blackheath hasn’t seen one of those for a very long time. I think I’ll enjoy it for a while and worry about the cost tomorrow. It will come soon enough, it always does.’

He holds out his hand. ‘Good luck, Aiden.’

‘You too,’ I say, shaking it and passing outside into the storm.

Anna’s waiting on the road, her eyes fixed on Blackheath. She looks so young, so carefree, but it’s a mask. There’s another face beneath this one, a woman hated by half the world, and I’ve helped free her. Uncertainty flickers within me, but whatever she’s done, whatever’s waiting, we’ll overcome it together. Here and now, that’s all that matters to me.

‘Where should we go?’ asks Anna, as I sweep the dark forest with the lantern’s warm light.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think it matters.’

She takes my hand, squeezing it gently.

‘Then let’s start walking and see where we end up.’

And so we do, one foot in front of the other, pressing into the darkness with only the dimmest of lights for guidance.

I try to picture what’s waiting for me.

The family I abandoned? Grandchildren raised on stories of what I did? Or just another forest, another house mired in secrets? I hope not. I hope my world is something else entirely. Something unknown and unfathomable, something I can’t even imagine from inside the confines of Gold’s mind. After all, it’s not only Blackheath I’m escaping. It’s them. It’s Bell and the butler, Davies, Ravencourt, Dance and Derby. It’s Rashton and Gold. Blackheath was the prison, but they were the shackles.

And the keys.

I owe my freedom to every single one of them.

And what of Aiden Bishop? What do I owe him? The man who trapped me here so he could torture Annabelle Caulker. I won’t give him his memories back, I’m certain of that. Tomorrow, I’ll see his face in the mirror and, somehow, I’ll have to make it mine. To do that, I need to start again, free of the past, free of him and the mistakes he made.

Free of his voice.

‘Thank you,’ I say under my breath, feeling him finally drift away.

It seems like a dream, too much to hope for. Tomorrow, there’ll be no footman to overcome. No Evelyn Hardcastle to save, or Daniel Coleridge to outwit. No ticking clock hanging over a puzzle-box house. Instead of the impossible, I’ll need only concern myself with the ordinary. The luxury of waking up in the same bed two days in a row, or being able to reach the next village should I choose. The luxury of sunshine. The luxury of honesty. The luxury of living a life without a murder at the end of it.

Tomorrow can be whatever I want it to be, which means for the first time in decades, I can look forward to it. Instead of being something to fear, it can be a promise I make myself. A chance to be braver or kinder, to make what was wrong right. To be better than I am today.

Every day after this one is a gift.

I just have to keep walking until I get there.