The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

‘If … if I do this, will anyone else be hurt?’

Eleanor thought she saw a flash of pity in the woman’s eyes.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No one else.’

The black-eyed woman’s shadow flickered on the wall. For a second it could have been anything – a man in a tall hat, a twisting vine, a boneless thing oozing out of a bulbous cocoon. In that moment, with the woman’s wine-dark eyes so flat and calm, anything might have been possible. Eleanor caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the window behind the black-eyed woman’s head. She’d been terrified her own eyes would look empty and dark, but they were blue as a summer sky.

Eleanor made the wish.

There were a few things that Eleanor was certain of.

The first: she was lying on the floor. Her bed was lumpier and smelled different. She was reasonably sure she was lying in something unpleasant, because there was a stench so hot and thick it forced its way into her mouth like a warden prising open an inmate’s jaws.

She was also certain that she was not properly dressed. She was far too hot. Had she put on all her clothes at once? It was the wrong kind of heat for that – it was a lush, prickling heat that wound around her like a snake. It curled in her abdomen, uncoiling its lazy tendrils all through her body.

It hurt.

The things she was not certain of were more complicated. She was not entirely sure how she had ended up on the floor, or where the smell had come from, or where she was. When she’d last checked it had been January, chilly and damp. But it clearly was not January, because January was never quite this humid. Also, she was not sure what the voices were talking about.

‘Oh God, oh please, please, please …’

‘… and I came to fetch her like you said, and then—’

‘You silly girl. Oh, Ella, you poor, silly girl …’

She knew those voices. They washed over her like waves, and with every ebb and flow she began to realize that something was wrong. She had to get up.

She tried.

There was a shriek, a brief glimpse of blurred faces and a bright flash of pain that lanced across her abdomen. She fell back, senseless.

Eleanor had strange dreams.

Her stomach had been replaced by a pit of snakes; they moved inside her arms and legs like a hand inside a glove. She bobbed on the surface of a vast ocean; something huge and dark thrashed in the water beneath her, and in forcing it back under the waves her hands and dress were soaked. A long line of children shuffled up to her and placed large, smooth rocks in the palm of her hand; they would not stop, even when all her fingers were crushed.

When she came to, it was to see Charles sitting by her bedside.

He had evidently been there for some time. The beginnings of a beard stretched across his pale face. His eyes might have been bruised. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar and cuffs, his waistcoat flapping open, his cravat dangling over the back of a chair. It was unsettling. She’d seen him naked, but he had never seemed so vulnerable then.

She reached for his hand. It seemed to take an age. When had her fingers become so thin? When had her arms become so heavy? If she put a hand to her head, would all the strands of her hair be white?

She took his hand. Charles flinched, and burst into tears.

Eleanor was not supposed to have visitors, but Charles never left her side. Cocooned in morphine, she did not remember much, but he was always there. Charles’s hand, pressing a cold flannel to her face. Charles’s voice, soft and slow as he read from the book of sonnets. Charles’s white-shirted back, hunched over the washstand or bending over the fire.

He did not want to tell her what had happened.

What she knew for certain was this: the black-eyed woman had granted her wish. It had left her in a lot of pain and a lot of blood, among other things. Charles had found her and sent for Dr Macready, who had supplied her with all the morphine. It was not enough. Her abdomen still hurt; the morphine only softened the edges.

Eleanor only regretted what she’d done when she saw Charles’s face. He tried to smile and keep his voice light, but the mask kept slipping. He looked old, and sad. Sometimes he would press his lips to her hand and whisper ‘I’m so sorry’ against her fingers. It felt like a prayer. Then, she thought about the life they might have had if they hadn’t been discovered; softer and slower than the future she’d dreamed of, but still happy.

There was no point in pining after what might have been, because what might have been was not what had happened.

Eventually her strength started to return and the morphine began to fade. Still, Charles hovered at her side, fussing with her pillows and lifting tumblers of gruel out of Eleanor’s hands the moment she’d finished eating. He seemed to find it hard to meet her eyes, but even when she reached to take his hand he sprang closer at once, afraid that one wrong twist would break her apart.

‘This is not your fault, Charles,’ Eleanor said.

He shook his head. ‘I never should have tried to take Mother’s ring. We never would’ve been discovered if I hadn’t been so stupid!’

She leant forward and grabbed the scruff of his neck, forcing him to look at her. ‘You are the last person to blame.’

‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t had such a shock – if I’d been here when Father spoke to you … but he told me if I didn’t return the things I’d pawned he’d press charges and I didn’t want to leave you, Eleanor, to r-raise our child while I …’

His eyes gleamed with tears. She brushed