Too Near the Dead

by Helen Grant

  “And had a good look?”

  “I couldn’t not look, James.” I can feel my own temper rising. I can’t bear the familiar feeling of being unjustly accused. “You owe nearly twenty-two thousand pounds. It kind of stood out.”

  “Only because you were reading my post. Addressed to me.”

  “I’m sorry, James. I apologise for reading your post. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that my fiancé owes nearly twenty-two thousand pounds and didn’t think to mention it.”

  “That’s my business.” James looks as grim as I ever have seen him, but there is no turning back now.

  “It’s my business too! We’re getting married, remember?”

  “Of course I remember.” James’s voice is steely. “But we’re not living in a sodding Jane Austen novel, where people have to prove they have an independent fortune before they get married.”

  “It’s not about the money! It’s about the fact that you didn’t tell me.” My voice is sliding up the scale towards a shout. “We could pay the whole lot off, you know that, if we cut back on the wedding plans and used our savings. But we have to plan that together. You just let me go on buying armchairs and looking at dresses and God knows what else and all the time you had that massive debt. It’s practically lying, James.”

  “I’m not the only one,” he snaps. “You knew about this and you didn’t say anything. If you didn’t mean to look, why didn’t you own up right away?”

  “Own up?” I am outraged. “I’m not the one in the wrong here.”

  “You’re the one who snooped.”

  “I did not snoop!”

  James picks up his tumbler of whisky from the counter and drains it in one. Then he turns away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs,” he says. “To change. I’ve been travelling half the day and then standing about at Perth station. I don’t need any of this right now.”

  For one moment I am tempted to pick up my own glass and throw it. I fight the impulse down. Instead, I stand there in silence and watch him go, the bitter poison of anger circulating through my body. We have never fought like this before – never. I have no idea where we go from here.

  Later, James comes downstairs again and goes straight into his study. I am calmer now, though still angry, and I go and stand outside the door, debating whether to go inside and have it out with him. Then I hear his voice through the panels and realise that he is phoning someone. Laura, probably. Always bloody Laura. I stalk away and leave him to it.

  Barr Dubh House is big enough for two people to be in it without interacting at all. I don’t see James all evening, although I hear him come out of the study and clatter about in the kitchen for a bit. He doesn’t come to find me, and I don’t seek him out either. Eventually he goes up to bed. I hear the boiler fire up as he takes a shower. When it goes off again and the bedroom door shuts, I am still downstairs in the living room. I have a book open on my lap but I haven’t read more than a paragraph; I can’t concentrate on it. All the same, I sit there for another half an hour, until the darkness outside the windows is beginning to play on my nerves and I shut the unread book.

  I creep into bed beside James. He isn’t lying on his back tonight, in his usual confident posture; he is on his side, his back to me. I turn my back to him, too. It takes a while for me to get to sleep, because I am still tense with anger and misery. And perhaps these bitter emotions have armoured me against whatever haunts Barr Dubh House, because when I finally do sleep, I don’t dream of anything at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When I wake, it is light outside, and I am alone. James’s side of the bed is empty. I lie there for a while, looking at the ceiling.

  Soon, I will have to go downstairs. What do I want to happen when I get down there? I don’t know. The hot anger I felt yesterday evening has cooled. I no longer feel like throwing glassware around. But I’m still sore about being accused of snooping. I wasn’t. And then James seemed to think that my opening his credit card statement was worse than his concealing a huge debt... I am beginning to feel angry again. There’s no way I’m going to be the one to apologise first. Or at all. I turn onto my side and glare at the wall.

  Gradually, though, the bitter current of anger blends into the slow dragging sensation of misery. There is no satisfaction in believing that I am in the right. Not long ago, we were happy. Now I have no idea how to get back to that place. I don’t even know how James will be when I finally go downstairs: angry, resentful, contrite, silent? This is the first real row we’ve had.

  Eventually I get out of bed, put on my robe and go downstairs, padding silently on bare feet. The kitchen is so still and quiet that for a moment I think I’m alone in there. Then I see James standing by the window, staring out. He doesn’t turn round, even when I pick up the kettle and fill it from the tap. It’s as though he hasn’t noticed I’m there. It’s not until I’ve finished making myself a cup of tea and laid the teaspoon carefully in the sink that he says, “Fen.”

  He does turn round then, and we look at each other. He looks tired, I notice.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever need to tell you,” he says. He sighs. “I nearly didn’t have to.”

  “But it’s so much money,” I say.

  “I could have covered it. I’ve got some big advances coming in – I thought they’d be in by now, but it takes them ages to get round to paying, and then Laura sits on the money for twenty eight days. I phoned her last night and told her to sort it out or I’d find another agent.”

  “Oh, James.” I am impressed with this, in spite of everything. “What did she say?”

  “She said she’d sort it out.”

  “Wow.” I shake my head. “But James, you could have told me. It’s like you said, we’re not living in a – what did you call it? – a sodding Jane Austen novel.” I can’t help it; my lips twitch at the memory of that.

