The Phantom Tree. Nicola Cornick

The anger pricked her into speech.

      ‘It’s a portrait of Mary Seymour,’ she said, ‘the daughter of Katherine Parr and Thomas Seymour.’

      Adam paused for a moment, studying her face. There was a tight frown between his brows now. Alison waited for him to contradict her. She was already regretting her words; she should have gone back to the hotel, thought about what had happened, decided on what she should do next, rather than blurt out a statement that would only make Adam want to know more.

      ‘I thought Mary Seymour died as a child?’ Adam said.

      Kudos to Adam, Alison thought. Most people had never heard of Mary Seymour, let alone knew what had happened to her. She did not know herself. Until tonight her search for Mary had drawn a blank. She had hunted her through books, archives, museums and galleries and had found next to nothing. Mary’s had been a life almost completely lost from history. But the one thing that Alison did know was that Mary had not died as a child.

      She shifted, aware of Adam’s acute gaze resting on her. ‘She definitely survived into adulthood,’ she said.

      ‘I assume there is evidence to support that?’ Adam leaned against the edge of the sales desk and folded his arms. His tone was not disbelieving, but there was more than a hint of challenge in it. Alison felt a flutter down her spine. This was precisely the sort of conversation she should have avoided until she got her head together.

      ‘I’ve seen other portraits of Mary,’ she said. ‘I know a bit about her. I researched her for some work I was doing…’

      She could sense Adam’s puzzlement. One thing he did know about her was that she was no historian. When they had met at summer school in Marlborough, she was a sullen teenager with a sponsored place on a tourism course. He had just accepted an offer to read History at Cambridge.

      ‘Genealogy,’ she said quickly, forestalling his next question, making it up as she went along. ‘I was looking for some stuff on my family tree and found Mary. There’s a distant connection between us.’

      She felt as though she was digging herself in deeper rather than out.

      ‘Genealogy,’ Adam repeated. His gaze was narrowed intently on her now. He looked as though he didn’t believe a word. ‘You never talked about your family,’ he said slowly. ‘You told me you couldn’t leave them behind fast enough.’

      ‘That’s how I felt at eighteen,’ Alison said. ‘People change.’ She fidgeted with the strap of her bag. ‘Look, forget I mentioned Mary at all. You’ve got a talk and a book…’

      ‘And a TV programme,’ Adam said dryly. ‘All based on the premise that this is a portrait of Anne Boleyn not Mary Seymour.’

      Alison felt a flicker of sympathy for him. The discovery of a new portrait of Anne Boleyn was quite a coup and would bring Adam lots of publicity. She had planted a seed of doubt in his mind now and even though he knew she was not a professional historian, he could not risk making a highly visible mistake.

      ‘It was authenticated,’ Adam said now, almost to himself. He straightened and pushed away from the desk, taking several strides across the gallery before turning back towards her, all repressed frustration and energy. ‘We found it with some other Tudor artefacts,’ he said. ‘There was no doubt about the dating. Then there was the box with the initials on it…’

      ‘The box still exists?’ Alison cut in quickly. ‘The one in the portrait?’

      Adam stared at her. ‘Yes. Why?’

      ‘Oh.’ Alison moderated her tone, realising she had sounded too eager. ‘I thought there might be something interesting in it, that’s all. Something to do with Mary, I mean.’

      Adam was still watching her. It was unsettling. She had always thought she was a good liar but now she was starting to doubt it.

      ‘There were some items inside,’ he agreed. ‘If that is indeed Mary Seymour in the portrait, I suppose they might have some connection to her.’ He did not elaborate and Alison knew it was deliberate. There was no reason why he would satisfy her curiosity.

      Her heart was thumping. She could feel herself shaking. She knew she should not push this now but desperation was driving her harder than she had ever known it. Mary seemed only a breath away. And Arthur… What clues had Mary left her to Arthur?

      ‘Where did you find the box?’ she asked, and she could hear the quiver in her voice.

      Adam shook his head. There was a faint smile playing about his lips now.

      ‘I’ll trade you that information – and more,’ he said, ‘to see the genealogical research you’ve done on Mary Seymour.’

      There was a small, deadly pause.

      Alison knew she was trapped. She could not see any way that she could show Adam the work she had done on tracing Mary without disclosing her own history. He had been right: she had not told him a single thing about her family. She had never spoken of them. But they were all there on the pages of notes she had so painstakingly compiled. The Seymour family tree linked them together, tangled as the roots of the old oaks of Savernake Forest. They were all there: she, Edward, Mary, Arthur…

      The silence stretched out whilst her mind scrambled for a solution, but then Adam shifted and smiled a condescending smile that made her itch to smack him.

      ‘I thought not,’ he said pleasantly. ‘There is no research, is there?’ He ran a hand through his thick, fair hair. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why you’ve suddenly turned up after all this time, Alison, but there’s really no point. I moved on a long time ago—’

      ‘What? Wait!’ Alison drew back. ‘Are you implying I’m here because I wanted to see you? I didn’t even know about your talk!’ She threw out a hand, narrowly missing the ceramic vase. ‘I came in because of her,’ she said, pointing at Mary’s picture. ‘It was nothing to do with you—’

      ‘Whatever.’ Adam raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘I’m not interested.’

      ‘Fine,’ Alison snapped. ‘Then I hope you don’t find that some other person more academically credible than I blows your Anne Boleyn theory to smithereens.’

      She pushed open the door of the gallery and stepped out into the driving rain. She thought she heard Adam call after her as she slipped out into the dark but she did not wait, pulling up the hood of her jacket and hunching deeper inside it when the wind caught her with its icy edge. The disconsolate re-enactors were closing down their stalls and heading to the pub. A woman was wheeling a pushchair erratically across the pavement and was dragging a small child along with her other hand. He had toffee apple smeared across his face and was screaming.

      Emotion pierced Alison deep inside where the hurt and the loneliness were locked away. She shuddered, blocking out the child’s scrunched-up face and the mother’s harassed scolding. Only fifty yards further along the wet pavement was her hotel. A small bay tree stood shivering in a planter on each side of the door. She hurried inside.

      She’d chosen somewhere modern and exclusive rather than one of Marlborough’s more traditional places to stay. She’d always found that embracing the present was the best way to keep the past at bay. Except that in Marlborough tonight the past had swept back like a dark tide.

      She was still shaking. She knew that rationally she could not blame Adam for thinking that she was only trying to stir up trouble, but rationality had nothing to do with the fury and frustration that welled up in her now. She felt the hot prick of angry tears against her eyelids. She had waited so long for word from Mary, each time she failed to find her, absorbing the blank wall of silence and the bitterness of defeat. And now here was Mary—and the box—and Adam was thwarting her attempts to get closer.

      The winter storm was gathering, sending litter skipping along the gutters, dimming the Christmas lights with a fresh downpour of rain but, inside, the hotel was warm, opulent and lit discreetly by lamps with striped beige and