by S M Hardy
‘The Morgans,’ he said. ‘That’s why they bought this place: they fancied having a bit of woodland for their kids to play in.’
‘Kids? I thought there was only the daughter.’
‘I’m guessing they wanted more.’
‘So the woodland comes with the cottage.’
‘Thinking about making an offer?’
‘What? On this place?’ I grimaced. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s early days yet. After a few weeks you might find you don’t want to leave.’
‘Hmm, we’ll see.’
‘Any more bumps in the night?’
‘No,’ I said with a little too much venom and had to force my face not to settle into a frown.
‘Good,’ he said, chugging back his coffee and getting to his feet. ‘I’ll be off, then.’
‘Be seeing you.’
‘Aye, lad, you will,’ he said and was gone. No sooner had he shut the door I wished he hadn’t left so soon.
I was going to have to find something to do with myself. It was all very well going away to chill out, but empty time on my hands wasn’t going to help me any. Instead of forgetting my misfortunes I’d be dwelling on them.
Perhaps I should find myself a hobby – but what? It was Thursday, so the travelling library would be coming to the village today – or was that every other Thursday? I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t much of a reader, anyway. What else could I do? Art? No – not one artistic bone in my body. Photography? Wasn’t that a kind of art? I mulled on it for a bit. One thing was for sure, I’d have to find something, otherwise I’d go crazy. Crazy with boredom.
I spent the rest of the morning on my laptop googling all sorts of hobbies and almost immediately discarding them. By lunchtime the idea of owning a dog was beginning to seem like a good one. Except you couldn’t own a dog for just a month. A dog is for life, not just for extended holidays.
Then the fourteen per cent warning flashed up telling me my laptop’s battery was about to expire. I logged off and dutifully plugged it in to charge and did the same with my mobile after checking for missed calls. At one time if I didn’t look at my phone for even an hour there would be one or two messages waiting for me. Now there was nothing. As far as my London friends and ex-work colleagues were concerned I could have died.
I thought about having some lunch and decided against it. I wasn’t hungry and eating for eating’s sake was not a habit I wanted to get in to. I wandered listlessly from room to room, opening drawers and cupboard doors. I’m not sure what I was looking for or what I hoped to find.
The Morgans had left a few bits and pieces behind, as though they might someday return, but mainly impersonal, practical stuff. There were a few books on a bookshelf in the lounge. I suspected they were more for decoration and maybe even put there by the estate agent to make the place appear more homely.
In the cupboard under the stairs beside the boiler there was a vacuum cleaner, a set of steps, a couple of umbrellas and an old biscuit tin containing nails, screws and other paraphernalia together with a variety of tools. A red leather lead hung from a hook at the back. I leant in and lifted up the thin strip and traced a finger down its length. The surface was still shiny but crazed with cracks. It was well used but not old. So the Morgans had kept a dog. I wondered where it was now; they surely couldn’t have taken it to New York.
I let the leather slip from my fingers to swing back and forth until it stilled to dangle there surplus to requirements and a sad reminder of a family torn apart. I shut the door with a sigh. I was getting maudlin.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and glanced up into the hallway, remembering what the reverend had said, and it occurred to me he was right: if the child – Krystal? Yes, Krystal – had fallen from the attic she’d never have been found at the top of the stairs. I was about to turn away but before I knew it, I was climbing the staircase. Not only was I maudlin, I was also getting morbid.
When I reached the top I stopped and stared down at the carpet. This must have been where they found her. This very spot. I shivered, hugging myself. I wasn’t surprised the estate agent hadn’t mentioned why the Morgans had gone away. I’m not sure I’d have rented the place had I known. My eyes were drawn to the loft hatch. The Reverend Davies was right: it didn’t make any sense whatsoever, unless she somehow managed to crawl to the top of the stairs. Would she have been able to do that?
I shivered again. Poor little girl; poor parents.
I went and stood beneath the trapdoor, peering up at the square of wood. How on earth did she get up there in the first place? Jed had reached it with a pole. OK, it was a cottage and the ceiling wasn’t that high, but could a six-year-old girl reach the brass ring and pull the hatch down?
My curiosity got the better of me. I went into the bathroom and fetched the pole, and as an afterthought picked up the torch. The pole was actually an odd length. It was only about two feet long and when I examined it I could see why. The end had been cut off. Had Mr Morgan, worried about his over-inquisitive daughter, cut the pole down?
I had no idea how tall a six-year-old would be, but it would have been a bit of a stretch for a child of that age to reach the catch, I’d imagine. I lifted the pole and caught the ring with the hook and pulled – nothing.
I thought for a second, then pushed upwards before pulling again. The hatch dropped down on creaking hinges. Maybe she could have opened the hatch. The aluminium steps were another thing altogether. They were laying back inside the loft space and a good five or six inches higher than the hatch.
I snagged the bottom rung with the hook. It took me several attempts to gain purchase and when I did I had to pull hard to get the ladder to tilt downwards. I was pretty sure a six-year-old child wouldn’t have been strong enough to do it.
So what did happen that day?