  “I know,” he says. “But there was never a right time. Before we decided to get married, it was my problem, one I was going to sort out myself. And then you came into all that money. What was I going to do, say, oh, that’s lucky, because I have twenty-two thousand pounds I need to pay off? I have some pride.”

  “You are living in a sodding Jane Austen novel,” I observe.

  “A George Eliot novel,” he says, with the ghost of a smile. “The penniless but strangely alluring artist.”

  “James...” I hesitate. “How did you come to owe that much money to start with?”

  “Gambling,” he says, and then grins at my expression. “Not that sort of gambling. I gave up my last job to write my first book. I said to myself I’d give it a year, and if I couldn’t write anything worth publishing in that time, I’d go back to work.” He shrugs. “I know – it was risky.”

  “Very risky,” I say severely. Hardly anyone lives on writing novels.

  “Basically I lived on my overdraft and my credit card. I didn’t run up the whole lot that first year. I finished the book and started sending it off to agents, and I got lucky. Laura was one of the first I sent it to and she loved it. But the first thing she wanted to know was whether I had anything else in the pipeline. So I thought: in for a penny. I didn’t go back to work. I wrote The Unrepentant Dead instead. By the time I’d finished that, I was starting to think I’d have to give up full time writing because my card was maxed out. But then it won the prize and Laura started to get me foreign rights deals. I reckoned I could get by, and pay off the debts when the advances came in. And you know, I realised I loved writing and didn’t want to give it up.”

  “Shame on you,” I say reprovingly. “If you were a proper writer you’d say it was absolute agony pouring out your soul every day.”

  “It is,” he says. “I’m just putting a brave face on it.”

  Now we’re both grinning and I feel a great wave of relief. We are alright. Nothin
g is irreparably broken.

  “I’m sorry I looked at your post,” I tell him, and now I actually mean it. “I really didn’t mean to snoop. I was trying to be helpful.”

  “I know,” he says. “I guess I overreacted. I wasn’t trying to lie about anything. I’d probably have told you anyway, now that I know the money’s coming in, only...”

  “Only...?”

  “You haven’t been yourself, and I didn’t know why... because you didn’t tell me.” He says this without rancour.

  “It just sounds so crazy,” I say. And it does, at this time of day, when the bright sunshine is slanting in through the windows. “I mean, if someone else told me the stuff I told you yesterday, I’d think they were making it up, or else that they were delusional.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, do I seem delusional to you?”

  “Well, you’re marrying me, for a start...” James shakes his head. “No, I don’t think you’re delusional. But I can’t explain any of the stuff you told me.”

  “I can’t explain it either. I mean, I can’t explain how it’s happening. But I think I’m genuinely dreaming about someone else’s experiences. The details are so exact.”

  James rubs his face with his hand. “I’m not going to make any sense of this until I’ve had some coffee.”

  So he puts the coffee maker on, and I drink my first cup of tea and make myself another. Then we sit either side of the breakfast bar and look at each other.

  “Look,” says James, “I know I’ve already asked you this, and don’t get mad, but is there any way at all that you could have heard the story of Euphemia Alexander before the dreams started? It’s the obvious explanation.”

  I’m already shaking my head.

  “You used to come up here on holiday when you were a kid, didn’t you? You could have heard it then and forgotten it, at least consciously.”

  “I really didn’t, James.”

  “What about all the research you’ve been doing, on the house and her life? Could that be influencing what you’re dreaming about?”

  “The dreams started before I did any of that.” I think about it. “The very first dream was one about being buried alive in a wedding dress. And I didn’t even find out that Euphemia was buried in hers until three days ago, when I read it in that book in the library.”

  “It’s fascinating,” says James. “If you’re really experiencing someone’s past life.”

  “It’s not,” I say with feeling. “It’s horrible.”

  “But why is it happening?”

  “Does there have to be a why? Maybe I’m just seeing an echo of the past or something, if that’s even possible.”

  “Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps she wants her story told.”

  I look down into my tea. “But I don’t want to hear it. I can’t stand it, James. That’s the truth. I’m afraid to go to sleep at night in case it happens again.”

  “Maybe it won’t,” he says. “Maybe she’s told you whatever she wanted to say – if that’s what’s happening.”

  Maybe. If. I can hear from these words that there is still doubt in James’s mind. It makes me feel desperate. I don’t think this is about something as simple as listening to Euphemia Alexander’s story and I don’t think she’s going to leave me alone if I do. I think about the times I’ve seen that indistinct form dressed in lavender roaming the land around Barr Dubh House. It’s me who sees her. James never does. Then I think about the things I have found – the grave decoration, the ring, the inkstand. Items from a phantom house that no longer exists. There is purpose in these things, though I don’t know what it is. What can she possibly want?

  I’ve been silent too long.

  “Hey,” says James. He puts out a hand and covers mine. “Next time I have to go away, come with me.”

