The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall (7 page)

More normality, I realize, picturing the faded stain that's still there, usually hidden by an artfully placed cushion. And if I turn my head to the right, I'm looking directly into “my” room. From this position – still star-shaped against the door through to the main house – I can't see much of it except for one plastic black bag of my belongings, which has been hastily dumped on the floor by the removal men and torn at the side. Some familiar pink, polka-dot fabric is poking through the tear, as if my pyjama bottoms are trying to make a run for it…

I can't believe I'm actually giggling, considering I'm quietly losing my mind. Though maybe getting hysterical is a symptom of going completely—

THUD!

The door thumps against my back and my heart practically gives out.

“Ellis? Ellis, are you there?” Mum's muffled voice calls out.

I let go of my breath like a deflating balloon.

“Yes – hold on!” I yelp, whipping myself around and pulling the door open.

The
first-floor landing of the main house is – thankfully – just as it should be: scruffy, unloved and empty of everyone except my mother.

“What did you close the door for?” Mum asks.

“I didn't! It was—” I hesitate, noticing that Mum looks worried and tense. She's biting the inside of her mouth the way she always does when she's stressed. Usually that's to do with bills and rent and lack of money, but it's not as if Mum has to worry about stuff like that any more.

“What's wrong?” I ask her.

“Nothing,” Mum says too quickly, too sharply. “Nothing's wrong. Look, I'm sorry about being short with you downstairs just now – there's just … just a lot to organize.”

I don't get it. Everything about the house is an organizational nightmare, but Mum's been totally up for it. She was up for it when she strolled around the house with Mr Fraser just now, happily examining every crack, fault and disaster. It was all “exciting” first steps in the Shiny New Project.

What's happened in the last few minutes to change that?

“Who were you talking to on the phone?” I ask her, since that might hold the clue.

“
It was … it was the internet provider. Boring stuff. Forget it.”

We studied body language in Citizenship at school last term. Apparently, people can't look you in the eye when they're lying. Apparently, Mum is lying.

Why would she do that? She tells me everything. We tell each
other
everything. “Secrets aren't good for people,” I remember Mum always saying. Has she conveniently forgotten that?

“You know, you don't look so well again, Ellis,” says Mum, stepping away from her fib and closer to me. She puts her small, cool hand on my hot forehead. “You feel a bit clammy.”

OK, now is the time to tell her what I saw –
who
I saw – out on the landing.

“I'm OK, I'm not sick,” I insist. “It's this house; it's making me feel crazy. Just now I—”

Mum's phone begins to ring and her already pale face goes chalk white.

“Oh, I have to get this, Ellis…” she says, and walks hurriedly past me. I watch as she turns into her “office” – and closes the door behind her. I feel completely shut out.

Who is she speaking to? I pad over to the office
and
try to listen in. For a couple of minutes, all I can make out is her uh-huhs and yeses and buts and occasional sighs, as the person at the other end of the call hogs the conversation. And it's hard to hear even that, since the panic waves are rushing in, and the blood is pounding and thundering in my ears.

I wish I could run away somewhere I feel safe. But that's nowhere in this house of many rooms. Not with all its visions and whisperings…

The grinning, hairy man is still squeezing and squeaking a corny Scottish folk tune out of his accordion.

“
Oh, speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing…
”

The elderly waitress trills along to the ancient videotape as she comes over, then plonks a hot chocolate and Tunnock's Teacake down in front of me. Her name is Moira. After she properly introduced herself, she asked me my name and my mum's name, and seemed happy with that amount of information. Maybe she's saving nosier questions for later.

“Like I say, I don't have enough money,” I tell her apologetically, spreading the few pence and bits of pocket fluff out on the plastic tartan tablecloth.

“
Och, call it a welcome to the village ‘freeb', dear,” says Moira, the wrinkles on her face crinkling as she smiles.

I try a smile back, even if I'm not sure what she's on about.

“That is what you young folk call it, isn't it? A ‘freeb'?”

“Oh, I think you mean freebie,” I shyly correct her.

“Ha! I think some of the teenagers who come in here would be rolling their eyes if they heard me saying that!” Moira laughs.

“Like Cam?” I say, then wish I hadn't. I don't want her to think I'm remotely interested in the boy with the blackbird eyes.

“Yes, like Cam!” she says brightly. “I saw him when I was opening up earlier. He was taking himself off to the pool today, though how he can be bothered on a chilly day like today I don't know.”

The pool … there's a leisure centre here in the middle of nowhere?

“Anyway, it's lovely that Wilderwood will have a bit of life breathed back into it,” Moira chatters on, gazing out of the window at the far-off watching windows of my new bedroom.

“
Do you know much about its history?” I ask her, since she's obviously old enough and local enough to know the Hall better than the more newly arrived Mr Fraser.

“Not at all, dear – I only moved to the village a few months ago,” she tells me. “My son and daughter-in-law moved here from Edinburgh and bought the old hotel down the road and this café. They persuaded me to come join them and help out here while they concentrate on the hotel.”

Moira isn't a local resident either?

“All I know is that Wilderwood's sat empty for decades, withering away, like a doddery old duchess!” joked Moira. “Till you and your mum came along to rescue her in the nick of time, of course.”

I quite like that she doesn't know about RJ, and I'm not about to tell her.

“Someone else tried to do it first,” I tell her. “In the 1970s, a man bought it and lived in it on his own. We heard he couldn't afford to do it up and … and he gave up, I think.”

