The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall (13 page)

Instantly I picture Flora lugging endless heavy
jugs
of water upstairs for the little boy's bath by the fire. At least she was better off than maids who came before her, who'd have to fill baths for the grown-ups too…

“So, still no one else up, then?” Mr Fraser asks, changing the conversation.

He knows there's not. It was me – toast in hand by my bedroom window at eight a.m. this morning – who spotted the two vans crunching up to a halt and hurried to let Mr Fraser and his team in. In fact, I hurried so much that I knocked my phone off the windowsill, and didn't stop to check if it was cracked or broken. (What was the point? I had no one to call anyway…) And once I'd shyly ushered Mr Fraser and Co. inside, I even made them all mugs of coffee. Mum would be proud of me, if she wasn't still lost in snooze-land now.

“Nope,” I reply, leaning on the door frame.

Yesterday, after the disastrous guided tour, Weezy stomped off to her room. She only reappeared for a mostly frosty meal in the evening, eaten on our knees in front of a laptop playing a DVD of
Modern Family
, since we couldn't get any reception for the TV. Weezy obviously wasn't a fan of
Modern Family
, or possibly
my
small branch of extended family, and
after
she'd finished her pizza and salad she scuttled back to the spare room. Mum deserted me pretty soon after, muttering something about needing to go over work in the office and try and call RJ. Again.

Which left me half-heartedly eating a lukewarm slice of pizza and wondering how on earth I'd ended up with a such a weird, uncomfortable “modern family” of my own.

A while later, after I'd brushed my teeth and switched my light out, I heard the buzz of Mum's voice on the phone, talking to RJ. Who knows what time of night the two of them stayed up talking till… ?

“That other girl; relative, is she?” Mr Fraser asks warily.

“Something like that,” I reply. “She's my stepfather's daughter. From his first marriage.”

“Ah. The two of you not get on, then?”

I can see why Mr Fraser would assume that, because of the silence in his van when he gave us both a lift from the Cairn Café.

“Yesterday was the first time I met her,” I tell Mr Fraser.

He shoots me a look, a look that tells me he's pretty shocked by that fact but is too polite to say
so.
And now I worry that I've said too much. He'll probably sit down at tea tonight and tell his wife and his bird-eyed son all about the weird family living in Wilderwood. Then Cam will go off and tell whatever friends he has, and in a couple of weeks, after the holidays, I'll end up the awkward outsider at my new school, same as I was at my old one.

“Oh, I was supposed to tell you something,” says Mr Fraser through his teeth, his jaw clenched with the effort of trying to slacken the nut. “I was talking to my wife about this place –”

I knew it. I
knew
we were gossip material.

“– and she remembered a conversation she had with the old couple that used to run the café in the village before they retired. They said that the hippy fella that once owned Wilderwood back in the 1970s; he didn't leave 'cause he ran out of money. It was more that he went a bit mad with the loneliness, apparently. The last time he dropped by the café he told them – actually, I probably shouldn't say.”

“Yes, you should.
Please
tell me,” I urge him, dying to find out some snatch of the house's history.

Of course, as soon as the internet is up and
running,
I can hopefully find out more, but any crumb of information will do for now.

“All right,” says Mr Fraser, fixing his eyes on me. “But it's probably a load of rubbish, so promise this isn't going to give you nightmares, or the wife won't forgive me.”

“Promise,” I say with a smile, to show how sensible I am.

“Well, this hippy fella says he's packing up and leaving 'cause he can't get a decent night's sleep. For months he's been having these wild dreams about the house being flooded with seawater… See what I mean? Crazy stuff. Like I say, loneliness must have got to him.”

“Must've,” I agree.

OK, so now I can put a line through any interest in the ex-owner of Wilderwood. Dreams of the sea lapping at the floorboards of the servants' quarters have nothing to do with my own mad meanderings into the past.

“Aargh!” Mr Fraser suddenly roars, glowering at the rusted-in toilet fixings. “This is
not
working. I'm off to grab some WD-40 from the van. Back in a minute!”

I shift aside to let Mr Fraser stomp by in his heavy
work
boots, while idly wondering what exactly WD-40 might be. But now that I have this room to myself, I move around it and run my hand over the rim of the huge sink, trying to imagine it fitting into our tiny shower room back in London.

And the bath … All of a sudden, just for fun, I step into it and lie down, picturing myself luxuriating in warm water with froths of bubbles. 'Cause with my eyes closed, it's easy to imagine it featuring in some ad for shampoo or chocolate or something, chilled-out music noodling in the background.

And just then, White Star Line's single begins to play on Mr Fraser's tinny little radio! I hum along to the verse, with my eyes still closed against the tattiness of the bathroom, feeling glad that Mr Fraser isn't here to spot the way my cheeks flushed at the sound of RJ's track.

The thing is, Mr Fraser doesn't know that his direct employer is the singer in a well-known band, and that's the way it should stay till the work's done, the estate agent advised, otherwise tradesmen might put their prices up. But Mr Fraser seems nice. I bet he wouldn't do something like that. He seems too friendly and down-to-earth.

“
And when your world isn't turning and your path leads nowhere, don't be scared, keep on walking, turn the corner, I'll be there…
” I croon softly, while my mind meanders on to what Mr Fraser just told me; the strange imaginings of the hippy who lived here. Did he dream of his bed bobbing as waves washed down the corridor? Or seaweed tangling itself round the legs of his armchairs… ?

It takes me a second or two to realize something has changed.

The radio has gone silent. But through the cold enamel of the bath I can feel a deep, insistent vibration. I don't know if I'm scared or thrilled. But what I
do
know is that I'm suddenly lying, floating in warm water.
Real
warm water.

