‘Gran!’ I yell. ‘Don’t go!’
But the crackling gets louder until I have to hang up. I redial straight away but there’s no ring on the other end at all.
Just silence.
My heart plummets.
No Gran. And my nose has started bleeding again. I try the line again.
Nothing.
I plug my nose up and lie in front of some rubbish on TV and after a while my eyelids droop and I fall into a sleep like black velvet.
I sleep so hard that I don’t even dream.
When I wake up Mum’s bustling around in the kitchen again and she’s made me some mushroom soup.
‘There, you look brighter already,’ she says. ‘Good girl. Will you be all right for an hour or two if I have my nap? Dad will probably pop in and check on you later.’
‘Yeah, I’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘Don’t forget your tablet.’
Mum sighs and comes back in, fills a glass with water and pops a tiny pill into her mouth. I know that she’ll be asleep in ten minutes flat.
‘See you later,’ she says. ‘Hope you won’t be lonely.’
I smile.
‘Well, I’ve got Ben, haven’t I?’ I say, but she’s disappeared off down the hallway and I hear the soft click of her door shutting – and the sigh that means
she’s slipped underneath the blankets and is heading for oblivion.
I ask if Ben wants to play a board game with me but he’s not interested, so I go into my room and play CDs for a while. But then I get bored, so I go over and look out of the window at the
back lawn.
It’s another beautiful day and the sun is streaking across the mown grass in jagged black stripes. Visitors sit on the benches at the back of the house and pour themselves cold drinks from
bottles and flasks. Others wander around the kitchen gardens or the ruined stables or the graveyard behind the little church.
There’s a familiar-looking person at the end of the garden, smoking a cigarette and patrolling back and forth.
Sid! He’s on his lunch break. Now maybe I can get the answers to some of my zillions of questions.
I pop my head into Mum’s bedroom and say, ‘Mum. I’m going out for a bit. OK?’ but there’s no reply, just as I knew there wouldn’t be.
Oh well. I did try to tell her. Not my fault if she wakes up and I’m not there.
‘I won’t be long,’ I say to Ben. ‘Stay in here and don’t answer the door.’
I head out of the flat and pass the groups of visitors hanging about in the entrance hall, buying tickets or standing at the foot of the stairs admiring the oil paintings. I nod hello to Dawn
and go out of the front door and round the side of the manor into the back garden.
Sid’s quite a way off and I don’t think he can see me, so I wave and he turns and looks in my direction. But he doesn’t wave back, so I wave again and shout, ‘Sid!’
but still he doesn’t react, which is a bit odd.
As I get closer I realise that Sid has stopped moving. He’s rooted to the spot, staring at me.
‘Hi!’ I call. ‘It’s a nice day to have lunch out here, isn’t it?’
He doesn’t reply. Just stares at me with his mouth slightly ajar and his eyes huge.
I get a sinking feeling.
Why is he just staring at me? At least – I THINK he’s staring at me.
It’s gone quiet. So quiet that the birds have stopped. I can smell lavender.
‘Sid?’ I say, reaching him at last. ‘What’s the matter? Should I get Dad?’
His face contorts into an ugly grimace and his eyes almost come out of their sockets. With an effort he lifts one finger and points it just behind where I’m standing.
I have no time to turn and look at what he’s pointing at because he lets out a cry and he clutches at his chest and starts to bend over, grey in the face.
Then he’s falling towards me and I’m being crushed by the bulk of him and I’m aware that there are people in summer shorts and skirts running towards us at top speed and as I
turn to scream at them for help I see, just for a second, a whisk of black silk dress disappearing very slowly in the opposite direction through the arch at the side of the house and there’s
that strange buzzing noise in my ears again but this time I manage not to faint and I stay with Sid until Dad runs over the lawn clutching his walkie-talkie and crouches down next to us.
Mum comes out in her dressing gown almost as pale as Sid and she takes me back up to the flat and hugs me to her.
‘You poor thing,’ she keeps saying. ‘Oh you poor thing.’
She forces me to drink a brandy and then she makes me go to bed and take one of her pills so that I’m asleep within about three minutes. I don’t wake up until it’s getting dark
outside.
