For Once In My Life: An absolutely perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

by Colleen Coleman

  As if this isn’t all unsettling enough, there are several vintage Ouija boards on display in the hallway – one of which our guide strongly cautions us against using. Believe me, I don’t need to be told twice. Feelings more than a little swayed by Christopher’s wobble, I’m beginning to think that if restless spirits do exist, then we really shouldn’t be disturbing them. Maybe we should let lie the things we don’t yet understand. Especially if we can’t see any good that may come of it.

  After the tour, I take a moment to compose myself before I go out to the car to meet Christopher. The reason being, despite all my earlier protestations, I’m a bit freaked out. But under no circumstances can I let Christopher know this. I breathe in deeply, grounding myself. I’ve got to keep it real. I’ve got to remember that there’s no such thing as ghosts, that Mr Dean is an expert in creating an atmosphere and amplifying the tension and he’s just sucked me in with his ghoulish voice and exaggerated stories and contrived effects so get over it, see it for what it is and hold it together for Christopher. I can’t show him that I’m somewhat spooked now too, and I’m definitely not going to mention that I’m staying in the murder room.

  Okay. I fetch a still pale Christopher from the car and we haul our bags up to our adjoining rooms.

  Back in the foyer, Christopher is jerking his head left to right, memorising all fire exits and possible escape routes when Mr Dean reappears, this time just with fire safety info and housekeeping, which relieves me. I’m really glad Christopher missed the tour; it even gave me the shivers. I leave out almost all details and tell him it was just a ‘historical talk’. A wave of relief passes over his face.

  Mr Dean claps for our full attention and points out the escape route, noting he leaves the lights on because visitors often flee in the middle of the night.

  ‘I figure they’d have to be pretty frightening spirits for someone to throw away the £295 it cost for the tour, bed and breakfast,’ says a tall blonde girl to her friend in a poor attempt at a whisper.

  Christopher nudges me nervously, I smile at him and roll my eyes as if it’s all just silly nonsense and I hook my arm into his. I’m so glad he’s here. I’m so glad to have someone to share this with. I became so used to living and working all by myself, I convinced myself that others would just hold me back or let me down. But now that Christopher is by my side, I feel like everything is so much more interesting when it’s shared. My heart clenches in my chest whenever he smiles at something I say. Even when he needed space today in the car, I loved being part of what we had. Actually, I’m really flattered that he felt comfortable enough to be himself, not the ever-confident, unflappable consultant that McArthur is grooming him to become.

  I lean into his ear and whisper, ‘The tour is over, so now all we’ve got to do is bed down for the night.’

  He pats his bag. ‘Cheers, Lily. You’ve been a lifesaver today. I wouldn’t have done this without you. Couldn’t have. Nearly there, eh?’

  We head upstairs and I bid goodnight to Christopher outside his room, assuring him there is nothing here but myths and make-believe – even if I’m rethinking this myself a little now – and I retire to my master bedroom to get some much-needed rest…

  But that isn’t to be.

  I must have nodded off, because the fire alarm tears me out of a deep sleep. Then three loud blasts ring through the house. And then the screaming starts. It’s piercing and relentless – so much so, I need to press my palms against my ears. I race out into the hallway to evacuate, waiting for Christopher. But I’m the only one here. Did I imagine a fire alarm? That’s disturbing, because it means I’ve just had a full-on auditory hallucination. Or perhaps it was real, but nobody actually believes there’s a fire.

  Thankfully, the screaming stops and soon Mr Dean, still fully dressed despite the early hours, rounds the corner with a flickering candle and two shivering, breathless teenage girls. No doubt in my mind that they were source of the operatic shrieking. He ushers me back to my room. ‘No fire. Happens all the time. False alarm. Please, go back to sleep. No one is in danger.’

  I take him at his word. Firstly, there’s no one else in the hallway or fleeing down the fire escape, and secondly, I can’t smell any burning or smoke. And it means I’m not out of my mind and Dorothy Shankley isn’t playing tricks on me. I can’t believe I’m even entertaining that as a possibility. But hey, twelve hours in The Shankley Hotel does make you question stuff about what’s real and what’s not, about what you thought you held true. I’m finding that out rapidly.

