She frowned, reached for her glasses again and studied the pin. ‘My g
oodness… I haven’t seen this in
years
!’
‘I
t is one of yours then?’
‘It
was
, but I gave it to Meredith – och, it must be over thirty years ago now! I first met her when she sang in
Don Giovanni
at Nice Opera House. Liz had told her how much I love music, so she sent me some tickets. Well, Meredith’s first entrance was very dramatic. She came on carrying a lot of luggage, wearing a great big hat over her wig. The night I was there, it was more dramatic than planned, because her hat nearly came off. Meredith was livid after the show, so I suggested a longer hat pin might help. I gave her this one as a thank you present for the tickets.’ Zelda looked up from the pin. ‘Wherever did you find it?’
‘
It was behind a bookcase,’ I said, avoiding Alec’s eye. ‘I had to retrieve one of my pens that had slipped down the back. And I found the pin.’
‘Well, goodness knows how it ended up
there! I swear things
walk
in this place. You can put something down and when you come back, it just isn’t there. The number of sewing needles I’ve lost over the years! And I
always
secure my needle in my work. But still they disappear. It’s maddening. I think there must be some sort of Cauldstane poltergeist. Either that or I’m going senile.’ Zelda handed me back the hatpin.
‘Don’t
you want to put it back in your collection?’ I asked, dismayed.
‘No, you keep it. As a souvenir of Cauldstane. If it turned up in your room,
Fate meant you to have it.’
My answering smile must have
looked wooden, but I thanked Zelda, declined tea and went back to my room where I lay down on the bed and tried to think. Meredith’s message now seemed even more sinister. If that pin had ever done any harm, it had been wielded by Meredith, not Zelda. It seemed far more likely Meredith would be the one to put the thing to malicious use and I could imagine her wanting to gloat over what she’d done, in much the same way she’d boasted about her infidelities and her sexual harassment of Alec.
Alec was right. It
was
all mind games with Meredith. She wanted me to know something – or rather, she wanted me to know that I
didn’t
know something. This was her way of demonstrating she still had power to manipulate people from beyond the grave. So I decided I wouldn’t play the game. I would get on with my work as planned, pushing Meredith and her machinations to the back of my mind. I opened the laptop and settled down to type up my notes from my morning session with Sholto. But not before I’d dropped the hatpin into a deep and hideous vase where I wouldn’t see it and where I trusted it could do no damage.
~
I sat at my desk, struggling to compose an account of Liz’s death. By leaving Alec out of the equation I had to omit the cause and some of the consequences of the accident. What remained was a vague description of a fatal riding accident that appeared to have no cause other than a jittery mare handled by an incompetent rider. This might have been fair to Alec, but hardly seemed fair to Liz.
As I re-read my partial account, written in the style I assumed for Sholto,
I was distracted by thoughts of Meredith who, leaving Alec aside, had been first on the scene. She’d also been the one Alec had spoken to first. He’d told her what had happened and she’d told the others. Sholto had said Alec was “wailing like a banshee” by the time he arrived, so presumably the boy was beyond giving an account himself, so all anyone knew was what Alec remembered and what Meredith said he’d told her.
T
his realisation was unsettling, but I couldn’t say why. Just a deep mistrust of Meredith, I suppose. It was spectacularly convenient of Liz to die after Sholto had refused to divorce her. But accidents do happen, as Meredith had pointed out in one of her vile rants. What exactly had she said?...
For a moment I chastised myself for deleting
her messages, then remembered I hadn’t actually done what I’d intended. When I’d spotted her latest communication – a death threat, virtually – I’d stopped what I was doing to read it. Afterwards I’d lain down on the bed, my heart pounding with anger and fear.
Without quite knowing why, I resolved to save all messages
in future, however painful. (Was I collecting evidence to use against a
ghost
?) I opened up another window and scrolled until I found the section I was looking for.
Riding is a dangerous sport and horses are unpredictable. Liz wasn’t the most expert of riders and her mare was temperamental. That’s what I said to Sholto – to anyone who’d listen, in fact. “Accidents happen.”
Especially to the MacNabs.
Nothing incriminating there. Callousness, yes, but no indication of anything sinister, other than a possible allusion to the MacNab curse. Nevertheless, I still felt something wasn’t right, but could see no way to investigate the circumstances of the accident, not after all this time and not without bothering Alec.
I abandoned my attempt to write and turned instead to that great time-eater, Google. I put in a search for “post-traumatic stress disorder” and “children”. Some of the psychiatric jargon was impenetrable, but the plain English sites were helpful, if depressing. There was a lot of stuff about physical and sexual abuse, less about witnessing or being involved in accidents. Generally it seemed children were pretty resilient, but witnessing a death, especially the death of a parent or carer, was likely to cause PTSD.
In children PTSD is associated with increased likelihood of worsening school performance and subsequent employment problems, increased risk of depression and anxiety disorders in adulthood, behavioural problems and substance misuse, increased chronic disease and problems forming stable relationships.
How much of that had Alec been through? I remembered he’d dropped out of university and Meredith had described him as a quiet, morose child, but as she clearly hated children, she was hardly a reliable witness.
I read on and found this on a discussion board
…
If PTSD is still there after a year it's probably going to be lifelong in some form or another.
