The Visitors Book

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘That is . . . bad,’ I agree.

  ‘If you ask me, that teacher should be fired! If they’d shown them, I don’t know, To Kill a Mockingbird or Cry Freedom – a movie that contains racism but also the condemnation of it, with the non-racist characters clearly shown as the goodies – that would be completely different. But just a video of extremely distressing racist abuse? An immersive racism experience for all the eleven-year-olds? The black girl, Ellie, started crying – as you would. All the other kids had to hug her to cheer her up, while the teacher, from what I can tell, did sod all. Sat back and did not hug. I mean, could he not think of any better way to make the point that racism is bad? Could he not have dug up some old footage of Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney singing “Ebony and Ivory”? What’s on the syllabus for next week: an Auschwitz gas chambers installation in the classroom? Jesus Christ, this school!’

  The Mums’ Night Out is at the Shezan, an unpretentious Indian restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet. In spite of this, the mums are dressed as if for the Oscars, in strappy shiny dresses and high heels. I’m wearing jeans, pumps, a checked shirt. I’ve made sure to sit next to Anna Gimblett in case I decide to resort to the supernatural.

  It turns out that I might want to do Lisa Paskin a favour after all. After her ‘Bitch of the Week’ coup, I can’t help but be favourably disposed towards her. Impressed, too. How the hell did she pull off the Bitch Switch? I would love to know.

  Julie Laycock is talking about death. ‘I told Maisie and Izzie yesterday: when our time comes, Mark and I have decided we want to be buried, not cremated, so they’ll have to sort that out for us.’

  Can that time please be soon? Like, before anyone suggests staying for dessert and coffee? Sitting next to Anna meant getting stuck at the very end of the table with only her, Julie Laycock and Jenny Buckley for company. Oh, fun times.

  ‘It made sense to tell them, I thought,’ Julie goes on. ‘We were updating our wills. Mark and I don’t think there should be anything a close family can’t discuss. I did apologise to the girls, because obviously burial means more hassle for them once we’re dead and gone, but I do find it comforting, the idea of having a resting place. Mark does too, now. I talked him round.’

  ‘Why more hassle?’ I ask.

  ‘Pardon?’ Julie blinks at me. It’s the first thing I’ve said to her all evening, or she to me. I’ve hardly spoken since I arrived, apart from the obligatory how-are-yous.

  ‘I can’t see why having your parents buried is any more laborious than having them cremated,’ I say. ‘Either way you need to organise the event, whatever it is, and have a funeral and all that stuff.’

  Julie sighs heavily. ‘Don’t be thick, Mel. With cremation, the ashes are scattered and that’s it, job done. With burial, there’s a grave to be visited and tended week after week, year after year. There’s a . . . a site that needs to be maintained.’

  Did I hear a note of pride in Julie’s voice? Is she actively looking forward to being a high-maintenance cadaver?

  ‘Don’t the church gardening staff do that?’ Jenny Buckley asks.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s the family that looks after the grave,’ Julie tells her. ‘Absolutely. Think of the weeds growing all over it. It can start to look messy very quickly. Plus, a kind of competitive thing kicks in – other families make their loved ones’ graves look spectacular and no one wants to seem a slacker in front of those people, do they?’

  ‘I keep wondering . . .’ Driana Roberts leans over and cuts in, ‘. . . is it okay that we’re here, going ahead with our night out as planned, while poor old Rachel’s miserable at home? She was the one who did all the organising. It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘She should have come,’ says Julie Laycock. ‘I told her: come along and show whoever did it that you’re not intimidated. I mean, she must know none of us would do a thing like that. It makes no sense, anyway. A person who gives a child a Bitch of the Week certificate is self-evidently a bitch themselves, as proven by their own actions.’

  Why don’t they suspect Lisa? I wait for one of them to mention her, but no one does.

  Come to think of it, why don’t they suspect me? I’d totally have done it if I’d a) thought of it, and b) seen a detection-proof way to do it.

  ‘Poor Grace,’ Anna Gimblett sighs.