  Mr Dean guides me back into my room with his candlelight, shutting the door behind me and I climb back into bed.

  But now I’m wide awake and my bed feels freezing. How is that? It should still be warm, considering I bundled out of it less than five minutes ago?

  As I try to rationalise this and warm my feet at the same time, suddenly I hear a loud, urgent rapping on my door. I locked my door, right? I can’t remember if I did or not! Holy crap! What is this place doing to me? I hear a sudden gust of wind blast against my window and I’m not going to lie. I scream. I scream and I scream and I scream. The door flings open and I jump out of my bed, screaming harder than I ever have in my whole life, and bolt backwards against the window, yowling every swear word I know.

  Then, with the flick of a switch, the chandelier snaps in to life and I’m blinded with an assault of cold, bright light.

  Shielding my face with both arms and squinting at the door, I see a figure. I see it move on the spot. But it isn’t the White Lady standing in my doorway half-dressed with a cricket bat in hand.

  It’s Christopher.

  Oh my God, I can feel my heart throbbing in my throat. I want to kill him and kiss him at the same time. He places a finger to his lips, gently pushing the door closed behind him. We both stand and wait, breathless, listening.

  ‘There’s someone outside the room,’ Christopher whispers as he tiptoes carefully towards me, his voice more uncertain than I have ever heard it.

  AAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

  More screaming! And we both jump. I grab Christopher’s shoulders, clinging to him and ducking my head in to his chest. More hideous, piercing, high-pitched shrieking comes from down the hall. We hear the opening and shutting of doors, pounding feet down the stairs, a bounding across the floorboards.

  Already confused and more than a little alarmed at the chaos in the corridor, I start to hear a frantic beeping through the wall of my bedroom. I take Christopher by the wrist and we head out into the hallway to investigate. We run into one of the teenage girls staying in the adjacent room. The beeping is coming from a ‘ghost detector’ app she’s downloaded on her iPhone. While basic logic tells me that an app clearly can’t detect supernatural occurrences, I can’t get over the fact that the ‘detector’ calms down whenever she goes back into her room – where no murders happened – and increasingly gets louder, faster and more agitated as she gets closer to my room. When we venture into my room, the app gets very excited. Especially over the spot where the ghost was supposed to reside.

  Where my pillows happen to be.

  I convince her to delete the app, especially if it’s going to incite more of her blood-curdling shrieking, or mine and try to get some sleep. By which I mean, let us get some sleep. I’m heading back down the hallway to my bedroom. Hopefully for the final time tonight. And this time I will certainly be locking my door, that’s for sure.

  I check my phone, and see it’s just after 2 a.m.

  Christopher escorts me to my room, stands at the doorway and points wordlessly at the four-poster bed, where all the ‘activity’ seemed to hover. ‘Really?’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But it’s only a couple of hours till the sun comes up and once it’s light, we’ll just get in my car and drive far, far away from here.’

  He swallows and trails his hand down the back of his neck. ‘Mind if I stay in here with you? On the ground, of course, I’ll grab my bag, just in case it disappears overnigh
t,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to stay alone in my room.’

  I nod, inwardly delighted and relieved. The more time I spend with Christopher, the more I’m realising how much I want to spend time with him. And how I miss him when he’s not around. Plus, I have to admit I could do with the company right now. This whole evening has got me surprisingly worked up and I don’t want to be alone either.

  ‘You can’t possibly sleep on the floor, Christopher, it’s freezing. This bed is huge, more than enough room for the two of us.’ I pat the bedspread, just as the fire alarm sounds again, but fortunately it cuts halfway through. Christopher tip toes across the hall to get his things. There’s no chance of a decent night’s sleep now, but I’m utterly exhausted. I want sleep so bad. Not just because my eyes are starting to sting but because I want to drift away in a dream and forget that we are still here.

