No words came. I was walking past her, subconsciously quickening my pace. I came out of the alley. Unless she had turned and followed me it would be some minutes before she made the journey round.

I started to hurry out into the open, towards the pond. When I was there I paused and saw her. She was walking slowly in the direction I had taken.

I crossed the road and let myself into the house with my latchkey.

As I turned to shut the door I saw the red-haired woman crossing the road.


* * *

I was in the drawing room when Annie came in. She said there was a “person” below asking to see me.

“What sort of a person, Annie?”

Annie repeated, “A person,” with a little sniff, which meant that she did not entirely approve of our visitor.

“What does she want?”

“She said she wanted to speak to you.”

“A lady then.”

“A person” insisted Annie emphatically.

“What name did she say?”

“She said you’d know her when you saw her.”

“That’s odd,” I said. “Perhaps you’d better show her up.”

I heard them coming up the stairs. Then Annie tapped at the door and threw it open.

I stood up in astonishment for the red-haired woman was coming into the room.

“We’ve met before,” I said. Annie who had looked very suspiciously at the visitor seemed then to think all was well. She shut the door on us.

“In the Gardens,” she answered with a slow smile.

“I… I saw you several times.”

“Yes, I was never far behind, was I?”

“Did you want something?”

“I think we’d better sit down,” she said, as though I were the visitor.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She smiled wryly as she said: “I might be saying the same to you.”

“This is rather mysterious,” I said coldly. “I am Mrs. Joliffe Milner. If you have come here to see me…”

She interrupted: “You are not Mrs. Joliffe Milner,” she said slowly. “There is only one of those. It’ll surprise you to learn that one is not you. I am Mrs. Joliffe Milner.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You will fast enough. You can call yourself Mrs. Joliffe Milner if you like, but the fact remains you’re not. How can you be when Joliffe was married to me six years ago?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I thought you wouldn’t. I’d have spoken to you before, but I thought you’d want proof. And what better proof than the marriage lines, eh?”

I felt faint.

“You are lying. It isn’t possible,” I said.

“I knew you’d say that. But there’s no denying what’s down in black and white, is there? Just look at this. We were married six years ago in Oxford.”

I looked at the paper she thrust into my hand and read what was written there.

If this document was a true one she had indeed been married to a Joliffe Milner six years ago.

It was like a nightmare. She crossed her legs, lifting up skirts beneath which were flounces of pink petticoat; her black stockings had openwork decorations up the sides.

“You look as if you’d had a shock,” she said and she gave a little giggle. “Well, you have, haven’t you? It’s not every day you hear the man you thought was your husband is someone else’s.”

I began rather shakily: “I don’t know who you are or what your motive is…”

“My motive,” she interrupted, “is to tell you what you ought to know. You’re a lady, I can see that. You’re well educated and I’ve no doubt you were very pleased with yourself… till now. I’ve watched you in the Gardens. I wondered whether to speak to you then. I had to do a bit of detective work to find him. Then I thought this is better. I’d call and tell you. I’ll wait here and see him if you like. That’s going to be a nice surprise for him! What about some refreshments? I could do with a glass of wine.”

I said to her: “I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

“Not when you’ve seen the lines?”

“It’s not possible. If he were married to you how could he marry me?”

“He couldn’t. That’s the point. He’s not married to you, he’s married to me.”

“He would never do such a thing.”

“He thought I was dead. I was traveling down from Oxford to London by train. That was a year ago. There was a disaster on the line outside Reading. You must have heard of it. It was one of the biggest crashes ever. Many people were killed. I almost was. Unlucky for him not quite. I was in hospital for three months and nobody knew who I was for some time. I had no papers on me and I couldn’t remember much myself. As for my devoted husband, he made no effort to claim me. Jolly good riddance, he said. He’d realized long before that what a mistake he had made. It goes to show that young gentlemen up at Oxford for their education shouldn’t get caught up with barmaids, leastways they shouldn’t go so far as to marry them. Joliffe was a hothead. No sooner do I say ‘Unhand me, sir. Nothing of that till I get my marriage lines’ and there are my marriage lines as you see them now! But marriage is for good. That’s what he forgot. So there you have the story of my life in a few sentences. It’s not uncommon. He’s not the first young gentleman who’s acted rash and lived to regret it.”

