by Graham West
I picked Josie up from The Keys that night, after opting for a coffee and a catch up at Tammy’s. She climbed into the passenger seat and let out a long sigh.
“So what happened with the stripper?” I asked.
Jo rolled her eyes. “No more fucking hen parties! That’s it!”
“I take it things got out of hand?”
Jo shook her head. “It was what they had in their hands that was the problem,” she said without a flicker of a smile. “The bride was about to go down on the guy while her mates filmed it! Honestly! And they talk about blokes!”
I grinned. “I bet you were popular!”
“I nearly got lynched. They accused me of ruining the show. The stripper managed to calm them down, and when they were leaving, the bride’s sister thanked me for putting a stop to the whole thing.” Josie fastened her seat belt as we moved off. “I can’t believe it. That girl would have regretted it for the rest of her life—and it would have been on her mate’s phone, too.”
I had coffee and garlic bread; Jo went for chocolate, her resolve broken the moment she saw the cake under the glass. “It’s begging to be eaten,” she told me. “How can I refuse?”
“Go for it!” I laughed, “We can eat healthy tomorrow!”
Jo threw me a mockingly indignant look. “I’ll have you know I’ve lost another two pounds!”
I told her she didn’t need to and that she was perfect as she was. I meant it.
We sat for over an hour talking about the Stanwicks’ house, Amelia, and ghosts. Conversation was always easy, and eventually, we started reminiscing. It was good that we had a history. The woman by my side had not come in out of the cold; she was not a stranger with baggage I knew nothing about. We had been friends, and although I had never believed that friends made good lovers, maybe Josie was the exception.
We left Tammy’s at close to midnight, and as I started up the engine Josie touched my arm. “Look, hun—over there.” I followed the direction of her eyes. “The car,” she whispered.
The red Fiat was parked up in the far corner of the car park. I stared hard but couldn’t make out the face of the occupant. Josie’s eyes were better than mine.
“There’s two of them,” she said.
“Male or female?” I asked, my heart beginning to race.
“Can’t tell…just shapes,” She replied. “Best just drive. Stop over with me at The Keys.”
The Fiat followed but turned off before we reached home. “I’ll make your bed up,” Jo said as we parked up. “Best not take any chances. Your life is complicated enough.”
I laughed but wasn’t sure why. There was no reason why anyone should be taking an interest in my whereabouts, but the mistaken-identity theory was starting to bug me.
“Promise me you will never, ever even think of approaching that car, Rob,” she said as I was turning in, praying for a decent sleep.
“No chance, babe,” I said. “I’m too much of a coward.”
Josie kissed my cheek. “That’s one thing you ain’t, hun,” she said. “Get some sleep. You’ve got a big weekend coming up.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I looked over at my daughter as the Stanwicks’ former home loomed up from behind its tree-lined driveway. “This is it,” I said. “This is where Amelia lived.”
We watched as the gates eased open with a series of creaks and clangs, wondering if this really was the end of our journey. Jenny looked up, searching for an attic window. We were both thinking the same thing.
A young domestic in a pale-blue uniform answered the door and waved us in. “You’re here to see Mr. Farriday?” We nodded and followed like obedient children as she weaved through a room of tables laid for dinner.
“Do you think Amelia ever saw this room?” Jenny whispered as we passed a couple of elderly ladies sipping tea in the corner. The thought chilled me. I almost expected to find her waiting around the next corner.
Brian Farriday was sitting in an office that would probably have been nothing more than a storage cupboard when the Stanwicks had lived there. He acknowledged us with a brief hand gesture and continued with his phone call. He was a rather lanky, awkward-looking character, with deep-set eyes and a receding hairline, who would have looked more at home in a sit com than running a home for the elderly.
Jenny stared at the photographs, postcards and health and safety notices pinned to the walls. Could the spirit of Amelia still be here?
Farriday replaced the receiver and apologised. “Never a minute, I’m afraid.” He stood and closed the door. “To be honest, I’ll be glad to get shut of the place.” He smiled. “We’ve just had the outside painted but I’m afraid it’s falling apart.”
I looked at him quizzically. “Really?”
Farriday sighed. “There’s a lot of repair work on an old place like this, and when it’s full of old people, you can’t really start pulling their home apart.”
Jenny frowned. “But I’d heard it was haunted.”
Farriday laughed. Thin lips. White teeth. “Oh, some of the old folk tell us they hear things, but medication and dreams play a big part in it, I would guess.”
“But it does have a history of weird stuff going on,” Jenny insisted.
Farriday grinned “Well, the Morton family had the attic room bricked up,” he said. “But you don’t have to worry. Your mother will be safe—”
“Bricked up? Why?” My heart sank. “Look,” I continued, deciding that it was time to come clean, “we’re not looking for a place for my mother—or father. They’re both dead. We’re here about the attic.”
Farriday frowned. “The attic?”
“This is going to sound really bizarre, but we need to see that room.”
“You can’t. Like I told you, it’s bricked up.”
Jenny looked at me, then at Farriday. “We would pay to open it up.”
Farriday shook his head. “Open it up? Are you kidding me?”
