The Woman in Black (10 page)

A morbid excitement rippled through the group. The children were caught between obeying their
teacher and the illicit thrill of wanting to see their dead friend.

Jean marched over to the door, closing it tight. She turned back to the children.

‘I want everyone to … to stay inside today. Even … even at playtime.’ She closed her eyes, shook her head, then looked up once more, turning to Eve. ‘Miss Parkins, see that Dr Rhodes has everything he needs. I … I’m going to write to the boy’s mother.’

Jean was straight through the door, banging it shut behind her. Her composure was dissolving, and she couldn’t allow the children to witness that. But Eve had seen her shoulders shake and the tears start to fall before the door closed.

Eve turned to the children. And found she had nothing to say.

She gave them what she hoped was a reassuring smile and went to find Jim Rhodes.

The barbed wire had been cut and rolled back to allow Tom’s body to be removed. It had then been twisted back into place, covering up the resulting hole. Now, the only thing that marked the location was the remaining blood.

Jim Rhodes was outside standing by his bus, surveying the estate, wrapped up in a thick coat and scarf, trying not to let his eyes settle on the spot
where Tom’s body had been found, but he couldn’t stop his focus being drawn back to there.

Eve came out and stood alongside him. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Their breath forming cold plumes, ghosting away into nothing.

‘I … I was sure I locked it,’ she said eventually. ‘The front door. Sure of it.’

Jim Rhodes shook his head, his eyes averted from hers. ‘I did say you had to be careful.’

‘I know, and I …’ Eve sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

Jim turned to face her. ‘I don’t think any of us could ever be sorry enough.’

Eve looked away. Her eyes alighted on the repaired hole in the barbed-wire fence. She shuddered. The drying blood had taken on the colour of rust. It looked to Eve like an external echo of the spreading mould inside the house. She turned back to Jim Rhodes.

‘Doctor,’ she said. Her voice was hesitant, but her emotion heartfelt. ‘There’s something wrong here.’

Jim Rhodes frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’

Eve looked back at the house and lowered her voice, as if its presence would inhibit what she was about to say. ‘There’s the walls … black marks all over them, mould. And it’s spreading when you, when you don’t look at it … it was on the … the door this morning, the front door … and it wasn’t there last night …’

Jim Rhodes said nothing.

Eve couldn’t stop. All her fears were pouring out of her. ‘And … the face. I … I saw a face. Through the floorboards. The cellar. In the cellar. A white face. And I heard sounds, like … like …’ She closed her eyes, tried to force herself to remember. ‘Backwards and forwards … And no one else heard it … And … and there was writing …’

She stopped talking, the fear she had kept contained inside her exhausting itself.

‘I know it … it sounds silly, especially in daylight, but …’ She sighed. ‘We need to get out of here. All of us.’

Jim Rhodes’s eyes were filled with compassion as he spoke. ‘I told you, there’s nowhere else to go.’ He took her hand in his, his compassion now tempered by worry. ‘Look,’ he said, holding her hand tight, his voice measured, like he was giving a grave diagnosis to a patient. ‘I think it might be best if you leave when the new staff arrive.’

Eve was shocked. This wasn’t the response she had expected at all. She stepped back, her hand falling from his. ‘No, no … I’m not making this up … I didn’t …’

Jim Rhodes continued. ‘We shouldn’t have expected you to be ready for this kind of full-time care. You’re only young.’

Eve had a sudden image of herself as a tragic
heroine in a Victorian novel, denounced as hysterical, her complaints not believed, and about to be committed to an asylum for her own good. ‘No,’ she said, ‘this has got nothing to do with … I am ready. I promise.’

The empathy in Jim Rhodes’s eyes verged on the painful. He took her hand once more. ‘The new staff will be better suited to this. It’s nothing personal. But they’re all parents themselves.’ He patted her hand, gave her what he felt was a reassuring smile. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

Eve couldn’t find the words to respond. She turned, and realised that Edward was standing on the front steps. He must have heard every word.

The boy stared at her, his expression unreadable. He held up the puppet. Its red, wooden face seemed to be leering at her, mocking her.

