The Haunting of Tabitha Grey (13 page)

‘Since when did you start wearing aftershave?’ Mum asks him. ‘No, it’s all right. Don’t answer that.’

She goes off down to the basement, clutching her pointe shoes in their pink box.

Dad looks kind of flustered and his cheeks are redder than usual. He doesn’t even go on about my outfit being too old for me, which is unusual.

‘I won’t be coming back for lunch today,’ is all he says. ‘All right?’

I nod.

This means I get Jake all to myself. He won’t mind Ben, but the main thing is that my warring parents will not be around. Mum will be asleep and Dad will be – doing whatever Dad is
doing. I don’t want to think too much about that.

I’m ready way too early. Jake isn’t due for another hour so I pace up and down in the flat, checking my reflection every two minutes and re-applying lip gloss. At last I see him
coming up the semi-circular drive and gazing up at the house like people always do when they visit for the first time. A few minutes later there’s a soft knock on the flat door and he’s
standing there, all clean-smelling and tall with his fierce blue eyes smiling down at me.

‘Hi,’ he says. ‘I bought you these.’

He holds out a pile of DVDs and a bag of Maltesers.

I blush.

‘Come in,’ I say. ‘D’you want a coffee?’

Jake’s staring at me like I’m a stranger.

‘You look different,’ he says. ‘You don’t usually wear that sort of lipstick, do you?’

I grin.

‘Like it?’ I say. I’m determined to be flirty and confident today. I’m not letting the house get to me and I’m going to make Jake see that I’m exciting and
fun to be with.

‘Erm, yes,’ says Jake in a polite voice. ‘I think so. Nice dress.’

I flick my hair back and put instant into two cups, all the while watching him look around our flat.

‘This is really cool,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think it would be so big.’

‘Well, it’s not really, compared to the rest of the house,’ I say. ‘Maybe I’ll take you round later if you’d like?’

I don’t really want to. But everybody who comes here wants The Tour, and I’d rather do it myself than have to cringe watching Dad do it, all puffed up and self-important.

I figure that if Jake is with me, I’ll be safe.

I make us a pile of cheese sandwiches and fetch juice from the fridge and we sit down with Ben and watch a DVD about a man and a woman who are destined never to meet.
It’s quite funny and even Ben laughs a bit. For a moment I forget where I am and just enjoy sitting next to Jake with his arm pressed up against mine and when he thinks I’m not looking
I watch him sideways out of the corner of my eye and enjoy the way that his eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs.

We’re so engrossed in the film that we jump when Mum comes in from downstairs, her cheeks flushed and her eyes lit up in that peculiar way that only comes from her dancing.

‘Hi Jake,’ she says. ‘Good to see you. I don’t know why Tabitha hardly ever has you over.’

I shoot her a furious look. Mothers are SO embarrassing.

‘Sorry, Tabs,’ says Mum. ‘But welcome, anyway, Jake. You guys got enough food?’

I gesture at the pile of sandwiches and raise my eyebrows a few times at Mum, so she gets the hint and goes off to get changed.

‘Sorry about that,’ I say. ‘Why are parents always so annoying?’

Then I realise what I’ve said and flush scarlet. Jake only has a dad. His mum died when he was a baby and his gran helped bring him up.

‘Sorry,’ I say, yet again. ‘Shall I just shut up now?’

I shove a triangular sandwich in my mouth and make a face.

Jake laughs and we watch the end of the film with his arm draped around the tops of my shoulders so that I go all tingly.

Mum comes back into the room dressed in jeans and a khaki jacket and with her rucksack on her back.

‘Going food shopping,’ she announces. ‘Be good. And – Tabitha?’

I twist my neck to look round at her.

‘Yeah?’

‘You know I love you heaps, don’t you?’ she says.

Omigod.

Why do parents always have to say these things at the worst possible moments?

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I mumble, turning my face away from Jake so that he can’t see my unattractive red burning face.

Mum gives me another look, which I can’t work out at all, and then she slips out of the flat with Ben hanging off her skirts.

‘She’s nice, your mum,’ Jake says. ‘Pretty. And kind, I reckon. I wish I still had my mum sometimes.’