“If this had been so he would have told me…”

“Joliffe tell you! You don’t know half what goes on behind that handsome mug of his. I used to say to him, ‘All that charm of yours will be your downfall.’ There were lots of fellows after me, I can tell you, but it had to be him and there he was caught. He couldn’t let me meet his family, could he? He saw that. What ructions there’d be! So he got me rooms in Oxford and we were there for close on a year. Married bliss! It didn’t last very long. He saw his mistake. He was always making excuses and going away. Then I was coming to meet him in London and there was this train. He always used to say he was lucky. I reckon he thought the day that train went off its rails was the luckiest in his life. But he didn’t look far enough, did he?”

“This is such a fantastic story,” I said.

“Life with Joliffe Milner would always be like that. Fantastic, that’s the word for it.”

“You had better come back when my… Mr. Milner is here.”

She shook her head.

“No, I’m staying. I want to come face to face with him. I want you to be there when I do. Because if you’re not he’ll cook up some story for you. He’s a great cooker-up, our Joliffe. No, I want to catch him, just like that before he’s had the time to work something out.”

“This is going to be proved a great mistake. There must be some other Joliffe Milner who is your husband.”

She shook her head.

“Oh no, I’ve made sure of that.”

I did not know what to do. From the moment I had first set eyes on her I had felt a sense of terrible foreboding. There had been something about the manner in which she had shadowed me which had filled me with apprehension.

I could not bear to sit in this room with her. I said: “You will excuse me…”

She inclined her head with a smirk as though she were the mistress of the house, giving me leave to go.

I ran up to our bedroom. It was like a nightmare. It simply wasn’t possible. It was some horrible joke in the bad taste to be expected of such a person. I was thinking of her in Annie’s terms. A person!

What a wretched half hour I spent. I wondered what she was doing in the drawing room. I imagined those big calculating eyes assessing everything. If Joliffe had married surely he would have told me. But would he? There was so much I did not know about him and the more I discovered the more I realized there was to learn.

It seemed an age before I heard his key in the lock. I sped to the top of the stairs. He was in the hall and smiled when he saw me.

“Hello, my darling.”

“Joliffe,” I cried. “There’s a woman… She’s here.”

He came up the stairs two at a time. I did not wait for him to reach me. I started to walk towards the drawing room and threw the door open.

She was seated on the sofa, her legs crossed, showing the flounces of petticoats, a sly smile on her face.

The next seconds I knew would be the most important through which I had ever lived.

In that short time I promised myself that he would look at her, prove her to have made false accusations, show me and her that he was not the Joliffe Milner whose name appeared with hers on those marriage lines.

I advanced into the room. He followed me. He stopped short. She smiled at him insolently. And in that moment I felt my world collapsing about me.

“Good God,” he said. “Bella!”

She answered, “Your own loving little wife, no less.”

“Bella… no!”

“A ghost returned from the grave. Not quite. Because I was never in the grave. A little shock for such a devoted husband.”

“Bella,” he repeated. “What… does this mean?”

“It means I’m here. Mrs. Joliffe Milner herself come to claim her conjugal rights and all that goes with it.”

He said nothing. I could see that he was completely stunned.

“It was quite a job to find you,” she said.

“But I understood…”

“You understood what you wanted to understand.”

“You were killed. There was proof. Your coat had your name on it.”

She laughed with exaggerated heartiness. “That was Fanny. Remember Fanny? She had a sealskin hat and I lent her my sealskin coat. Oh that was a lovely coat, one of your presents to me. Remember? I was so fond of it I had my name worked on the lining. We went up to London together—she in my sealskin I in her beaver. She was killed, poor Fanny, and they thought she was me of course. I was nearly done for. I didn’t know who I was for three months… then it came back slowly. It took me a long time to find you, Joey, but here I am.”