“Really? Ooh, that's interesting, isn't it? I wonder what—”

There's a sudden tinkle of the old-fashioned bell
above
the café door, and two people dressed in hiking boots and fleeces come stomping in. And so Moira bustles off, leaving me with the sugary steam of the hot chocolate twirling under my nose, and my fingers already tugging the silver foil from the teacake.

How funny … it's just dawned on me that I've barely eaten since yesterday, when I had half a sandwich for lunch in a service station north of a pretty little town called Perth. Since then I've eaten nothing but a teacake for breakfast (served to me on Mum's pillow this morning). Rather than whiplash from my tumble, is
that
why I've been so light-headed? Why I've been feeling so strange? Hey, I've accidentally starved myself, and
that's
the reason I've started hearing and seeing things…

Relief floods through my chest as the first sip of hot chocolate warms me through. Now I'm glad that I left that note for Mum while she was on the phone and went for a walk, the nearest thing I could get to escaping. I'm even more glad that during my mooch through the grounds of Wilderwood, I came across the path that led over a stile, through an open, grassy field, and discovered it was a shortcut to the village of Glenmill.

And
I'm particularly glad that I saw Moira waving at me through the plate glass window of the Cairn Café, while I sat – beginning to shiver – on a lone bench by the bus stop, wondering what to do with myself next. (Inbuilt shyness
nearly
made me pretend not to see her, but inbuilt politeness meant I couldn't allow myself to do that.)

And now, with Moira busy and bustling and no stray boys and dogs to stare at me, I get the chance to gaze properly around the steamy room. Apart from all the tartan and thistle corniness, there are quite a few framed black-and-white photos on the walls. The one closest to me is of the main street here, with the café looking much as it does now – though there's a date of
1963
scribbled in the corner of it.

Above that is a much older looking photo, of a shop this time, with a shopkeeper standing proudly outside it in a cap and long apron. There are children staring fascinated towards the camera, and from their clothes and bonnets, I'm guessing this picture was from Victorian or Edwardian times.

In fact … getting up and looking closer, I can see that the grocer's shop in the photo is what's now the Cairn Café.

I
stand up to nosy at the next batch of framed prints. Here's a church, a tumbledown bridge, some mountains and a river. Maybe I'll be able to spot the modern-day versions of these old-time views once I get to know the area. After all, I've got nothing better to do than drift around the place, have I?

And this one; it looks fun … a group of young boys in nothing but long johns seem to be taking turns to jump into a frothing cauldron of water in the middle of some woods. Some printed lettering underneath says “Linn o' Glenmill”. Those kids who are waiting are in perfect focus, but the mid-jumpers are a blur, since exposure times on long-ago cameras took for ever.

This outdoor pool is carved into rock, and looks deep. I bet it's freezing, even on a hot day.

Hold on … is this the pool Moira was talking about? Has Mr Fraser's son, Cam, headed for a wild swim there today, whether it's chilly or not?

Cramming the last chunk of teacake in my mouth, I lean over to drop the balled-up silver foil on to my table – and catch sight of a photo on the furthest-away wall.

Immediately, I begin to weave my way between the tables, screeching chairs out of the way. Because
even
from a distance, I've recognized the shape of the imposing double front door and steps in the image. And once I'm standing in front of the ornate but chipped frame, I pause to read the brass plaque on the bottom of it:
Wilderwood Hall, April 1912
.

My heart gives a little lurch at the sight of those etched words.

It lurches again as I lift my gaze to study the group of people standing posed on the steps.

People whose backs are straight, and whose faces are stern, just as the photographer urged them to be. “Hold still,” I could imagining him shouting politely but firmly at the upstanding, finely dressed Master and Mistress of Wilderwood House, with their retinue of staff fanned around them in the monotone shades of servants' outfits.

Wealthy Mr and Mrs Richards, from London, in their relatively newly built, grand Scottish estate.

And now I stare, fascinated, at one face that's just a blur. One person didn't obey the photographer's orders, but that's because the person is only a small child. A little boy, by the look of it, though the bloomer style of his trousers would be considered a girl-style fashion nowadays. The blurred boy is holding the hand not of his mother, but of a tall
young
woman, with a cameo brooch at the high neck of her blouse…

No, no, no, NO!

Agitatedly, I scrabble in my pocket and find my phone. I need to take a photo of this portrait, so I can study it properly, so I can try to make sense of this when I'm back home, with Mum. I know I was a bit cross with her just now, but that doesn't matter; I just want to show her this picture and talk it over together and—

“Ellis? Oh, Ellis!” Moira calls over to me. “Can you be of help to this young lady?”

I hadn't noticed the jangly bell above the door tinkle again, or seen the new customer come in.

I hadn't heard the girl with the long red hair and beanie hat ask for a bottle of water and directions to where she was going next.

The girl is older than me, taller than me, but in a non-gawky way. She looks like a sulky supermodel on her way to a festival.

But behind her black-rimmed glasses I can see she's dark around the eyes, and looks exhausted, as if she and her rucksack have had a long, hard journey.

On the far side of the counter, Moira's face radiates smile lines and optimism.

On
the near side of the counter, the girl's face is gaunt and tense.

I have no idea who she is, but from the way she's staring at me, it's as if … as if she
hates
me.

“She's looking for Wilderwood Hall, Ellis,” Moira explains, aware of the sudden, awkward silence pulsating between us.

“It's my father's house,” the girl says almost bitterly.

I hold tight to the nearest table, ready for the waves to roll in…