Jessica's Ghost (6 page)

Andi’s plan, which she outlined on the walk to school, was to go out to the village where Jessica used to live.

‘What for?’ asked Francis. ‘You can’t knock on her aunt’s door and ask what happened. That’d be just as bad as phoning.’

‘We don’t have to knock on anyone’s door,’ said Andi patiently. ‘We just have to ask at the shop.’

‘The shop?’

‘There was a shop in the village where you lived, wasn’t there?’ Andi turned to Jessica. ‘And they know everything in the village shop. All I’ll have to do is walk in and say “I used to know someone called Jessica Fry, have you heard what happened to her?” and they’ll tell me.’ She
paused. ‘I thought we could go out there this weekend.’

Jessica said she couldn’t see the point. She had never been interested in finding out why she had died. It had never seemed important. There were, she said, much more exciting things they could do.

Andi, however, persisted.

‘You might not be interested, but
I
am,’ she said. ‘And it’ll give you a chance to look around where you used to live. See if anything’s changed. Maybe look in the churchyard to see if you’ve got a gravestone – you
have
to be interested in that!’

Jessica pointed out that, if she had been interested, she could probably have done all those things already, but Andi was not deterred. It would only take an hour or so, she argued. She had told her mother that Francis wanted to visit a friend’s grave and Mrs Campion had already agreed to take them. Jessica didn’t
have
to come with them, but it would be so much more fun if she did …

Andi could be very single-minded when she had set her heart on something, and none of them was really surprised when, that Saturday afternoon, they were all to
be found in Mrs Campion’s car while she drove them the seven miles to the village where Jessica had lived.

Parking her car outside the church, Andi’s mother told Francis he could take as long as he liked because she had plenty of phonecalls to make. So, while Andi walked off to find the shop, he pushed open the gate to the churchyard and went inside, with Jessica floating beside him.

It didn’t take long to find the grave. All the new burials were together in the same section, and one of them was marked by a small square stone, laid flat in the grass. Written on it were Jessica’s name, the year she had been born, the year she died, and the words
Deeply loved
. Around it someone had planted a circle of primroses that were just coming into flower. Looking at it gave Jessica an odd sensation.

‘So where did you live?’ Francis asked.

‘What?’

‘Your house. Was it near here?’

‘It was over there.’ Jessica pointed across the tombstones
to a group of houses, just visible through the trees on the other side of the road. ‘Bannock Lane. We were the last house on the right.’

As she said it, Jessica’s mind filled with pictures – of her room over the front hall, of sitting in the living room watching television with her aunt and uncle, of eating meals round the little table in the kitchen.

‘Perhaps I
will
go and take a look at it,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Course not,’ said Francis. ‘I’ll wait here.’

‘Thanks.’ Jessica was already floating towards the road, her feet stroking the grass as she went. ‘I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’

The house was exactly as she remembered. As she stepped through the front door into the hallway, she found the same patterned wallpaper, the same carpet, the same coat hooks on the panelled wood to the right, even the same coats. There was one difference though. On the wall to her left, opposite the living room, was a large picture of herself. It was a copy of her last school photo and seeing
her own face smiling out gave her the same odd feeling as looking at the gravestone.

Jessica wandered through to the sitting room, where she noticed the television had been replaced, then to the dining room, which was full of Uncle George’s files and business reports as always, and then through to the kitchen. Nothing had changed. The bread bin, the sugar bowl, the kettle … everything was exactly as she remembered. She stared out of the window at the garden for a moment, and then went back out to the hall and up the stairs.

The first room at the top was the bathroom, Aunt Jo and Uncle George’s bedroom was to the right, the spare room was to the left and along the landing was the room at the front of the house that had been hers. The door was shut and, as Jessica stepped through it, she was shocked to discover that this room had changed completely.

Everything she remembered had gone. The bed, the wardrobe, the little cabinet with her collection of dragons, the bookshelves, the television, even the carpet and curtains – had all been stripped away. The room had been
repainted, and a smart new desk ran along the wall under the window, with a new computer, a telephone, a printer, and a swivel chair. The wall to her right, where her bed had been, was taken up with shelves containing piles of papers, magazines, and a large, three-drawer filing cabinet.

Her aunt and uncle must have taken over the space to carry on some part of their business and the only thing left of Jessica was a collage that hung on the wall behind the door. It was made from dozens of photographs of her, all glued on to a large piece of card under a glass sheet. There were pictures of her as a baby with her parents, then as a toddler living with her mother, then of her and her grandmother and, along the bottom, more pictures from the months she had lived with her uncle and aunt. Jessica had never seen half of them before, and she stared at them for several minutes, trying to work out where they had been taken. She was still staring when she heard the sound of someone opening the front door.