  ‘If you’re sure?’ Christopher asks as he stands by the end of my bed, travel bag in tow.

  ‘I am. Now lock the door and turn off the main light, I’ll keep the nightlight on. Just get in and let’s try to get some shut-eye.’

  The light goes down. I feel the weight of him climb into the bed beside me. He stays on top of the covers, and I feel him wriggle and settle, pulling his own blanket up to his chin to try to stay warm.

  This will work. There’s nothing weird here. Just two colleagues adapting to the situation. If I was here with Amy or Jasmine, this wouldn’t even be considered inappropriate or unusual. So why shouldn’t it be fine just because we’re a man and woman? We’re grown-ups. We can do this without making it a big deal. Right?

  * * *

  I’ve been snoozing for less than thirty minutes when I wake up to what feels like a gush of air on my feet. Praying that my frightened, fatigued mind is playing tricks on me, I try to drift back off to a happier place, but a few moments later, I hear Christopher tossing and turning, making distressed noises, as if he’s having a very vivid nightmare.

  I shake him awake, and his wide eyes are full of fear until he realises where he is and who I am.

  ‘I felt a weight on my chest,’ he says, still gasping for breath. ‘It was wet and cold.’ He looks at me, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. Neither of us is getting back to sleep. ‘I can’t do this sober.’ Christopher turns on the lamp by his side of the bed and reaches down for his rucksack. ‘Which is a positive, because it means I can do it, just not without the filter of intoxication. Baby steps.’ He pulls out a half-finished bottle of wine and twists the cork to re-open it.

  ‘We’ll leave as soon as the sun comes up, I promise,’ I say, watching his hand tremble slightly as he pours the wine into two plastic cups. He’s really freaked out and I’m desperate to know why, but after the way he was in the car earlier, distant and closed, I know I’ll have to choose my questions carefully. ‘I wonder if people are born with an innate belief in the paranormal or whether it happens because they experience something in their own lives?’

  At least this way, he can decide whether to shrug and say he doesn’t know or to open up. The choice is his, but I’d love to find out. I want to find out all about Christopher. What he thinks, why he thinks it, what he wants from life, what’s important to him, what he hopes for.

  He shuts his eyes and takes a big swig of wine. ‘For me personally, it was a bad experience. I know you think it’s a gimmick, but I swear my grandmother’s house was haunted.’

  ‘What happened?’ I ask him, relaxing into the cushions and eager to hear more, eager to just watch him speak, watch the way he runs his fingers through his hair and pauses before he meets my gaze.

  ‘We moved into her place to care for her as she got older. The house was large and old, in a state of disrepair.’ He speaks slowly, distractedly, as though his mind is grappling with some abstract problem. ‘Local gossip said it boasted three “presences”: a woman who stalked the ground floor, an elderly doctor forever racing up the stairs searching for a dying grandson and, in its upper reaches, the victim of an argument that had spilled over into murder. There was even what appeared to be a bloodstain that could not be removed, which had since been covered with carpet.’

  I take a deep breath and look around our room. ‘Was it a house like this one?’

  He nods. ‘Almost identical.’

  I sit up in the bed, pulling the covers under my chin.

  ‘You must think I’m crazy,’ he says, green eyes flickering in the half-light.

  I shake my head. I’m intrigued. ‘Not at all, go on,’ I urge him. ‘What else? I can tell by the look on your face there’s more.’

  He smiles. ‘You really do want to know, don’t you. Lily, you picked the perfect career for yourself, you know that?’

  I smile back and nudge him gently. ‘Come on, I’m hooked. Tell me everything.’

  He clears his throat and I watch as he stretches out his arms and relaxes back into the cushions next to me.

  ‘There was something so sinister about the place, a personality, a sense that we were intruding, like it was already occupied. It never felt quite empty. Doors would shut of their own volition, footsteps would sound on the staircase when everyone was in bed. I always felt like I was being watched. Even if I was in the bath!’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Please stop me if I’m boring you.’

  ‘Boring me? Never!’ I clink my plastic cup against his.