I stagger into the kitchen all disorientated and thirsty from the brandy and pill, so Mum makes me some tea and then Dad comes back in from the hospital with his head bowed and his face lined
and serious.
He looks at Mum and then at me where I’m sitting in pyjamas on the sofa with Ben tucked up next to me.
‘Sid had a heart attack, Tabs,’ says Dad. ‘He’s lucky to be alive. He’s got to stay in hospital for a while and then spend some time recuperating at
home.’
‘Is he going to come back to work after that?’ I say. Visions of Sid’s kind face and shiny head well up, making me want to cry.
Dad’s face falls.
‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t well enough to say very much, but one thing he did say to me is that he’s had enough of the manor.’
‘Why?’ is the only word I can get out of my mouth. That one word seems to sum up everything that has happened to me at Weston Manor.
Dad thinks that I’m asking why Sid is fed up with the manor, but I think I can already guess the answer to that.
No – what I mean is:
Why did we have to come and live here?
Why are all these horrid things happening?
Why do most of them happen to me?
And why won’t anyone believe me?
The only person who believed me was Sid. And he’s not coming back.
S
omething tried to silence Gran – and then Sid.
Or someone.
And in the days after Sid’s heart attack it’s like they’re out to get me too.
Not just in the daytime, but at night too.
I can’t talk to my parents about it. Dad just laughs it off and Mum gets her anxious look on and tells me to ‘Stop That Right Away!’ or ‘Don’t Start That Again,
Tabitha’.
Dawn changes the subject when I ask her if she’s ever seen anything in the manor.
And Sid’s wife calls by to see Dad and sort out his final salary payment but I can’t very well start pestering her with questions – so I don’t. I just watch her trying
not to cry, and Mum trying to comfort her, and I feel sad and small.
And scared.
It’s started to happen in the flat too.
I thought the flat was my sanctuary. I thought I’d be safe here. I didn’t think they’d get to me in here as well.
It’s two days after Sid’s heart attack and I’m up in my room.
I’ve tried calling Gran again but I can’t ever seem to get through.
It’s dark outside and I’m huddled under my duvet with the bedside lamp on, trying to read a diary about a teenage princess cos all my other books are about teenage vampires and
that’s the last thing I need to be reading at the moment. Although the diary is funny and as light as marshmallow, I can’t concentrate on it and I’m drained of all energy. So I
click my light off and bury myself under the pillow, trying not to listen to Mum and Dad arguing in low angry voices in the kitchen.
I expect they’re arguing about me. Again.
This has been going on since even before we came to Weston Manor, but it’s got a lot worse over the last few days.
I hug my pillow and close my eyes, trying to block out the noise of my fighting parents.
I must have dozed off because it feels much later when I come round to the sound of somebody whispering my name.
I jump and shoot upwards into a sitting position, clutching my duvet to my face. Like that’s going to protect me. Stupid.
I click on my bedside lamp with fumbling hands and look at the clock.
It’s just gone 3 a.m.
There’s a rustling noise in the corner.
I freeze and glance towards the bedroom door.
Should I get up and run across the room and out to Mum and Dad?
The rustle happens again and a dark shape shifts and moves on the old armchair in the corner of my bedroom.
My eyes adjust to the light.
There’s a woman sitting on my chair and she’s got her head buried in her hands. I hear the faint sound of sobbing. Not close, like somebody’s in my room, but like it’s
coming down a tunnel from miles away or from a television with the sound almost turned right down.
My ears begin to buzz and I shake my head left and right, trying to rid myself of the noise and the vision.
Maybe I’m dreaming. I pinch my arm hard but it hurts like hell. I open my mouth to shout but nothing will come out, however hard I try.
The woman stops sobbing and lifts her head from her hands. In the dim light I see the moon-shaped oval of her face.
The slits for eyes.
The face without a mouth.
She’s looking right at me.
It’s the same woman I saw in the dining room, the woman in the dark blue dress.
Although every fibre of my body is screaming out in terror, some small part of my brain tells me that if she’s crying and looks frightened then maybe she’s not out to cause me
harm.