This is so unexpected coming from a BOY that I nearly choke on my cheese and pickle.

I stare at Jake’s chiselled features and I think:
Perhaps I could love you after all
.

When I’ve washed up the plates and Jake’s dried them, I take a deep breath and ask if he’d like the tour of the manor now.

He nods, so we lock up the flat and head off down the long corridor outside, with sunshine streaming through the Edwardian glass windows and lighting up bits and pieces of furniture inside the
big rooms.

‘Wow,’ says Jake as I take him into the dining room. ‘Can you imagine actually eating your dinner in here?’

I shudder. The table is laid for about twenty people with silver knives and fish knives and the glass goblets are out today too because a school group has been round on an educational trip. The
Chinese lions preside over it all as usual, teeth bared into ugly snarls.

I take Jake into the elegant drawing room and he sucks his breath in sharply with admiration at the ornate furnishings and floor-to-ceiling windows that open on to the gardens of the manor.

‘Wow,’ he says, yet again. ‘This is like SO cool. You’re lucky, living here.’

As I take Jake into the trophy room and then Lady Thomas-Fulford’s morning room I ponder on that statement.

I don’t feel lucky at all. Just about everything’s been going wrong since we moved in.

Jake admires the photos and miniature paintings in the morning room and then he stands by the desk in the corner for a moment and says: ‘Can you smell lavender?’

I jump. In fact I can, but I’ve been trying not to notice it.

‘It’s the polish that the cleaners use,’ I say quickly. I do not want Jake to think of me as some ghost nut.

‘And something else,’ says Jake as we leave the morning room and I try not to glance in the little servants’ mirror just by the door. ‘Coal, maybe?’

Yeah. He’s right. I can smell coal, just like somebody’s lit an old fire somewhere nearby.

‘Can’t smell anything,’ I mutter. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

We go upstairs without pausing to look at any of the pictures of brown dogs on the panelled walls. Then I conduct a whistle-stop tour of the grand bedrooms and the servants’ quarters and I
don’t tell Jake that in the library I get a whiff of something so vile that I nearly keel over and that in the guest bedroom something or somebody grabs hold of the back of my jeans belt and
gives it a good hard tug so that I let out a shriek and have to grab on to the bed to stop falling over.

Jake appears to have forgotten about the lavender and coal smells and he doesn’t pick up on anything else.

We go into Lady Thomas-Fulford’s bedroom and as we pass the huge chest of drawers by the door a photograph of one of her dogs slams down hard on the wooden surface so that I jump and
clutch Jake’s arm.

‘It’s your heavy footsteps,’ I say, trying to make a joke of it. ‘You knocked it over.’

I let go of his arm with some reluctance. It feels nice – all muscular and real and warm beneath the sleeve of his long black top.

‘Or else someone doesn’t want us to be in here,’ says Jake with a big grin.

I smile back. Good. He’s not taking any of it seriously.

‘What’s this?’ he asks. There’s a faded album on the dressing table and Jake’s turning the pages. I shoot a nervous look at the security camera.

‘I don’t think you should be touching that,’ I say. But I’m dead nosy and I’ve never noticed the photo album before so I go and stand close to his shoulder, so
close that I can feel the heat coming off him – and it’s kind of nice.

‘Loads of old dead people! Boring,’ says Jake, losing interest and wandering over to look at the paintings on the other side of the room.

I flick through the pages. The photographs inside are tiny, blurred and almost all of servants posing outside in the garden at Weston Manor.

I flick through fast because Jake’s getting fed up of waiting – until one of the photographs catches my eye.

A line of female servants in long dark dresses with white aprons and white frilled caps, standing in front of the old sundial which is still outside in the walled garden.

I peer closer.

There’s something about the girl on the far left of the picture.

She’s not smiling, for a start. The others are, but this girl has big scared eyes and her hands are clasped in front of her stomach.

It’s the eyes.

I’ve seen them somewhere before.

Although I don’t much want to, I keep turning the pages of the album and something else catches my eye.

There’s a tiny faded photo of two old ladies standing by a fireplace in the hall at Weston.