Edward turned and went back inside.

All around, the snow was melting. The ice crust was thin and brittle, and Eve’s shoes shattered it easily, sinking to the soft, wet grass and earth beneath. One fragile world shattering to reveal another.

The children were inside the house. Eve would have said they were safe there, except she was starting to believe that might not be the case. At least they were all together and Jean was looking after them, so Eve didn’t have to worry too much about them.

She walked through the mist-wrapped woods, not noticing which direction she had come from, not caring which direction she was headed in. She hadn’t been able to stay near the house, had to get away. Jim Rhodes’s words still echoed round her head, guilt and grief intermingling.

She stopped walking, touched the cherub pendant round her neck and closed her eyes.

She wanted to cry, to scream, to be somewhere else. Someone else. She felt tears prick the corners of her closed eyes, fought them back. She wouldn’t give in, she couldn’t give in …

She opened her eyes again, wiping the tears away. Through the trees ahead of her, silhouetted against the mist, was an indistinct figure. Eve moved to the side of a tree to get a better look. Then slowly walked towards the figure.

A woman, dressed all in black. But not contemporary clothes; these were decades old. She wore a black veil, but even from a distance Eve could make out her bleached-bone skin, her dark, glittering eyes. Shock coursed through Eve’s body. She recognised the face as the one she had seen through the floorboards in the cellar. The woman glared at Eve.

‘What are you doing here?’ Eve called to her. ‘What do you want?’

The woman just turned and slowly walked away.

‘Wait …’

Eve began to hurry after her, but the woman kept moving away. She disappeared behind a clutch of trees and Eve sped up, not wanting to lose her. But the woman always seemed to be ahead of her. No matter how fast Eve ran, she couldn’t reach her. It
felt like she had slipped into a dream, a realm where waking logic no longer applied.

‘Come back …’

Eve ran even faster. So intent had she been on catching up with the retreating figure that she hadn’t taken notice of her surroundings. She had long since left the path and was now on a higher ridge with a steep slope down on her left. Melting snow covered the unfamiliar terrain and she misjudged a step, causing her to lose her balance. She slipped and fell, rolling down the hill.

She went through bracken and brambles, mud, slush and ice, until she came to rest at the bottom of the hill, her back against something cold and hard, the air knocked out of her. She kept her eyes closed until she regained her breath, then opened them.

And screamed.

A figure loomed above her, arms outstretched, wings unfolded. Heart pounding, she realised that she was looking up at a statue of an angel.

Eve slowly got to her feet, brushing the mud from her clothes. She was in a graveyard. She scanned the surrounding area. The woman she had been chasing was nowhere to be seen.

The gravestones caught her attention. They
were all old, as old as the house, she presumed. An attempt had been made to smarten them up – probably for the children’s arrival – but it was only cosmetic and largely futile. They were in bad repair. Decaying away to nothing, like the bodies beneath them had done. She could just make out the inscription on the nearest one:

Someone, Eve noticed, had attempted to scratch out the final sentence. Eve examined another stone.

Eve couldn’t read any more on that one. The stone had a huge crack across the front of it. It looked like it had either been split by lightning or someone had tampered with it.

Eve straightened up and shivered. Graveyards didn’t usually scare her. After all, there was nothing
to fear from the dead, she always rationalised, only the living. But she didn’t like it here. She felt very uneasy.

Turning round, she hurried back to the house.

She didn’t look back.

James didn’t like his milk. It tasted different from what he was used to in London; thicker and warmer. Mrs Hogg had told them that they were lucky to have it, that the milk in the country was so much fresher than that in the city. Even so, thought James, he still preferred London milk. He preferred London everything.

The children were all sitting round the dining table eating lunch. No one had spoken while they were eating; in fact they hadn’t even looked at each other. James was thinking about Tom. He kept thinking of when they would play cowboys and Indians, or Nazis and commandos, when one of them would get shot, die and then get up again, ready to fire back against their enemy. But Tom wouldn’t be getting up again. Ever.