I find my voice.
‘Are – are you OK?’ I say. Like you do, when you’ve got an apparition in your bedroom!
The woman continues to stare at me and her narrow eyes bore into my skull and my ears fizz and crackle. She looks as if she is about to speak but a bell rings from somewhere in the manor and we
both jump out of our skin.
‘You.
Here!
’ yells a sharp female voice from the dark bowels of the manor. The woman gets up and drifts out through the door.
The door is closed.
I lie for a while trying to calm my thumping heart. I can hear faint noises from far off in the big house. It sounds like two women having an argument – but as if they’re having it
underwater.
I lie for what feels like a lifetime, too afraid to move before at last I creep into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and put my sleeping bag on the floor again.
Then I lie there wide awake until daylight.
Mum decides that I need to have next week off school.
‘No,’ I protest. ‘I really, really want to go back.’
I’ve missed so much of the summer term already. I really want to be back to a normal place with kids yelling and fighting and teachers giving me detention.
I want to see Gemma and talk to her about normal things like music and make-up and cats and telly.
And Jake.
I really need him now. It’s weird – he’s stopped being annoying and is starting to represent sanity. After all, he’s kind and loyal and I think I can trust him.
Mum’s got her stubborn expression on so I know I’m not going to win this one.
I slump on the sofa in the lounge and text Gem.
Olds keeping me in
, I put.
And they’re arguing all the time. T.
That’s a bit of an understatement. Mum and Dad are hardly speaking to one another.
The Mayor is coming for a special visit today and Dad insists that I help him pick flowers from the walled garden and arrange them in large blue-and-white vases on the
dining-room table where there’s a huge spread of buffet food brought in by a local firm.
We finish arranging the flowers and as the house is closed to visitors for the special occasion, there’s nobody much around for a few hours. Dad drives off into town to get his hair cut
for the occasion and Dawn has disappeared too.
The entrance hall is deep and silent. Only the dull tick of the grandfather clock penetrates the vast space. I stand there on my own for a full five minutes, listening.
Nothing.
It’s very quiet in the manor today. I wish I could say that this was a good thing, but it isn’t. It’s like the air is weighted with expectation and starting to build up in
tension. I rub my temples where my head is starting to ache.
Just to prove that I’m not scared standing here on my own, I do a spot of whistling and then I text Gemma to ask if she ever bought the pair of leggings she’d seen in town and then I
even stroll up and down the hall a bit, gazing at the paintings of Eleanor and Charles and the two beautiful half-sisters, and peering into glass cases at tiny china snuff boxes and pieces of
priceless crystal.
‘I live here and I am going to like it,’ I say, all of a sudden. ‘It’s kind of my home, now. I belong here.’
I hadn’t even meant to say that. It just came out.
There’s a loud slam. The door to Lady Eleanor’s morning room has just banged shut.
I look around the hall again. Nothing’s changed. I can see a couple of photographers from the
Gazette
outside on the front lawn setting up cameras and this gives me confidence, even
though a big part of me wants to run and hide away in our flat for the rest of the day to sit with Ben or Mum and try to pretend that everything is OK. But I guess there’s still this mad
curious and annoying part of Tabitha Grey that wants to dig deeper.
Sometimes I hate being like that. Why can’t I just let things go?
‘All right,’ I say. It seems to help if I speak out loud to myself. It’s like having a confident, bossy teacher in tow, telling me what to do next.
I look out at the men on the lawn once more for comfort and then I take a deep steadying breath and put my hand on the knob of the morning-room door.
Can’t believe you’re doing this
, says a scared voice inside me.
‘Neither can I,’ I mutter, but by then I’ve pushed the door open.
There’s an abrupt rustle as I enter the room, like somebody’s just stood up in a hurry. Out of the corner of my eye I see something dark swish out of sight. Then a heavy silence
falls on the room. I walk to the centre and look out of the sash window over the gardens of the manor.
‘Good,’ I say. I can see Dad making his way up the drive. He’s got a special jaunty walk that I can spot a mile off, both hands tucked into his jeans and his head nodding a bit
from side to side.