Could Alec
still
suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Probably hard to tell if you’re being haunted by a ghost. Was he haunted by a ghost
because
of his mental instability, the way poltergeists are supposed to home in on troubled adolescents? But it seemed likely Coral was also haunted by Meredith. So for that matter was I. Was that what we all had in common? Mental instability? Or just some kind of fragility?
I remembered being bullied at school for being a cry-baby because I blubbed at stories and films. Even sad songs could make me well up. I
moved on to high school, hoping for a fresh start, but bullies still singled me out – not for crying, but for being academic, for being more interested in books than boys, for wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Did I just emanate vulnerability? And did I still? Was that why I sensed Meredith?
I scanned another page and was astonished to discover that
until the mid-1990s psychiatrists had been under the impression children didn’t suffer from PTSD.
Liz had died in 1980. What were the chances of any trauma in Alec being diagnosed or even noticed, especially by a father who made light of frostbite and failed to mention two cracked ribs to his expedition leader because he “didn’t want to make a fuss”. I imagined Alec would have been left to get on with it, especially while he was away at school, where he would doubtless have followed his father’s stoical example.
I was scrolling through more Google results when t
here was a tap at the door, followed by Alec’s voice saying. ‘It’s me. Are you busy?’
‘Yes. But come in anyway.’
I swivelled round in my chair as he entered.
‘I haven’t come for any reason.’
He shut the door and, still holding the handle, just stood there, looking at me with a soft, shy smile. ‘I just wanted to check you were OK. You seemed a wee bit nervous downstairs. But mainly I… well, I just wanted to look at you.’
‘Oh,
Alec
.’
He raised a hand, palm outwards, as if to forestall my rising from the chair. ‘No, I’ll go now if you’re working.
That smile’s set my mind at ease.’
‘Please stay! Sit w
ith me for a while.’
He obeyed, but as he set a
chair beside me, I remembered what was on the laptop screen. I turned and quickly closed the window down, revealing my own work. I became flustered, trying to remember whether Meredith’s last message would be visible, so I just slapped the laptop shut and turned back to Alec.
He
eyed me with suspicion. ‘More messages from Meredith you don’t want me to know about? What are you trying to keep from me, Jenny? And why?’
Ignoring the question, I said, ‘I’ve been researching PTSD. Post-traumatic—’
‘I know what it stands for. And I can guess why you’re researching it. But I don’t know why you won’t tell me what Meredith wrote.’
I looked away
. ‘Oh, it was just the usual bombastic nonsense.’
‘Threats?’ I didn’t ans
wer. I didn’t want to lie again, nor did I want to tell him the truth. ‘Who was she threatening? Me? Or you? My guess it was you. That’s why you didn’t tell me. And that’s her style. It would drive a wedge between us. Which is of course what she wants. You’d have to lie in order to stop me worrying about you.’ I still said nothing and looked at Alec helplessly. He folded his arms and continued cheerfully, ‘If I was Meredith and I wanted to wreck Alec MacNab’s life again, I’d try to scare off his new woman. And she, being a plucky wee thing, wouldn’t confide in him. Och no, she’d tough it out on her own because she really likes Alec and she doesn’t want to be sent away.’ He paused. ‘Am I right?’
‘In every single respect
, damn you.’
He grinned. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself! I’ve known this woman – this
ghoul
– for many a year. I know how she thinks. I watched her try to come between me and Coral. I knew as soon as I expressed an interest in you, Meredith would try to make me regret it.’
‘Do you?’
‘No. but I’m very sorry she’s taking it out on you. Will you please show me what she said?’
‘N
ot now. I’d like to talk to you about something else.’
He sighed and said, ‘My mother’s death.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes. Would you mind? It worries me that the only sources of information about what happened are a traumatised eight-year old and Meredith.’
‘Aye, I know, but I seem to have given her a surprisingly lucid account of what happened.’
‘Yes, that’s what bothers me.’
‘What d
’you mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s just something about the way she wrote about Liz.’
‘There was no love lost there, for sure, but my mother broke her neck falling off a rearing horse and I caused the horse to rear.’
‘Could you bear to tell me what happened? Briefly
? I’ve heard Sholto’s version and I’ve read Meredith’s. He’s adamant no detail is going into the book and I’m happy with that. But the nerdy researcher in me thinks I should also hear the only eye-witness account.’
‘It was thirty-two years ago, Je
nny. I’d only be telling you what I remember telling Meredith.’
‘
Don’t you actually remember what happened?
‘Aye,
but it’s hazy. It always
was
hazy. I’ve a clearer memory of what happened before and afterwards. I can tell you what book Wilma read me after it happened.
The Velveteen Rabbit.
I can still see the book now. It was one of my favourites.’
‘I had that
one too! I loved it so much.’ I put my hand up to my mouth as I felt the tears come. ‘Oh, this is stupid! Honestly, the slightest thing sets me off. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. You love books. They’ve been your life. I feel the same way about swords. The craftsmanship of a blade can make me feel all mushy
inside.’
‘So you can remember that book clearly?’
‘Aye. It had belonged to my father and it was in a very precarious condition. Like the Velveteen Rabbit himself.’
‘But your memory of the accident is…
vague?’
‘It was like a series of impressions. I could make little sense of it at the time.’
‘That’s what I wanted to hear really. Your impressions. Sholto told me how it actually happened.’
Alec leaned forward, clasped his hands and rested his arms on his knees. His head was bowed, so I couldn’t
see his face. ‘I just remember seeing my mother lying on the ground… and wondering what the hell she was
doing
there.’