I squint to read the caption.

‘Lucinda and Rose,’ it says. ‘Return to Weston, Christmas 1945.’

There’s that buzz in my ears again. It’s faint this time, but it’s there.

I feel dizzy, like I might pass out.

‘Jake,’ I say. I grab his arm and propel him out of the room. ‘I’ll show you the kitchens if you really want but then I think I’d like to go back to the
flat.’

I drag him back on to the landing and downstairs and then I ask the new security guard, Paul, to take us down to the basement kitchens where I do my best not to look at the row of black bells
hanging down in the corridor or to think about the unhappy servant girl and the two old ladies in the photograph album. I make sure that at all times I’m standing near Paul.

Jake loves it all. Loves it.

‘Can I come and live here?’ he says. I look at his face and it seems as if he’s only half joking. ‘I really, really like this place. Can’t see what my gran makes
all the fuss about.’

Oh yeah. Jake did tell me that his gran doesn’t like the house.

That all seems months ago. But it was only a couple of weeks.

Time does funny things at Weston Manor.

Jake goes at about five after conversation between us kind of dries up. I try to talk to him about the photograph album and the woman in my bedroom and my feelings about living
in this house. But he starts yawning and fidgeting and looking at me in a funny way so I shut up and after he’s gone I wander around the entrance hall for a while, looking up at pictures and
wondering if Mum’s back yet. I catch a glance of myself in the servants’ mirror outside Lady Eleanor’s morning room and I decide that I do look a bit deranged with the red
lipstick on so I wipe it off there and then and head outside. I don’t really want to go back to the flat and sit on my own and there’s something else I want to see without Jake looking
at me in that odd way.

I head through the arch at the side of the manor and open the gate into the churchyard. There’s nobody there today so I head right towards the spot where I saw the two old ladies
talking.

They were leaning on either side of a tall gravestone topped with a large cross. I crouch down and read the inscription.

The inscription on the tomb is clear.

I shiver, a great violent judder that rocks my body. Then I notice the two smaller tombstones just to the right of Eleanor’s. One of them has been carved with elaborate
flowers and buds round the inscription.

Next to this stone is another of the same height but this one has a small stone angel on the top. I crouch down, even though I know what I’m going to see.

Yes.

I get up. My legs have gone soft, like all the blood has been drained out of them.

So why – why did I see these two women the other day? Do they come every day?

There’s a soft melodious laugh behind me, like somebody heard me thinking out loud and thinks that I’m stupid or something but that they’re quite fond of me nonetheless.

I spin round but I know that there will be nobody there.

But something else catches my eye. On the opposite side of the path is a tiny gravestone in the shape of a cradle.

I bend over to read the inscription. There’s ivy all over it so I have to poke and pull at the strands until I can make out the carved lettering.

This is all getting too weird.

Who is this child? I can’t recall anybody at the manor ever mentioning a child.

Still – the two old ladies looked kind enough when I saw them before. They don’t look like they’re out to get me. ‘Even if they’re dead,’ I mutter to myself.
I can’t quite take in what I’m saying. But it’s true – they didn’t look at all as if they would cause me any trouble.

Unlike their half-sister, Lady Eleanor.

I try to block the image of her stern features looking down from the painting in the hall and I head back towards the manor.

My head is whirling with stuff I don’t much want to think about.

Again.

I sit in the walled garden on the way back and gaze at the pet graves again.

I find them comforting, in a way. Little dogs can’t harm you, whether they’re alive or dead.

Over the wall beyond the ruined greenhouses the top half of Weston rises up towards the sky.

It’s almost as quiet in here as it was in the cemetery.

I look at my watch. I’ve got a few minutes before Mum will be looking for me.

I close my eyes in the sun and lean my head back against the wall. It’s hypnotic out here, with the chirp of the birds and the hum of a lawnmower and the thud of croquet balls from the
back lawn and the sun is acting like a drug on my tired sleepless brain and I start to dip into the dark as the breeze tickles my face and the sun warms my cheeks and then it all fades to a fuzz
and I sink somewhere warm and soft.