He had seen Miss Parkins come in covered in mud, and go upstairs to change. She had been in a hurry, hoping no one had seen her. James wouldn’t tell. He prided himself that he wasn’t like that. He did wonder where she had been, though. Perhaps she had had her own bad experience with the barbed wire. He shook his head and tried not to think about it. Miss Parkins had come down and joined them, but she looked as upset as the rest of them. She was hardly eating, either. He took another mouthful of milk, then remembered he didn’t like it.

Edward was sitting opposite him. He hadn’t touched his food. He just stared at his precious drawing in his lap, that tatty old Mr Punch puppet never far from him. James wished he could do something to help him. Everything he had said or done since they had arrived had turned out to be the wrong thing. He desperately wanted a way to make things up to his friend. Make him happy again.

‘Can I have your roll?’

Alfie, sitting next to Edward, had cleared his plate but was still hungry. He was looking at Edward, seeking permission to start on his next.

Edward didn’t even acknowledge the question. Alfie took Edward’s silence as an affirmative and
reached over to Edward’s plate, ready to take the bread. James pushed Alfie’s hand away. Alfie looked up, startled.

‘He didn’t say yes,’ said James. ‘You can’t just take it.’

Alfie was surprised by James’s outburst but not put off. He shrugged and reached out again for the roll. James grabbed his hand this time, determined not to let him get it, upset with himself for not standing up for Edward earlier, desperate to make up for it now.

But as he did so, James accidentally knocked over his glass of milk. It fell sideways, the milk spilling out all over Edward’s lap.

Jean, alert as ever, was on her feet. ‘Careful, James …’

Both teachers came over to the table.

Edward moved the drawing out of the way, but he wasn’t quick enough. The milk had already hit it, wetting the paper, smudging the drawing. He looked at James, his eyes brimming with hurt.

Eve began to mop up the mess with a napkin. As she did so, James looked at Edward, his expression apologetic.

‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ James said. ‘I’m sorry, it was an accident …’

But Edward didn’t hear him. He was on his feet,
launching himself at James, kicking and punching, furious with him. James was so surprised he barely had time to bring up his hands to defend himself.

Eve was right beside them. She dropped the napkin and put her arms round Edward, grabbing him hard from behind, shouting at him to stop it, trying to pull him away from James.

Edward didn’t respond. Tears in his eyes, he just kept pummelling away. Eve tried to turn his face round.

‘Look at me … Edward, please, look at me …’

He just shrugged her away. She kept her arms tightly encircling him, not letting him move, and gradually his temper subsided. James stood away from him, body tensed, fists clenched in adrenalin-charged silence.

Miss Parkins looked at Edward’s drawing. She saw what it was – a woman and a boy – and immediately understood why it would be so precious to Edward. James also knew how much it meant to Edward, but he was so angry that he didn’t care.

I tried to be nice
, James thought,
tried to stand up for him, and this is the thanks I get. Well, I’ve had it with him …

There was a knock at the door.

‘Hello there,’ said a cheerful voice, ‘the door was open so I …’

Harry, the RAF captain, stepped into the room. His smile froze as he saw the collection of frightened, angry and grief-stricken faces.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘have I picked a bad time?’

Eve was bundled up in her heavy coat and scarf. Beside her, Harry had his greatcoat wrapped firmly round him. They made their way along the shoreline at the back of the house, the shingle gravelly, hard and snow-crusted beneath her shoes. The pair of them walked apart. The tide had gone out, leaving an expanse of black and grey mud beyond the stones. Knowing the causeway was open should have made Eve feel more connected to the mainland, less isolated. But seeing how desolate and treacherous her surroundings looked made her feel even more alone. The sky was empty, the only clouds their misting breath.

After Harry’s sudden appearance, Jean had decided Eve should get some fresh air, put some distance between herself and the recent events
in the house. ‘Go for a walk,’ she’d said, and Eve didn’t need to be told twice. Since telling Harry what had happened, there had been silence. But the further they walked from the house, the more those words felt to Eve like a confessional and she now felt long-dammed tears welling in her eyes. She wiped them away, attempted a smile to cover her sadness.