With a start, I open my eyes, and see Flora standing in the middle of the large bathroom, looking back at me, just as startled. Over one arm she has a pile of fluffy white towels. And in the other hand, she is holding a blue glass bottle. She has it lifted to her lips, as if she's about to drink it, like Alice in Wonderland. But she's Flora in Wilderwood and was probably just smelling some expensive potion belonging to whoever was supposed to be having this bath…

“
What are you doing in there?” she says in a panic.

I sit up in the bath, water pouring from my clothes. There are no bubbles, so when I look down I can see the submerged deep blue of my jeans.

“I – I don't know,” I tell her, feeling flustered. “But it's all right. Remember, only
you
can see me.”

Glancing around, I spot a pristine loo, with a polished wooden seat that doesn't exist in
my
version of the Hall.

“But why would you even step into the mistress's bath?” Flora asks, still dumbfounded, seeing me so unexpectedly.

“There wasn't any water when I got in,” I say. “I – I was just lying here listening to music and –”

“– and you were singing!” says Flora. “When I came in just now with the towels, the bath was run and waiting for the mistress.
You
were not here. And then I looked up at the sound of your voice, and there you were!”

I have no idea what to do. Do I get out, soaking wet, or stay where I am till I'm called back to my own time? But what if I stay put, and Mrs Richards walks in, chucks off her dressing gown and climbs in here with me?

It's
such a ridiculous idea that I start laughing. Properly laughing. Laughing like I haven't done in weeks. In months. I'm laughing so much it's infectious, and now Flora joins in.

She laughs so much that she spills some of the potion from the blue bottle on to the perfectly tiled floor – which makes us both laugh even more. We're still laughing when the door flies open and a young woman I've never seen flies in.

“Are you completely deranged, Flora Dean?” she barks.

Her outfit is similar to Flora's except that the dress is grey instead of black, and looks newer and less worn. The twists of plaited hair around her head are more ornate than I suspect Flora would be allowed.

“Pardon, but I had a fit of the sneezes,” says Flora, giving a tiny, polite curtsy to the young woman.

“No you did not; you were
laughing
!” the young woman accuses her.

“No, Miss Ann, that's not how it was,” says Flora, her eyes to the floor and her expression far from funny. “But I have been told I have the most peculiar sneezes.”

At Flora's quickly thought excuse, I lose it and
burst
out laughing again. Then I grip the bath and check for a reaction – luckily this Miss Ann, the ladies' maid – has no clue that I exist. But poor Flora, her cheek is twitching as she struggles to keep her composure.

“So you're mocking me, are you?” Ann says snidely. “I warn you, I'm watching you, Flora. One slip and you'll be out of here so fast. Don't think I can't guess who put horse manure on my shoe yesterday afternoon, and let me walk it all along the landing and into milady's room!”

“I would not do that!” Flora protests, her cheeks flaming. “Why would I, since I was called for to clean it?”

Poor Flora… I might feel alone in my world, but she is
beyond
alone, facing these bullying older workmates without any family or friends to turn to. Though she has
me
now, I remind myself, feeling a flurry of protectiveness towards her.

“You're such a sly creature I wouldn't ever say I could understand your ways,” hisses Ann, snatching the towels and the bottle from Flora, who gasps, as if Ann's cutting words are a slap.

I watch, held back by the weight of water, as Flora flings the bathroom door wide open and makes her
escape
… straight through Weezy.

“Oh!” exclaims my so-called step-sister, her eyes blinking behind her black geek glasses.

My mind flips from one time to another, and I realize Weezy is gasping at the sight of a girl sitting fully dressed in an empty bath, and not because a servant from a bygone time slipped into the past through her tall, tomboyish, modern-day body.

“Sorry, I just thought I'd see how comfy it was,” I quickly say, getting up on to my haunches, ready to propel myself out of the tub.

Weezy stands staring, her long red hair ruffled with bed-head tangles.

“Whatever,” she mutters, as if what I say, think or do is of zero interest to her. “Does this stuff work?”

She's pointing to the loo, sink and the bath I'm clambering out of.

“I – I think it will do soon. Mr Fraser is fixing it all up today.”

“Good. This'll be my bathroom, then. And I'm moving to that big corner room. The one I'm in now is too depressing…”

Weezy turns and goes without another word.

By the time I'm out of the bath, I can hear her dragging something out of Flora's room and out
through
the connecting door of the East Wing.

“Do you need a hand?” I ask, realizing she's pulling the heavy futon mattress across the landing towards the old nursery.

“No,” Weezy replies flatly.

All I can do is lean on the doorway of the bathroom and watch as this tall, spiky cuckoo makes herself quite at home in my nest…

“Whoops!” says Mum, and nearly goes flying.

Her white Converse trainers might have been perfectly fine for padding from our London flat to the Tube and back, but for a walk in a stony and muddy Scottish forest, they're pretty awful. Mum does have some wellies packed somewhere – from when we went to the Latitude festival last summer – but she doesn't know which of the still-taped-up boxes they're stashed in.

“Got you,” I say, making a grab for the arm of Mum's sky-blue Puffa jacket and steadying her. “It can't be much further now. I think I can hear water.”

“Must be. Gordon the builder said it's just a five-minute walk from the car park to the pool,” Mum
chats
away, though her eyes, like mine, are fixed on Weezy stomping ahead of us in her beanie, parka and flowery Doc Marten boots. “Can't wait to check out first local attraction!”

Today is amazingly sunny and warm for April, and so if we were normal tourists it would be the perfect time for sightseeing in the Highlands. But our weird little group – me, Mum, and a sulky eighteen-year-old stranger – aren't exactly normal tourists.