I was about to push the ladder back up then thought, what the hell? Now I’d opened it I might as well take a look and see if there was anything of interest lurking in the space beneath the roof. I remembered when my father had cleared out my grandparents’ attic after they’d died it had been like an Aladdin’s cave. Sorting out other people’s rubbish might not be much of an occupation, but it’d give me something to do.
Balanced halfway up the ladder, with my head and shoulders poked through the hatch, I swung the torch around the loft space. The inside of the roof had been lined, fairly recently, by the look of it, and the rafters had been boarded so it was actually a good storage space, but apart from a roll of what looked like an old carpet the attic was near empty.
I swung the torch around one more time. There was a water tank in the corner and some pipes clad in grey foam running along just under the eaves, but nothing else except specks of dust and fluff floating like tiny phantoms in the swathe of torchlight. I turned around on the steps to look behind me, swinging the torch in an arc across what was the largest expanse of space, and something moved.
For an instant, caught in the roving beam was a white, startled face. I turned right around, jerking the torch back. My feet slipped on the metal rungs and I dropped the torch as I scrabbled to grab hold of something to stop my falling.
I bashed my chin on the edge of the hatch snapping my head backwards, saw stars and next thing I knew I was sitting on the landing.
I took a couple of deep breaths and looked up at the empty hole in the ceiling above me. I think I half-expected to see a face peering down at me, but no, just a square of dark.
I lifted both arms – they at least were working – and then tried to stand. I creaked a bit and my calves and back complained. I think I must have whacked them on the aluminium ladder on the way down, but otherwise I appeared to be uninjured. I gingerly touched my chin with the tips of my fingers and they came away a sticky pink. I hadn’t so much cut my chin but scraped it and it felt bruised.
The torch lay abandoned a few feet away and surprisingly enough was still working. I picked it up and looked back towards the hatch. I’d seen some
one; I was sure I had.
I took another couple of breaths and started back up the ladder. This time when I reached the top I turned completely around and wedged my backside in between the rungs.
I slowly moved the torch back and forth. Nothing. Carefully, I moved myself around and searched the water tank end of the loft space. Still nothing, other than the roll of carpet, pipes and tank. No white, startled face. Nothing.
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. At best I’d imagined it, at worst I was seeing things. And hearing things, a little voice reminded me.
I clambered down the ladder, pushed it into the loft and shut the hatch. I was overwrought, that was all. My conversation with Jed the day before and then the reverend this morning had rattled me, and my morbid curiosity had got me seeing shadows where there were none.
I put the torch and pole away and went in search of some antiseptic to bathe my battered chin.
It actually felt worse than it looked. If anyone noticed it at all they would think it was a shaving rash. My calves were in a similar state, pink and grazed. I’d got off lightly and the image of a small, red-cardiganed girl lying at the top of the stairs sprang into my mind unbidden.
Despite telling myself it wasn’t a good idea, at ten past eight I was walking through the village towards The Sly Fox. I needed company and, although I could probably do without Jed’s at the moment, he was the only person I knew in the village other than the reverend, who was another one I could do without seeing for a while. So, Jed’s companionship it would have to be, that is if he was there and not holding seances or whatever damn thing it was that he did.
When I walked in, Old Ginge was sitting on the bar licking advocaat from his paw. He looked up with huge eyes and, upon seeing me, went back to licking off the last of the yellow, sticky liquid.
‘Pint of Jail?’ George asked.
‘Thanks,’ I said, glancing around the bar.
Jed was sitting at the same table as before. He raised his pint to me when he saw me looking.
‘Another pint of whatever Jed’s drinking,’ I said to George.
‘I’ll start a tab,’ he said by way of reply.
I carried the drinks over to the table and sank down opposite my new best friend – or should that be only friend.
He downed the rest of his pint and murmured his thanks for its replacement. Then he frowned, studying my face.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
He stared at me for a few long seconds more and I slumped back in the chair, staring back and hoping the sudden burst of hostility I was feeling didn’t show on my face. For a moment I did wonder where all this anger was coming from.
Eventually he looked away and picked up the pint I’d bought him. ‘I’ve got someone coming to see me in a bit and, if it’s going to offend your sensibilities, I suggest you leave when she arrives.’
‘That girl – Julie?’
‘Nah. I doubt I’ll be seeing her again now her big brother’s got involved. Probably just as well, I had nothing more to give her. This is a believer.’
‘Won’t she mind? Me being here, I mean?’
He chuckled. ‘No. She won’t mind at all. You, on the other hand, might.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked, frowning at him.
‘You know the saying “it takes one to know one”? Well she’ll know what you are, no mistake, and won’t be afraid to say so.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Here she is,’ he said, getting to his feet.
I glanced over my shoulder, not at all knowing what to expect. I supposed maybe some elderly hippy if she was into clairvoyance, tarot cards and the like. Perhaps the woman I’d seen outside the village store. The lady walking across the bar towards us wasn’t any of those things. She was older, but that was about it. And by older I don’t mean old. She was one of those women who have an elegant, timeless quality about them. She could have been fifty or sixty, or maybe even a decade older. Fine lines wrinkled the corners of her eyes and lips when she smiled, and I suspected she smiled a lot. Her blonde hair curled down over the collar of her cream silk shirt and, although it was cut short at the back and sides, the top was long and more Helen Mirren than Dame Judy.
