by Amanda Mason
Lucy walks over to the table by the window, suggests they move into the living room, out of the way.
‘Issy sent flowers,’ she says, as they settle themselves in the sofas once again. Dan finds an armchair for Lewis and drags it into place, and the younger man sits down with a slight thump. He looks pale, as if the pain medication he’s been given isn’t quite up to the job.
‘That was kind,’ says Nina. ‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘Not yet,’ says Lucy. ‘I’d like to but – you know, I’ll see how she feels. Have you?’
‘Yes.’ Nina looks embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I just – there were things she needed to know,’ she says.
‘I see.’
‘Things?’ Dan smiles politely.
‘To do with her photos. To do with my dad.’
‘Ah.’
‘And you,’ says Hal, ‘how are you?’
A dislocated shoulder, cuts and bruises, concussion.
A miracle.
‘I’m fine,’ says Lucy.
They had suspected a fractured skull and Lucy had spent an inordinate amount of time under observation at the hospital. Two consultants had examined her notes and her person, almost irritated, it seemed to her, that she hadn’t suffered more serious injuries, but she had been discharged eventually.
Everything hurts, of course, everything is tender, she looks dreadful, and she wonders if she’ll ever feel comfortable in her skin again, but she is to all intents and purposes quite well.
‘Thank you for coming,’ says Dan, although he’s probably said it before.
‘We wanted to,’ says Lewis. ‘We liked Cathy. We wanted to pay our respects.’
‘We wanted,’ says Nina, ‘to reassure you.’
There won’t be a book, no new version of events of the haunting of Iron Sike Farm, not even with all the evidence they have.
‘Are you sure?’ Dan looks as if he can’t quite believe them.
‘Quite sure,’ says Hal, glancing at Lewis.
‘I mean there never really was one in the first place,’ says Nina. ‘But now – well, it wouldn’t be fair.’
Lucy is afraid she might cry.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ says Nina.
Hal reaches out and takes her hand in his.
‘Oh,’ says Lucy, because it’s so obvious now. ‘You thought it was him, you thought it was Simon.’
‘No. No.’ Nina shakes her head. ‘But I was … afraid – you know? It was always at the back of my mind. That he might have been involved in her death, somehow. I mean – why did he keep quiet about Bee? He was there, he must have seen what happened. And Issy couldn’t get a straight answer out of him either. She told me so in her email, she didn’t really think he’d done anything wrong, but – she knew he was keeping something back.’
And things happened like that, didn’t they? They had happened all the time, or so it seemed, men who had seemed so kind, so genuine – all the charming and respectable men who got away with it.
‘He was,’ says Lucy, ‘he saw – I think he saw me. He asked me, I think, what I’d seen, what had happened. But I was—’
‘When he found the pictures of Tib, perhaps he realised there was something everyone had missed at the time,’ says Lewis.
‘I think he thought that if he could prove it was Tib, well, then. That might be – better, for you and for Cathy,’ says Nina.
‘And she wanted to know too,’ says Lucy. ‘Once she started seeing … her, the girl in the garden, that’s why she was so keen on you, and all your photographs. She wanted her proof too.’
‘There’s no point now,’ says Dan, ‘in dragging this all up again. It was an accident.’
He has been very insistent on that, despite what Lucy has told him in private.
It wasn’t your fault, Loo. You weren’t yourself.
‘And we won’t,’ says Lewis, ‘truly, we won’t. But there is something you need to see.’
Nina has brought her satchel with her and today, inside, there is only one folder. It’s bent at the corners, the typewritten label has faded and someone has written over it in blue ink: ‘Parish records and notes, census details Iron Sike Farm’.
‘It says in my dad’s notes,’ says Nina, ‘that just after the voice identified herself as Tib, Michael Warren asked him to find her in the parish records.’
Proof.
‘But he couldn’t,’ says Dan. ‘She didn’t exist.’
‘There was nothing,’ says Nina, ‘in Longdale church, so Dad wrote to the Gazette, Issy’s paper, and he chased up the census records at the turn of the century too. But then Bee died, and everything changed, and they packed up, and this was – I think – handed on to Michael Warren. Then eventually handed back to my dad.’
‘And they missed it, both of them,’ says Lewis. ‘As far as we can tell.’
Nina opens the folder.
The first document is a photocopy of a census return for the year 1891.
‘Here.’ Nina leans forward and points it out.
The address given is Iron Sike Farm, Longdale. The family name is Chadwick, which means nothing to Lucy, but the family are not the only occupants of the house.
Tabitha Bone, servant, aged seventeen.
‘It’s not the same name,’ she says.
But it’s close.
The second document is a photograph.
‘It’s a scanned image, so it’s not too brilliant, sorry,’ says Nina.
The family are standing in front of the house, Iron Sike Farm. A couple Lucy takes to be husband and wife are standing in the front garden, their children – six, no, seven of them – ranged on either side.
