Chapter One
Barbados, June 1812
Living on the estate of a sugar cane plantation affords young ladies of an excitable age few opportunities for formal instruction or social gatherings. Today, the weather is relentlessly brutal with its heat and humidity, and last week’s devastating hurricane flattened the cane and caused considerable damage to the poorer thatched huts on the northern shore of the island. Our insignificance grows as Mama and Papa continue to ignore their five daughters. Their ambitions are occupied by their yearnings for a son.
We run wild, unfettered by the lack of a governess. This morning, we skirted the fiery boiler house and sugar mills and tramped one after the other through rows of cane until our skirts were torn and filthy. Excessive perspiration was unavoidable. Later, as the sun reached its zenith, we found a quiet bay and swam in the ocean in our petticoats. The stinging salt water washed away the red grime of the fields but irritated our scratches.
And we stole. Again.
The habit isn’t frequent and mostly happens when the weather is especially close and hot. At first, it was pastries from the kitchen, which displeased the cook who must account for missing supplies. Hunger isn’t the reason as we are well-fed. It’s that Mama dictates the menus and her tastes are frugal when it comes to the very sugar the plantation cultivates.
When we were in town, we followed our distracted mother from one to store to the next and slipped ribbons and trinkets into our pockets. On one occasion, during a visit at a neighbour’s house, I borrowed two books. I have yet to return them. I can’t help myself; reading is my chief delight. Books habitually collect dust upon library shelves as they are of little benefit on a tropical island populated by savages. My sisters helped themselves to hairbrushes and perfumes in little bottles. They don’t attempt to un-borrow. They were quite convinced no one would notice their absence however much our father lectures us on the challenges of transporting goods from one side of the Atlantic to the other.
The penalties for a slave caught stealing are terrible. Earlier today I pleaded with Alice to consider that as she examined the contents of our mama’s top drawer.
She sighed and closed it and left the room empty-handed.
I suggested to her that keeping a diary is a suitably productive occupation in which to spend her hours of leisure. She borrowed paper and ink from me, and after much persuasion agreed to give an account of her life here on Barbados, in as much as I do also.
Chapter Two
Terrington Hall, England, Present Day
Since Amy’s arrival at Terrington Hall, I often stay by her, move with her, as close as possible, as if I walk her steps, breathe the air she breathes and can see what is in front of her. But I don’t feel her thoughts or touch what she does. My hopes for salvation are fuelled by her curiosity, her diligence, especially if she discovers the truth behind the thieves that once lived here.
I’ve always relied on others for companionship, to breach the loneliness of my incorporeal existence. My chief occupation is listening to their conversations. They have been generous in keeping me abreast of the changes both in and outside the house. They read newspapers and magazines, speak of things and events that are difficult for me to comprehend until one explains something complex to another in a simple manner, as if to a child.
There is one whom Amy doesn’t notice among the endless chaotic stream of visitors. He likes to stand before the grandest portrait in the Long Gallery, and admire the subject, as if they are familiars, but they are strangers to one another. What happened here, and far away, is secreted away out of sight. Many have been and gone and never cared enough to ask the right questions. They believed the lies and gossip that spread and confounded the truth of my life. I despise them all.
I’m the unseen shadow that drifts through the rooms, a whisper that can’t be heard. Like the objects that never venture out of the house, I’m trapped as there is nothing that can fashion me into a single form, not even the house itself. Forget what you have been told in fairy tales. Spirits do not transform into bodily shapes or apparitions that are visible or felt. And worse than that invisibility is amnesia; I’m a stranger to my own history. Without the power to materialise, memories of my stolen life remain petrified within these stone walls; I’m left shaped only by the hollow years that followed my death.