‘Jed,’ she said, kissing him on both cheeks.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘V and T, please.’
‘I’ll bring it over,’ George said, giving her a smile that suggested she was one of his more than welcome customers.
Jed led her over to the table and I got to my feet. ‘Emma, this is Jim. He’s renting the Morgans’ old place.’
She gave him a quizzical look and then reached out her hand for me to shake. Her cool fingers closed around mine and she smiled, her eyes glittering. ‘Nice to meet you, Jim.’
‘And you, Emma.’
She gave my fingers a squeeze before letting them go and sinking gracefully down onto the bench seat beneath the window.
‘How are you?’ Emma asked Jed, and there was an inflection to her voice that made me think it was more than a rhetorical question.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Better.’
Her forehead crinkled with concern. ‘Which is it? Better or good?’
‘Good,’ he said.
She studied his face and I was sure she was about to say more, but George arrived with her drink, and by the time they’d exchanged a few words and he’d gone, the moment had passed.
‘How are you finding village life?’ she asked me.
‘I’ve only been here a few days so it’s a bit early to tell.’
‘Hmm.’ It was my turn to fall under her thoughtful scrutiny. ‘Do you like the cottage?’
‘It’s a fair size, bigger than I was expecting, actually, and in a lovely location.’
‘You’d not seen it before you rented it?’
‘Only in photos, but I’m only staying for a month or so.’
‘We’ll see,’ Jed said.
‘Two months tops,’ I told him.
‘That’s what I said when I first came to Slyford,’ Emma said, ‘and that was more years ago than I care to remember.’
‘Emma lives at The Grange,’ Jed said.
‘I’m not sure …’
‘It’s the big house just outside the far end of the village. You probably haven’t been out that way yet,’ Jed said.
‘We’re practically neighbours,’ Emma said with a laugh.
‘So you knew the Morgans?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her smile softening. ‘Lovely couple, and Krystal was a poppet. Such a shame.’
‘What happened to their dog?’ I asked and the look that passed between them wasn’t lost on me. ‘I found a lead hanging up in the cupboard under the stairs.’
‘Benji,’ Jed said.
‘An adorable little Jack Russell,’ Emma added.
‘What happened to him?’
Emma gave a sigh. ‘No one knows,’ she said. ‘He went missing the day Krystal died.’
Jed took a long draught of his pint. ‘I looked for him everywhere, but it was like he’d vanished into thin air.’
‘That’s a bit strange, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘The local plod thought he might have got scared when she died and ran away.’
‘Idiots,’ Emma said, ‘bloody idiots.’
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
Jed and Emma exchanged another look. ‘Something happened that day, something more than anyone let on. Even Charles and Yvonne were in denial.’
‘They were in shock, Emms,’ Jed said, reaching across the table and patting her arm.
‘Yes, they must have been,’ she said, picking up her glass and cradling it between her hands. ‘It was all so terrible.’ She gave me a tight smile. ‘Let’s talk about something else before we all start crying into our beer.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘So, Jim, what do you do for a living?’
‘Not a lot at the moment, as it happens,’ I said.
‘I was a banker up in the City, but I decided I needed a career change.’
Emma gave me a sympathetic look. ‘You lost someone,’ and it wasn’t a question.
‘My girlfriend. Fiancée, actually.’
‘It was an accident, you know.’
‘What?’
‘She didn’t mean to … I’m sorry,’ she said, seeing my expression, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Jim here doesn’t believe.’
Emma frowned at Jed. ‘But he’s—’
‘He still doesn’t believe.’
She turned her frown on me. ‘How can you not believe?’
‘Believe what?’ I asked, knowing full well but beginning to get a little irritated – in fact, a lot irritated.
‘He’s another one in denial,’ Jed muttered.
She waved a hand at him, telling him to shut up. ‘Jim, what you have is a gift – you should embrace it.’
‘I have no gift,’ I said, leaning back further into the chair and crossing my arms.
‘He’s been hearing things at the cottage,’ Jed said.
‘A thump from up in the loft is all.’ What about the face? a little voice in my head reminded me. What about the child in the graveyard? Where did that come from? It was some kid trespassing, that was all.
I swallowed some beer. This was crazy. They were crazy. It’d do me no good at all meeting up with people like them. I started to get to my feet. I needed to leave. I needed to leave Slyford and get back to London. Coming here had all been a big mistake. I needed to go.
‘Sit down,’ Jed said. ‘Sit down and listen.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, pushing back my chair and pulling my wallet out of my back pocket.
‘Jim.’
‘No,’ I said and hurried over to the bar, taking a couple of notes out and flinging them on the bar.
‘Hey, don’t you want your change?’ I heard George call as I practically ran from the bar. When I was out on the street I began to run. And I ran and ran and didn’t stop until I reached the cottage.
CHAPTER SIX
As soon as I walked in through the front door I knew I was going to throw up. I pounded up the stairs and made it to the bathroom – just.