Jenny slumped back in her chair. Farriday saw the look of disappointment. “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t just start knocking walls down at the whim of two people who have just walked in off the street. I don’t know you from Adam!”
“We’d also pay to have the door bricked up again,” I replied.
Farriday shrugged. “I’m sorry, this whole thing sounds crazy to me. Why are you so desperate to see a dingy attic? I really don’t understand.”
Jenny and I looked at each other. “It’s your story, sweetheart—you tell him.”
***
We followed Farriday up the stairway as he rattled a bunch of keys like an irritated jailer. “I’ll show you the door. It still opens, apparently.
“I thought it was bricked up.”
“It is—behind the door.”
“So that should make it easier to knock down. It—”
“No,” Farriday snapped, quickening his pace.
We reached the top of the stairs, breaking into a trot in an effort to keep up with our host as he strode ahead past a series of open doors, each room occupied by domestics, dusting and changing bed sheets. The grandeur of the Stanwicks’ house had been lost under plasterboard and pipes. Rooms had been turned into bedsits, oak-panelled doors had been painted and the carpets were going threadbare. I wished I’d taken time to find out if any photographs of the old place in all its glory actually existed. The time when little Amelia lived with her weak mother. The times when Sarah would climb those stairs with a heavy heart.
Farriday spun to the left, and we soon found ourselves following him up a much steeper and narrower stairway. My heart began to pump harder.
“It’s just up here,” Farriday told us. “Although there’s not much to see.”
The attic door was probably the only thing in the whole house that hadn’t been painted. It remained in its original state. Old panelled mahogany. Farriday fished for the key.
“Why is it locked? You can’t get in!”
Farriday rolled his eyes. “Superstition,” he replied. “N
ot mine—my wife’s.”
“So she believes in spirits, then?”
Farriday nodded. “She’s convinced they exist—unlike me.”
The key twisted in the lock. “There you go,” Farriday said stepping back. “Take a look.”
Jenny stepped forward. We both held our breaths. What would be waiting on the other side?
“Go on,” I urged as Jenny hesitated, her hand resting on the brass door knob. She twisted and pulled. The door creaked and strained as my daughter pulled it towards her. A blast of cold air hit us, the musty scent of old wood and damp walls. Yet, sure enough, there was nothing but brick.
We stood in silence, looking at the wall, as if at any moment it would part like a theatre curtain as the show began, but there was no sound or movement. Even the chill had evaporated, along with the musty scent of Amelia’s home.
“Well, this is it,” Farriday said. “Your story was fascinating, but I’m afraid I can do no more.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Jenny snapped.
Farriday glared, clearly vexed. “I’m sorry. I won’t.”
***
Jenny seemed remarkably at peace as we drove home. “I thought you’d be disappointed,” I said as we pulled up outside the house.
Jenny smiled. “He’ll change his mind,” she said. “Just wait and see.” Jenny could tell I wasn’t convinced. “It’ll gnaw away at him,” she continued. “Okay, he doesn’t believe in spirits, but I bet he’s the type who won’t like people keeping secrets—he’ll want to know what’s really on the other side of that door.”
I didn’t see a man like Farriday giving in under pressure. We had done the right thing in leaving with a handshake and our number scribbled on a post-it note.
“I know how you feel about that room, Jen, but you have to be prepared—”
“I need to be in that room,” she said as we walked through the door. “I’ve got to believe that Farriday will change his mind.”
I sensed that Jenny didn’t want to pursue the subject any further. She flicked on the TV. We were trying hard, and I never doubted that Jenny loved me, yet there was a wall between us as impenetrable as the one keeping us out of Amelia’s room. She wasn’t mine—and I wasn’t hers.
The TV became our focus, allowing us to avoid any meaningful conversation. I grabbed the remote and killed the sound. Jenny shot me a look. “What are you doing?”
“We need to talk.”
Jenny groaned. “About what?”
“You know what.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
“I need to know how you feel.” I could hear my father again—easy, my son…easy. “You’ll always be my girl, Jen. I couldn’t feel any differently towards you, even if I wanted to.”
Jenny continued to stare at the TV screen. “Are you seeing Josie?”
The question came like a surge of electricity through my body. “How do you mean?”
Jenny turned and glared at me. “It’s a simple question.”
“Josie’s married.”
“So were you. But it didn’t stop you screwing the bitch?”
I felt like a deflated tyre, my spirit leaking from every pore. “We’re friends. She’s been there for me.”
Jenny smiled sarcastically. “The age old prelude to an affair.”
“But I don’t understand where this is going?”
“Okay, the bottom line is this. You fancy the pants off Josie, it’s so obvious. You don’t have any ties, you don’t have a wife, you don’t have any children.” Jenny looked at me with venom in her eyes. “So why don’t you and Josephine piss off into the sunset and leave me and my murderous little twat of a half brother alone!”
