The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

But I had started work with debts of my own, and after fifteen years in the same small country practice I was yet to make a decent income.

Why did he come back to this town? Why didn't he start somewhere else?

I have never thought of myself as a discontented man. I have been too busy for discontentment to have had a chance to set in. But I’ve had occasional dark hours, dreary fits when my life, laid all before me, has seemed bitter and hollow and insignificant as a bad nut; and one of those fits came upon me now.

saw her frown. She swiped at the ground again. ‘All this time, ’ she said, without looking at me, ‘I thought you must hate us slightly, my mother, my brother, and I. ’ I said, astonished, ‘Hate you?’ ‘Yes, on your parents’ behalf. But now it sounds almost as though—well, as though you hate yourself.

‘Well, then we can be nobodies together. It makes a nice change from home. I can’t go into any of the villages these days without feeling everyone’s watching me, thinking, There goes poor Miss Ayres, from up at the Hall . . . And now, look. ’ She had turned her head. ‘All the nurses have arrived, in a great big flock, just as I’d pictured them! Like blushing goslings. I thought of nursing, you know, during the war. So many people told me I was just cut out for it, it put me off. I couldn’t make that out as a compliment, somehow. That’s why I joined the Wrens. Then I ended up nursing Roddie.

Catching the touch of wistfulness in her voice, I said, ‘Did you miss it, service life?’ She nodded. ‘Badly, at first. I was good at it, you see. That’s a shameful thing to admit, isn’t it? But I liked all the mucking about with boats. I liked the routines of it. I liked there being only one way to do things, only one sort of stocking, one sort of shoe, one sort of way to wear one’s hair.

I opened my mouth to reply, but her question had rung some sort of alarm bell in me, and I realised with a shock that I was thinking of that conversation I’d had with Seeley. I felt a touch of the sick suspicion that had risen in me then. The idea was impossible, grotesque . . . But other grotesque and impossible things had happened, there at Hundreds; and suppose Caroline was somehow to blame for them? Suppose, unconsciously, she had given birth to some violent shadowy creature, that was effectively haunting the house? Ought I to leave Mrs Ayres unprotected there, for even one more night?

And you want to marry her?? Who's the crazy one now?