  ‘Maybe Mrs Harkness did it,’ I suggest.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ says Julie. ‘What form teacher would do that? Whoever did it’s got a screw loose. Grace is lovely. I mean, yes, she does seem to feel the need to overshadow the other girls, and she puts herself forward way too much, but she’s learned that from Rachel – you can’t blame the child. Not that I’m blaming Rachel, I just meant . . . well, you know.’

  ‘Returning to the subject of your death, Julie,’ I say. ‘I’d go for cremation if I were you and Mark. Burial’s a hostage to fortune. What if your kids don’t bother to tend your grave, or even visit? You know where you are with cremation: once you’re scattered, you’re scattered. I suppose they might not bother doing that either, but personally I think they’re more likely to. A scattering’s a one-off – most people would make the effort.’

  Julie’s eyes widen as her lips narrow. ‘You’re suggesting that my daughters might not bother to look after their own mother’s grave?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I grin at her. ‘People are busy. Do you have spare time for grave-tending? I don’t. Maybe Maisie and Izzie won’t. Or maybe they’ll find it too upsetting to go, or they might secretly resent you and use the non-maintenance of your grave as a way of showing it once you’re safely out of the way, if they’re too scared to stand up for themselves now.’

  I know for a fact that Izzie Laycock, at least, is terrified of her mother. She’s not allowed to watch Pretty Little Liars at home, and when Bee suggested they watch it at our house and there was no way Julie would find out, Izzie nearly started crying. ‘I’d have to tell her myself,’ she said. ‘We have a rule in our family – we tell each other everything.’

  Julie Laycock is, I believe, a practitioner of Covert-Reign-of-Terror parenting, the sort that kids don’t realise they’ve had until they’re in their mid-thirties at least. Julie’s chosen burial over cremation because it pisses her off to think that after her death she won’t be able to emotionally blackmail her daughters any more. How can I still make them do stuff for me from beyond the grave? will undoubtedly have been part of her thought process. No doubt she’ll stipulate that her gravestone must be hewn from a rare granite that needs polishing every Tuesday at exactly quarter past three in the morning.

  If you want to end up with your epitaph obscured by weeds, Covert-Reign-of-Terror parenting is the way to go. I wish Lisa Paskin were here – she’d agree with me, I’m sure.

  ‘I’d totally haunt my girls if they didn’t take proper care of my grave,’ Julie smiles around the table at everyone but me, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I’d appear at the foot of their beds every night and give them a thorough ticking-off!’

  It’s the perfect opportunity. How can I resist? I can’t.

  ‘So you’d be a typical night-time ghost,’ I say, glancing at Anna Gimblett to check she’s listening. ‘Wronged by the living, and returning in spirit form to right the wrong. You all know the difference between night ghosts and day ghosts, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t,’ says Jenny Buckley.

  No one knows. That’s hardly surprising, since Lisa Paskin made it up and it’s a load of rubbish. What’s peculiar, though, is that Anna Gimblett is also shaking her head. She isn’t saying, as I expected her to, ‘Oh, I’ve heard this before from Lisa, Harriet’s mum.’

  I’m committed now; I have to explain. ‘It’s simple: the ghosts you see at night, they’re the ghosts of good people who didn’t deserve to die. They’re back to get wrongs put right – wrongs that were done to them while they were alive. Daytime ghosts – the ones who stroll up to you in broad daylight and just start chatting like regular people – they weren’t wronge
d. They were the bad guys. They’re brazen, back to cause more trouble, and they’ll use you to do it if they possibly can. That’s why they’re not scary when you see them. They have to present themselves as ordinary, non-threatening, even likeable human beings or else they won’t be able to influence you, and that’s what daylight ghosts are after: influence. They don’t want to scare you or upset you – they want to be your friend.’

  ‘You don’t honestly believe that, do you?’ Jenny Buckley asks.

  Anna Gimblett snorts. ‘It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,’ she says.

  ‘But you believe in ghosts, don’t you, Anna?’ I give her a sharp look. Surely she remembers hearing all this from Lisa. Why doesn’t she mention it?