  He takes another sip and indulges me.

  ‘Every few weeks, when the house kicked off, it kicked off in epic style. Some nights at 4 a.m., someone – something – would tear up the stairs, rattling the doorknobs, then forcing open the old, antique doors, all of which required proper turning and thrusting, until it reached my room, entering in a furious, door-slamming blast. This may sound like nothing, but I cannot tell you how regularly this happened. And how much it shook me.’ He blinks his eyes at me. ‘One night, I roared at it, told it to “leave us alone and shut the fuck up” and it did, briefly, before recommencing with still more drama. There was a silver lining to this episode: my little sister, then nine, still alludes to my big-brother bravery with the line: “Christopher can send ghosts back to where they came from.”’

  ‘She sounds like she really looks up to you.’ I say. ‘How lovely to have a sibling to look out for. To look out for you. How lovely to have a relationship that begins as an infant and grows right through your whole life. I always wished for a brother or sister,’ I tell him. ‘I think it’s a very special bond.’

  We pause a moment and then he gives me a wry smile. ‘She was terrified by the rapping on the windows, and the way the dogs would always growl, hackles raised, teeth bared, at a certain spot in the kitchen where the old larder was. Back then, we didn’t use the G-word. In fact, we were encouraged not to use any word at all – not to acknowledge any rumblings, certainly not to discuss it. And so the house tried harder, with what, I imagine, would be referred to as classic poltergeist activity. We would return home to find the taps turned on full force, requiring wrenching back into inaction. The new electric oven would have its rings switched to red hot. After the third time it happened, we had it disconnected. But it still happened again.’

  I’m starting to understand a little more how much our past influences our present. How protective we are of exposing the secret fears we carry in our hearts. I can’t help but feel incredibly honoured that he’s sharing his deepest fears with me. How courageous of him to trust me with that, his greatest vulnerability, his most hidden weakness. I’m humbled by it.

  ‘How did you stay there? That’s not just frightening, it sounds dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, well, I wanted to leave, believe me. It was the first year of my life I actually counted the days to get back to boarding school. Then things got worse. One night, the disused fireplace in my room sounded as if it was caving in. I put my pillow over my ears, telling myself it must be a trapped bird, but the next morning, I investigated. Behind the fireplace, crammed up the chimney, were Victorian
newspapers recording the murder that had happened in the house.

  ‘At breakfast, drinking tea in the kitchen, it just came out; the whole family finally admitted that something was happening. We tried to laugh and tease each other, but, my God, it was a relief. It transpired that even our dog would always shy at the gate, and I’ve heard that pets still do, padding the ground in fear.’

  ‘Did they sell up and move far, far away? I think that’s what I’d have to do.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s a family house so not something we wanted to walk away from. Eventually, things settled. Over time, a year or two, events gradually petered out.’

  I pour more wine, two big measures this time.

  ‘You should write all that down. You’re one heck of a storyteller.’

  ‘Thanks. But I think I’ll leave the writing to the writers.’

  ‘You don’t fool me. I’ve seen you scribbling away in your notepad. That’s a writerly thing to do. If you weren’t a writer, you’d be sat at the bar playing games on your phone.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind of you to say. I did like the idea once upon a time. I even suggested to my father that I study English Literature at university, but he scowled at the prospect. As I imagined he would.’

  ‘Why would he scowl at that? That’s amazing, to study English at uni, right?’

  ‘Not as amazing as studying something more profitable, such as Business.’

  ‘I see. Well, I guess it’s nice to have a dad that cares so much about you. And your future.’

  ‘I’ve never told anyone that before,’ says Christopher, rubbing his cheeks. ‘Any of it – about my grandmother’s house or about my sister or about my dad… or even that I fancied myself as a writer once upon a time.’

  ‘Not even a friend or a partner?’ I query.

  He shakes his head. ‘My male friends don’t tend to discuss stuff like this to be fair. We tend to keep it simple: sport and share prices, that kind of thing. And I’m not often sitting up in bed with them drinking wine and having deep and meaningfuls.’