Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

been on them. She had hurled out what appeared to him to have been a cordon bleu meal, complete with crockery.

      Glancing over his shoulder, he watched for a moment in silence as she worked, then he began to hunt for some coffee and set the kettle on the gas.

      ‘What do you call that picture?’ he asked several minutes later when he handed her a mug.

      She took it without looking at him. ‘What you mean is, what the hell is it?’ she said slowly. She stepped closer to the painting, eyes narrowed, and added a small touch of red to the swirl of colours. ‘I had better not tell you. You’d have me taken away in a strait-jacket.’ She gave a taut smile. ‘You’re the psychiatrist. Why don’t you tell me what it means?’ She rubbed at the canvas with her little finger and stared thoughtfully at the smear of red it left on her skin. Then she swung round to face him again. ‘On second thoughts, why don’t you drink your coffee and get out of here?’

      Sam grinned. ‘I’m on my way.’

      ‘Good.’ She paused. ‘I told her, you know. In front of the whole bloody world.’

      ‘Told her what?’ Sam was still studying the canvas.

      ‘What Nick said to you on the phone. That she would crack open if she were hypnotised again. That she is more or less out of her mind.’ She threw down the brush and crossed to the untidy desk by the window. Pulling open a drawer she extracted a newspaper clipping. ‘This was in yesterday’s Mail.’

      Sam took it. He read the paragraph, his face impassive, then he handed it back.

      ‘You certainly made a good job of that bit of scandal.’

      Judy smiled. She turned back to her canvas. ‘So, hadn’t you better rush over to Cornwall Gardens and see if Nick can spare you one of her hands to hold?’

      ‘That’s what I’ve come for.’ Sam drank the last of his coffee, then he put down his empty mug. ‘I take it,’ he added carefully, ‘that you think that Nick spent last night with her.’

      ‘Unless he got run over and is in the mortuary.’

      ‘And you were expecting him here to dinner.’

      ‘As you plainly saw.’

      ‘I am sorry.’ Sam’s face was carefully controlled. ‘Nick’s a fool. You deserve better.’

      She went back to the painting and stood staring at it. ‘That’s right. And I mean to get it. Make no mistake about it, Dr Franklyn, I mean to see that Nick leaves her for good. So if it’s your mission in life to comfort Jo Clifford and see that she keeps calm and safe and sane, I suggest you move in with her, and send your brother to me, otherwise I’ll see to it that she regrets the day she was born.’

      Sam turned and picked up his case. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said. He pulled open the door. ‘But if you’ll take a piece of advice from me, I suggest you use a little more subtlety with Nick. If you behave like the proverbial fishwife he’ll go off you for good. I know my brother. He likes his ladies sophisticated and in control. If he sees the mess in your kitchen he’ll leave, and I wouldn’t altogether blame him.’

      He didn’t wait to hear the string of expletives which echoed after him as he began to run down the stairs.

      Jo was sitting on the cold concrete steps outside the library watching a pigeon waddling along in the gutter. Its neck shimmered with iridescent purples and greens as it moved unconcerned between the wheels of the stationary cars intent on gathering specks of food from the tarmac. The roar of traffic in the High Street a few yards away distracted it not at all. Nor did the scream of an accelerating motorbike a few feet from it. Behind her the library doors were unlocked at last. Jo did not move.

      The events of the previous afternoon, and the restless tormented night which had followed, had receded a little, dreamlike, now that it was day. Standing in the kitchen drinking a hasty cup of tea before Nick woke up, Jo had stared out of the window and scowled. Somehow Carl Bennet had managed to influence her. There was no other explanation. She would go to the library, look up the few facts she had, draw a complete blank there, and return to begin work on an article which would ridicule out of existence the whole idea of hypnotic regression.

      Now standing up slowly, she brushed the dust off her skirt, watching as the pigeon, startled into sleek slimness by her sudden movements, took off and swept with graceful speed up and over the rooftops towards the park.

      As she ran up the echoing staircase to the library she became aware suddenly that she could hear her own heartbeats drumming in her ears. The sound was disconcerting and she stopped outside the glass swing doors to try to steady herself. Her head ached violently and her eyes were heavy with lack of sleep.

      Taking a deep breath, she pushed through the doors and turned towards the reference section, skirting the tables where already students and newspaper readers were establishing their base camps for the day. As she pulled the notebook from her bag she realised that her hands had begun to shake.

      Begin with The Dictionary of National Biography.

      It was unlikely she would find Matilda there, but it was a place to start. She approached the shelf, her hand outstretched. Her fingers were trembling.

      ‘Braos?’ she murmured to herself. ‘Breos? I wonder how they spelled it?’ There was a rustle of paper beside her as a large bespectacled priest turned to the racing page. He looked up and caught her eye. His wink was comforting.

      She walked slowly along the shelf, squinting at the gold-lettered spines of the books, then she heaved out a volume and carried it to a table, perching uncomfortably on the very edge of the chair as she began to leaf through the pages.

      Don’t let it have been real … Please don’t let it have been real … I can’t cope with that … She shook her head angrily. The thick paper crackled a little, the small print blurring. A slightly musty smell floated from between the covers as the riffling pages stirred the hot air of the room.

      … Bowen … Bradford … Branston … Braose, Philip de (fl. 1172), two inches of print, then Braose, William de (d. 1211). There were more than two pages.

      She sat still for a moment fighting her stomach. She could taste the bile in the back of her throat. Her forehead was damp and ice-cold and her hands were burning hot. It was a while before she became conscious that the priest was watching her closely and she realised suddenly that she had been staring at him hard, oblivious of everything but the need not to be sick. Somehow she forced herself to smile at him and she looked away.

      All it meant was that she must have read about them somewhere; she had a good memory, an eye for detail. She was a reporter after all. And that was what she was here for now, her job made easier because the characters she was searching for were obviously at least moderately well known. She took a deep breath and stared down at the page. Was Matilda there, in the article, which she could see at a glance was full of place names and dates? Had she lived long enough to make her mark on history and have her name recorded with her cruel overbearing husband? Or had she flitted in and out of life like a shadow, leaving no trace at all, if she had ever existed?

      The priest was still watching her, his kind face creased with concern. Jo knew that any minute he was going to stand up and come over to her. She looked away again hastily. She had to look up Richard de Clare, too, and Abergavenny and make notes on them all. Then, perhaps, she would go and have a cup of coffee and accept the consolations of the Church if they were offered.

      It was several minutes before the intercom on the doorstep below Jo’s flat crackled into life. Sam bent towards the display board.

      ‘Nick? It’s Sam. Let me come up.’

      Nick was waiting on the landing as Sam walked slowly up the carpeted stairs. ‘You’re too late,’ he said brusquely. ‘She went to a hypnotist yesterday and let him regress her.’

      Sam followed him into the brightness of the flat and stared round. ‘What happened? Where is she?’ He faced his