  I nod, biting my lip. I don’t think it will solve the problem, but I also don’t think I ever want to spend the night on my own at Barr Dubh again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I am in Perth on a grey weekday morning, making my way along pavements that are shiny with rain, heading for the solicitor’s. It’s one of those offices that advertises properties for sale and offers conveyancing as well. James knows I am here, and why. Not more secrets, that’s the agreement. I pause before I go in, perusing the photographs in the window while the rain patters off my umbrella. We could buy a town house overlooking the park if we wanted. We’d have neighbours on both sides and a busy street outside. I can’t imagine feeling haunted there.

  I push the door open, folding the umbrella carefully. The woman sitting behind the desk is perhaps ten years older than I am and very precisely coiffed and made up. A name plate on the desk top proclaims her to be Jean Murray. She looks at me over the top of a chic pair of spectacles with a thin gold chain and I see from her expression that she recognises me immediately.

  “Miss Munro,” she says, rising to her feet. “Or is it Mrs. Sinclair already?”

  ‘Still Miss Munro at the moment,” I say. “I’m impressed you remembered.”

  She gives me a tigerish smile at this, but there is a hint of restraint in her manner. There is no reason for me to be back here so soon and she is wondering what I want.

  “How are you finding the magnificent Barr Dubh House?” she asks me, and I suspect that she is daring me to contradict her statement of its magnificence.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I say evasively. “This is an enquiry really, not an instruction – not at this stage.” I sit across the desk from her and put the dripping umbrella on the carpet by my feet. “In your opinion, if we put Barr Dubh back on the market, would we get a lot of interest? Would it sell fairly quickly?”

  “It’s an unusual property,” she says. “It would depend on a suitable buyer coming along at the right time.”

  Which tells me nothing at all.

  “Are people looking at properties in this price range at the moment?” I persist.

  She folds her hands in front of her on the desk and gives me a direct look, radiating sincerity for all she’s worth.

  “To be honest with you, Miss Munro, the run-up to Christmas is never a very good time to sell. Winter can be altogether a difficult time. It can be hard to show a property off at its best, especially in a rural location. If you were to put it on the market in the spring, however...”

  She lets the sentence trail off invitingly.

  “If we lowered the price?”

  Jean Murray purses her lips at this; the very idea offends her commercial soul.

  “Of course, anything will sell if you price it low enough. But Miss Munro, you and Mr. Sinclair paid a very reasonable price for Barr Dubh when you bought it. I couldn’t recommend going any lower, certainly not as a starting point.”

  “What if we rented it out?”

  “The same considerations would apply, I’m afraid. Winter is not the ideal time. But if you asked us to handle the rental – or sale – we would obviously do our very best to get things moving as quickly as possible.”

  She goes on for a while after that, describing the company’s credentials and the wonders of their personal service. Mindful of my English accent, she reminds me that under the Scottish system we only need to accept an offer and then things will move very quickly. A matter of weeks.

  I’m not really listening. I nod every so often, but all I can think is: I can’t get away from Barr Dubh, even if I want to. Oh, she’s probably right about the spring being a better time, but I have all the rest of the winter to get through first – the darkest days, when it’s light for less than eight hours out of every twenty-four.

  I rouse myself. “The house was empty for a while before we bought it, wasn’t it?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says, “But an agent went in regularly. It was well maintained.”

&nbs
p; That’s not what I’m getting at. “There was no other interest?”

  “As I say, it’s an unusual property,” she says smoothly. “You simply need the right buyer.”

  “At the right time,” I say flatly, and get a tight smile in reply.

  “Exactly,” she says.

  Perhaps unreasonably, I am starting to dislike Jean Murray quite a lot. I decide I don’t really care what she thinks of my questions. I am going to get as much out of her as I can.

  I pause for a moment, as though sunk in important deliberations.

  “The house is less than three years old, isn’t it?” I say. “The people we bought it from were the ones who built it.”

  She nods.

  “We’ve been in it six months, and it was empty for – what, eighteen months before that?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So the first people can’t have been living in it for any time at all. Less than a year.”

  “I suppose not,” says Jean Murray.

  “So why did they sell it?”

  There is a silence after I ask this question, and I let it stretch out, resisting the temptation to suggest any reasons that Jean Murray might seize upon.

  “I really can’t say,” she says eventually.

  “Didn’t they say anything at all?”

  “I can’t really comment on clients’ individual circumstances.”

  “Can you give me their forwarding address?”

  She shakes her head. “I could ask Mrs. Clarke, the solicitor, if she is prepared to forward a communication to either of them. But may I ask what this is about, Miss Munro? If you feel that there was something irregular in the house sale, we’d like to know about it first.”

  “I really can’t say,” I tell her. I pick up my umbrella and stand up to leave. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Do think of us if you do decide to sell,” she says, maintaining the professional mask to the last.

  I step outside into the rain and put up my umbrella.