  ‘Well, I believe in something beyond material reality, yes, but I certainly don’t—’

  ‘Anna, seriously?’ Julie wrinkles her nose in distaste. ‘You believe in ghosts?’

  ‘According to Lisa, you’ve seen one yourself,’ I chip in.

  All the women turn to face me. There’s silence for a few seconds. ‘Lisa who?’ asks Jenny.

  ‘Lisa Paskin. Harriet’s mum.’

  They exchange puzzled looks. ‘Who’s Harriet?’ Anna Gimblett asks.

  ‘Oh, come on. Harriet’s new in the same class as . . .’ I stop. They’re all staring.

  ‘Mel, the newest girl in the class is your Bee,’ says Anna. ‘You must know that. No one’s joined since last term.’

  A gold envelope. A day off work. A hand in a drawer in an empty classroom at lunchtime. A little bitch that deserves everything she gets . . .

  The images flash through my mind like cards shuffled too fast to see properly. The story so far . . .

  What’s going to happen in the end, Mel? Together we can make it happen.

  I mustn’t mention Lisa again. No one else knows about her. I don’t want to alert them to the danger.

  Grace Taggart can’t be the only one who gets what she deserves. Of course she can’t. What sort of justice is that?

  At home later that night, I turn on my computer and search the internet for the names Lisa and Harriet Paskin. I find many newspaper articles. In the accompanying photographs, I recognise my new friend from the school gates. Six years ago, Lisa and her daughter Harriet killed a teacher at eleven-year-old Harriet’s school. They never revealed why they did it, though they did immediately confess to the crime, and there was never any doubt that they were guilty. Mother and daughter planned and committed the murder together. The teacher’s husband shot them both dead on the steps of the crown court and is now in prison. This all happened in Cornwall, nowhere near our school.

  Why did they do it? There appears to be no answer, at least not on the internet.

  Feeling calmer than I have for a long time – almost completely removed from my actions – I search for ‘ghosts who appear during the daytime’ and variations on that theme. I find nothing, but I keep looking.

  My hand in a gold envelope . . .

  My phone buzzes on the table next to me. I pick it up. A new email has arrived from Jenny Buckley, the words ‘Nice photo from tonight!’ in the subject box. I click to open the photo and see us all sitting around the table: all the other mums in their ridiculous finery and me in my casual shirt with not-entirely-clean hair and no make-up.

  Wait. What’s Rachel Taggart doing there, in the picture? She wasn’t there. She didn’t come.

  Her face is white, her eyes half closed. She’s dead. I look at the other faces and see that they are all dead, in fact – all propped up at the table like stiff dolls.

  Poison in the curry. A private room. Maybe someone’s house, not a restaurant.

  Julie, dead. Jenny, dead. Anna, dead. Rachel, dead. All the others, too. Not me; I’m not in this picture.

  As soon as I’ve seen the whole story, it’s gone. The photo on my phone’s screen is, once again, the one Jenny sent me: all the mums smiling. All the dead mothers of my daughter’s friends. I can’t wait for our next Long-Overdue Mums’ Night Out.

  An Excerpt from Closed Casket

  1

  A New Will

  Michael Gathercole stared at the closed door in front of him and tried to persuade himself that now was the moment to knock, as the aged grandfather clock in the hall downstairs stuttered its announcement of the hour.

  Gathercole’s instructions had been to present himself at four, and four it was. He had stood here—in this same spot on the wide first landing of Lillieoak—many times in the past six years. Only once had he felt less at ease than he did today. On that occasion he had been one of two men waiting, not alone as he was this afternoon. He still remembered every word of his conversation with the other man, when his preference would have been to recall none of it. Applying the self-discipline upon which he relied, he cast it from his mind.

  He had been warned that he would find this afternoon’s meeting difficult. The warning had formed part of the summons, which was typical of his hostess. “What I intend to say to you will come as a shock . . .”

  Gathercole did not doubt it. The prior notice was no use to him, for it contained no information about what sort of preparation might be in order.