She waited as whoever had come in walked briefly through to the kitchen, then came back into the hall
and up the stairs. She listened as they walked along the landing, the door opened …

And Aunt Jo came into the room.

‘Where’s she gone?’ asked Andi, when she arrived at the churchyard and found Francis on his own.

‘She went to look at her old house,’ said Francis. ‘What did you find out?’

‘Nothing.’ Andi shook her head. ‘The people in the shop are new and they’d never heard of Jessica.’ She stamped her feet to keep warm in a breeze that was turning chilly. ‘Is she going to be long?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Francis. ‘She said just a few minutes.’

But Jessica was not back in a few minutes. Nor was she back in twenty.

‘Do you think your mum would mind if I walked round to the house,’ said Francis, ‘to see if anything’s wrong?’

‘You think something’s wrong?’

‘Yes,’ said Francis. He had no idea why, but he did.

Mrs Campion said she didn’t mind waiting – she was
working her way down a long list of phone calls – and Andi said she would stay by the car while Francis walked across to Bannock Lane. When he got to the last house on the right, he stared up at the semi-detached stone-fronted building, with its neat garden and a garage to one side, wondering what to do next. There was no sign of Jessica. He peered over the fence at the windows to try to see her inside, but she wasn’t there.

He thought about knocking on the door in case she was in trouble and needed help, but then realised that if anyone answered, he could hardly ask if they had a ghost inside. And if no one answered, what was the point of knocking? He was still wondering what to do, when the front door opened and a woman appeared. She was tall, with short black hair, and she walked down the path towards him.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Francis. ‘I’m … waiting for a friend.’

‘I see.’ The woman nodded. ‘You want to talk while you wait?’

‘No. No, it’s all right.’ Francis backed away. ‘I’m fine.’

‘OK.’ The woman reached into the pocket of her skirt, took out a card, and passed it across. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take this. In case you change your mind.’

Francis took the card. It had
Joanna Barfield
–
Counsellor
written on it, with a telephone number and an email address underneath.

‘Did you … did you know someone called Jessica Fry?’ asked Francis.

The woman was already heading back up the path to the house, but she stopped and turned.

‘Yes. She was my niece. She died just over a year ago. Did you know her?’

Francis wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.

‘I’d heard of her,’ he said.

The woman nodded, then pointed at the card. ‘You can call that number any time,’ she said. ‘Any time at all.’

When Francis got back to the car, Mrs Campion was still sitting in the driver’s seat, her phone glued to one ear, while Andi was leaning against the bonnet, waiting for him.

‘Did you find the house?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And Jessica?’

Francis shook his head.

‘So what do we do?’

‘I suppose we … go home.’

‘And leave her behind?’

‘It’s not like she’ll be stranded,’ said Francis. ‘All she has to do is close her eyes and think herself back. She might have done it already.’

But when they got back to Alma Road, there was no sign of Jessica. She was not at Francis’s house, nor at Andi’s. She did not appear that evening and there was no sign of her the following day.

Nor the day after.

Nor the day after that.

It was not an easy time.

The friend with whom Francis had shared almost every waking hour for the last month had vanished out of his life, and he had no idea where she had gone or why. She had disappeared as suddenly and unexpectedly as she had appeared that first day on the playing field. And he missed her.

Andi missed her as well, and they both found her disappearance difficult to accept. They stayed very close to each other in the days that followed, talking endlessly about what might have happened, where Jessica might have gone, and when she might come back. But the simple truth was that neither of them had the least idea.

On Monday evening, after a rather gloomy day in
school, they were up in the attic room where Andi was trying on the off-white cotton blouse that Francis had been altering to fit her. Altering the blouse and the Prince of Wales check skirt to fit Andi had been Jessica’s idea – she had said it was wasted sitting on Betty the dummy – and it was while Francis was marking up the alterations that he suddenly realised Andi was crying.

‘It’s all my fault, isn’t it?’ she said, the tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘If I hadn’t made her go out to the village with us, all this would never have happened. She’d still be here, wouldn’t she!’

‘We don’t know that anything
has
happened.’ Francis reached out to take the blouse before Andi could use the sleeve to wipe her nose. ‘It may be something ghosts do every once in a while. We’ll have to ask her about it when she comes back.’

‘But what if she never comes back? What if she’s gone for good and we never see her again?’