If I’d had an answer, I could have barely voiced it. Jenny grabbed the remote and turned up the sound. Back off, son, you’re done here. Let her rest. So we sat watching a movie neither of us had the energy to follow, and that night, as Jenny rose and signalled that she was going to bed, I told her that I loved her. I loved her more than anything else in the world. She turned away without answering, and I listened to her footsteps on the stairs. At the end of the tunnel, the light that kept my hopes alive flickered and died.
***
Up to that moment, the weekend had been neither a success nor a failure. We had been comfortable together without being close. I returned from the hospital that Monday feeling deflated, like a father returning his child to her home after spending a few short and precious hours together. The house was empty once more.
I was about to call Josie. In fact, my hand was on the receiver when the phone rang. It was Farriday.
“Mr. Adams? I have been talking to my wife about that attic room…” He paused. “I’m afraid she has overruled me.” He laughed. “You know what women are like. Once she heard your story… She’s fascinated by ghost stories although she’ll probably sleep with the lights on in future.”
Jenny had been right. It was something more than optimism. It was knowledge.
“Anyway, we are getting our odd job man to open up the doorway—probably at the end of the week. Laura—er, my wife—wants to keep the door locked until you’re ready.”
I replaced the receiver after thanking him profusely. Suddenly, the place didn’t feel so empty. I called Sebastian, who sounded as upbeat as I felt.
“Come on over,” he said brightly. “I’ve someone I’d like you to meet.”
***
The German shepherd pup yelped excitedly at Sebastian’s heels as I followed them into the lounge.
“I’ve called him Ricky,” Sebastian told me. “I couldn’t have called him by any other name.” The old man looked truly pleased with his new companion. “How about a shot of whisky in your coffee?”
It was a kind of celebration I suppose, for the two of us had turned a corner. I just wasn’t so sure what awaited me on the road ahead.
Jenny was convinced that Amelia’s attic home would hold the truth within its walls, but what would happen if the room she had visited in her dreams refused to give up its secrets? Where would we go from there?
Sebastian listened intently and then asked, “Exactly what are you expecting?”
I shrugged. The old man was going to tell me, obviously.
“You have to leave yourself open. You have to feel the place. Jenny has never been wrong—there will be something in that room.”
“Amelia?”
“Who knows?”
Maybe that was the thing I feared most—more than finding nothing at all.
“You need to remember,” the old man continued, “Amelia requires a resting place…a proper burial. Once you have found the body, Jenny will be free.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand. Why should a spirit worry about a decayed shell?”
“It is not so much the body, it is the manner of her death. She lived and died with no recognition, whereas the man who raped and brutally assaulted her lies immortalised in the house of God.” Sebastian shot me a look. There was anger in his eyes. “I don’t think I’d be able to rest in those circumstances, do you?”
He lifted a whimpering Ricky onto his knee.
“Remember me telling you about the student who died in a road accident?”
I nodded.
“He appeared to me within an hour of his death, simply to tell me that I had been wrong. All those things of which I’d been so convinced. There was no God, no life after death. It was as if he could not rest until he had let me know.” Sebastian smiled. “Amelia cannot rest, either.”
***
I left the old man’s house imagining an irate spirit languishing behind the wall of the Stanwicks’ attic, waiting to unleash its fury upon the world. Jenny brightened when I told her about Farriday’s call that evening, but there was no verbal reconciliation. I spoke to Dr. Grace about the possibility of allowing Jenny home again at the weekend. She seemed hopeful.
“Jenny seems healthy—her blood pressure is normal, and she seems relaxed. We are looking to discha
rge her within the next few days.” Dr. Grace smiled. “We will be referring her for therapy, but providing she doesn’t lapse back into this erratic behaviour, she will probably be better at home with you.”
***
My mobile bleeped as I poured myself a fresh orange juice. It was a text from Josie.
Hey, you! Just learned to text. you are my first. How are you?
I punched in a reply. Well done! How long did it take you?
Ten minutes on, my mobile bleeped again.
About 30 mins! Haha!
Jo’s message made me smile. She had never taken to her mobile and never bothered with social media. I kind of loved that, and for the briefest of moments, I’d forgotten all about Amelia Root.
It’s an age thing! I punched back.
Two minutes later, my landline rang.
“Who’s a clever girl then?” Josie crowed before I’d had time to say hello. “Meg’s knocking me into shape!”
“Who’s Meg?”
“The new barmaid. She gives a whole new meaning to the word streetwise. She’s going to be really good for the place!” Jo paused. “Anyway, is there any news?”
I told her about Farriday and the attic room, but halfway through she stopped me. “Look, hun, why don’t you come on over? We’ll have supper.”
It sounded good to me. I needed to think aloud, let my thoughts escape, and Jo was just the person. Besides, she served a mean cheese toastie, and no one could beat her milky coffee.
“See you in ten,” I said, replacing the receiver and running a comb through my hair. That tired, middle-aged man stared back at me, and I wished to God that mirrors could lie.
***
The Keys was quiet. A few couples propped up the bar, and the girl I presumed to be Meg was serving up an exotic-looking green cocktail. Jo had been right. She would be good for the place. Meg was straight off the cover of a glossy magazine. Blonde, blue eyed, perfect white teeth and a smile that could chase the clouds from anyone’s sky.