  His discomfort grew more pronounced when he consulted his pocket watch and noticed that by hesitating, and with all the taking out of the watch and putting it back in the waistcoat pocket, and pulling it out once more to check, he had made himself late. It was already a minute after four o’clock. He knocked.

  Only one minute late. She would notice—was there anything she did not notice?—but with any luck she would not remark upon it.

  “Do come in, Michael!” Lady Athelinda Playford sounded as ebullient as ever. She was seventy years old, with a voice as strong and clear as a polished bell. Gathercole had never encountered her in sober spirits. There was always, with her, a cause for excitement—often such morsels as would alarm a conventional person. Lady Playford had a talent for extracting as much amusement from the inconsequential as from the controversial.

  Gathercole had admired her stories of happy children solving mysteries that confounded the local police since he had first discovered them as a lonely ten-year-old in a London orphanage. Six years ago, he had met their creator for the first time and found her as disarming and unpredictable as her books. He had never expected to go far in his chosen profession, but here he was, thanks to Athelinda Playford: still a relatively young man at thirty-six, and a partner in a successful firm of solicitors, Gathercole and Rolfe. The notion that any profitable enterprise bore his name was still perplexing to Gathercole, even after a number of years.

  His loyalty to Lady Playford surpassed all other attachments he had formed in his life, but personal acquaintance with his favorite author had forced him to admit to himself that he preferred shocks and startling about-turns to occur in the safely distant world of fiction, not in reality. Lady Playford, needless to say, did not share his preference.

  He started to open the door.

  “Are you going to . . . Ah! There you are! Don’t hover. Sit, sit. We’ll get nowhere if we don’t start.”

  Gathercole sat.

  “Hello, Michael.” She smiled at him, and he had the strange sense he always had—as if her eyes had picked him up, turned him around and put him down again. “And now you must say, ‘Hello, Athie.’ Go on, say it! After all this time, it ought to be a breeze. Not ‘Good afternoon, your ladyship.’ Not ‘Good day, Lady Playford.’ A plain, friendly ‘Hello, Athie.’ Is that too much to manage? Ha!” She clapped her hands together. “You look quite the hunted fox cub! You can’t understand why you’ve been invited to stay for a week, can you? Or why Mr. Rolfe was invited too.”

  Would the arrangements that Gathercole had put in place be sufficient to cover the absence of himself and Orville Rolfe? It was unheard of for them both to be away from the office for five consecutive days, but Lady Playford was the firm’s most illustrious client; no request from her could be refused.

  “I daresay y
ou are wondering if there will be other guests, Michael. We shall come to all of that, but I’m still waiting for you to say hello.”

  He had no choice. The greeting she demanded from him each time would never fall naturally from his lips. He was a man who liked to follow rules, and if there wasn’t a rule forbidding a person of his background from addressing a dowager viscountess, widow of the fifth Viscount Playford of Clonakilty, as “Athie,” then Gathercole fervently believed there ought to be.

  It was unfortunate, therefore—he said so to himself often—that Lady Playford, for whom he would do anything, poured scorn on the rules at every turn and derided those who obeyed them as “dreary dry sticks.”

  “Hello, Athie.”

  “There we are!” She spread out her arms in the manner of a woman inviting a man to leap into them, though Gathercole knew that was not her intention. “Ordeal survived. You may relax. Not too much! We have important matters to attend to—after we’ve discussed the bundle of the moment.”

  It was Lady Playford’s habit to describe the book she was in the middle of writing as “the bundle.” Her latest sat on the corner of the desk and she threw a resentful glance in its direction. It looked to Gathercole less like a novel in progress and more like a whirlwind represented in paper: creased pages with curled edges, corners pointing every which way. There was nothing in the least rectangular about it.

  Lady Playford hauled herself out of her armchair by the window. She never looked out, Gathercole had noticed. If there was a human being to inspect, Lady Playford did not waste time on nature. Her study offered the most magnificent views: the rose garden, and, behind it, a perfectly square lawn, at the center of which was the angel statue that her husband, Guy, the late Viscount Playford, had commissioned as a wedding anniversary gift, to celebrate thirty years of marriage.