‘We’ll see her again,’ said Francis firmly. ‘I know we will.’

‘You know?’

‘Yes,’ said Francis. ‘I don’t know how I know. But I know.’

And there was indeed something deep in Francis that told him the story was not over yet, and that Jessica would be back.

Even so, it was a huge relief when she appeared in his bedroom while he was getting dressed for school on Wednesday morning.

She was wearing a hospital gown – nothing else, not even shoes – and had a slightly dazed look. Not that Francis was bothered. He was just overwhelmingly pleased to see her.

‘Thank goodness!’ he said. ‘Where have you been? Are you all right?’

‘I think so.’ Jessica had the look of someone who’s been knocked down by a car and still hasn’t quite recovered.

‘So what happened?’

Jessica had, it turned out, no idea where she had been or what had happened. All she knew was that she had found herself in the little room on the third floor at the
hospital that morning feeling, as she described it, ‘sort of strange’ – and not even sure what day it was.

‘I checked the calendar on the nurse’s desk,’ she said, ‘which said it was Wednesday, then realised I couldn’t remember Monday or Tuesday.’ She frowned. ‘Last time I saw you was Saturday, right?’

‘We went out to where you used to live,’ said Francis. ‘In the afternoon.’

‘Did we?’ Jessica looked puzzled.

‘We went to the graveyard and then you went over to your aunt’s house and never came back. You don’t remember?’

‘Oh …’ Jessica nodded. ‘Yes, I do. A bit.’

‘Did something happen at the house?’

Jessica opened her mouth to answer … and disappeared again.

This time, fortunately, she was not gone for long, and twenty minutes later she popped up between Francis and Andi, still wearing the hospital gown, as they were walking to school.

‘What happened?’ she said.

‘You disappeared again,’ Francis told her.

‘Again?’ Jessica frowned. ‘Why do I keep doing that?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Andi, ‘but I wish you’d stop. It’s very upsetting.’

‘And you need to get changed into proper clothes,’ said Francis. ‘You’re all hanging out at the back.’

‘Oh, right …’ Jessica concentrated for a moment and the hospital gown was replaced by jeans and a coat. ‘Better?’

‘Much better.’ Andi smiled. ‘You really have no idea why you disappeared?’

‘No.’ Jessica shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’

When she ‘disappeared’ twice more in the course of the morning, however, a part of the reason soon became clear. On each occasion, she disappeared when Francis or Andi asked questions about what had happened during the visit to her aunt’s house on Saturday.

They decided very quickly that there must be no more talk of aunts, houses, the village or whatever had happened that day. There must be no more investigations, either, into Jessica’s past. Interesting though it might be
to find out why she had died, if it was going to make her disappear, it simply wasn’t worth the risk. Life with Jessica’s ghost was too good to do anything that might mean losing her.

Especially, as Andi said, with a maths test coming up on Friday.

The sight of their contented children was an unceasing marvel to both Mrs Campion and Mrs Meredith. Mrs Meredith saw with relief how Francis had lost that downtrodden, slightly hunted look that had worried her for so long, while the change in Andi was something Mrs Campion still found hard to believe. Everything about her daughter seemed to have been transformed. She was getting good reports from school, she’d stopped hitting people, she even dressed differently – something Mrs Campion found particularly puzzling.

Andi had never been interested in clothes – out of school, she had simply worn the same jeans and T-shirt every day until they disintegrated – but in the last few weeks that had changed. It had begun with the T-shirts
Francis had made her, then she had asked for money to buy new clothes in town and now, when Mrs Campion had asked her to find something smart to wear when they went up to London, she had appeared in an off-white cotton top and a very fetching little skirt in a Prince of Wales check that fitted her like a dream. Mrs Campion almost cried when she saw it. Her little Thuglette! In a proper skirt!

How all these changes had come about she did not know, but Mrs Campion was certain of one thing. The person responsible was Francis. She did not know
how
he had done it but, in her eyes, the boy from number forty-seven had the status of something close to a god.

She told anyone and everyone the incredible story as often as she could. She told them how her daughter had refused point blank to go to school, how she met Francis and how within a day he had not only persuaded her to go to school, but to knuckle down to some work while she was there.

‘I’ve no idea how he did it,’ she would say in her booming voice, ‘and I’ve never dared to ask, but I’ll tell
you something. That is the most remarkable boy I’ve ever met. Absolutely. No question. The
most
remarkable boy.’

She repeated the story as often as she could to anyone who would listen, which led to what was, in many ways, the strangest part of this story.