Last night I dreamed I came again to Manderley. I found myself walking up the long drive to the house, clutching in my hand a torn and empty packet of cookies. They were the ones that the housekeeper, Mrs. Dante, had pressed upon me as I’d left the last time, and there were crumbs still on my lips.
“They were Rebecca’s favourite,” she whispered, her voice as dry as parchment. “Max doesn’t know.”
And I had fled, fearing that Maximillian de Winter would reappear at any moment and demand the return of the cookies.
I woke in a cold sweat, the sheets tangled tightly around me, imprisoning me within my own bed. I struggled free, and turned on the bedside lamp, and there, there on the table where there should have been nothing more threatening than Mrs. Woolf’s most recent novel, was a packet of those infernal cookies.
I trembled, but I could not stop my hand reaching for them, my mind already savouring their rich, compelling taste. I knew that every bite would take me back to Max, but it seemed my fate was set.