Behind them on the front step stands another, older couple, and a little to one side, half hidden in the doorway, is a young woman in a plain dark frock. She is tall and thin, her fair hair pulled back in a thick plait.
The photograph bears no names, but there is a date.
1891.
‘We’re trying to find a birth certificate,’ says Lewis, ‘and a death certificate, for Tabitha.’
It might be her imagination, but Lucy thinks she can see a shadow behind the girl in the photo, something jagged, trying to push its way through. Not one girl, but many, she thinks.
They stay a while longer, talking things through. Dan has warmed to them a little and after a while he starts to answer their questions about that time at the farm. Reminiscing, even though there will be no book.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Hal is leaning forward, trying to keep his voice low. ‘It might sound a bit daft.’
‘Sure.’ Lucy stands. ‘Let’s go outside.’
They walk across the grass to the bench, Hal fumbling in his pockets. They sit down and he lights a cigarette.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I expect this is against the rules.’
‘If we get caught,’ says Lucy mildly, ‘they’ll never let us back in.’
Hal smiles and they sit in silence for a while.
‘The thing is,’ Hal says, ‘I wanted to ask. You could feel it too, couldn’t you? That house. It wasn’t – right. Was it?’
‘No.’ Lucy has been thinking about this, about that first summer as well as the last weekend. ‘No, I don’t think it ever was. I always felt there was something wrong – I’m not sure what. And they think they can untangle it, don’t they? Nina and Lewis, they think Tib was Tabitha. They think Tib pushed Bee; all of it so very neat.’
‘And did she?’
Lucy doesn’t know what to say; she finds she can’t quite look Hal in the eye. She’s discussed this with Dan, confessed. And the other sense she had, that Tib was larger than one person, that Bee had been held in something older, something more complex than they had imagined, it’s hard to put into words.
‘I don’t know,’ she says eventually. ‘For the longest time I couldn’t remember, and then when I did – when it came back in bits and pieces – it was as if I could see what happened, but I couldn’t feel it, I wasn’t connecte
d to it. It was almost as if it had all happened to someone else. Until we went back to the farm.’
‘And,’ Hal goes on, ‘do you feel – different, now?’
‘Different?’
‘Yeah. Since the house, since Bee. Different here.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘Like you can see things …’ His voice fades.
‘Like something inside has clicked into place,’ says Lucy, ‘and you can’t reset it, no matter how much you’d like to? Different like that?’
‘Oh, fuck,’ says Hal. ‘I hoped I was imagining things.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy says, and she is.
‘Yeah,’ says Hal. ‘Me too.’
He stubs out his cigarette and leans back, folding his arms. ‘What was she like, Bee?’ he asks.
‘Irritating,’ Lucy says, after a moment. ‘Loud and restless and irritating. Selfish, too. And it was as if – as if everything she felt was too much, too bright, too big.’
‘That must have been difficult, coping with that.’
‘Yes.’
‘And maybe that wasn’t the only thing you were dealing with, either of you.’
‘Maybe not,’ says Lucy. ‘Everyone was consumed with the mystery of our poltergeist, Tib. But for us, the biggest mystery was Joe. We didn’t know where he was, or when he would come back. We only knew that it was Cathy’s fault he had gone.’
‘And was it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. She told us he was teaching – off being an artist somewhere – but it turned out he was labouring, working on building sites, and sending back money whenever he could. Bee had overheard them, though, in the barn – there had been an argument and Cathy …’ She hesitates. ‘It sounds so stupid,’ she says softly. ‘I knew Bee was making stuff up, but still, I half believed her. She made me think Cathy had done something, hurt him – Joe. We were both so angry with her.’
‘You were just a child,’ says Hal.
Lucy looks at Blue Jacket House. Someone stands and comes to the window, a girl caught in silhouette against the warm lights of the living room. She raises a hand to the latch and opens the door.
Nina.
She calls out to Hal to come back in, and he and Lucy stand. It’s time to go, to say their goodbyes.
They walk slowly across the lawn to the open windows. Lucy has tried occasionally, since she got out of the hospital, to see if she can sense her still, her sister, Bee, walking a little way behind her, perhaps, waiting. She tries again now, as they reach the door and Hal steps inside; she turns and looks back across the garden, hoping to see her again, scowling, untidy, impatient.
But she’s not there.
Acknowledgements
To my agent, Julia Silk, who read an early draft of this novel and gave me the most perfect piece of advice at exactly the right moment.
To Sophie Orme, who has had faith in this book, and in me, from the very beginning, and whose passion and insight have helped shape it. She and the whole team at Zaffre have been wonderful.
To Sophie Coulombeau, who encouraged me to think about the kind of writer I wanted to be; her support and example have been an inspiration.
To Rob Redman of The Fiction Desk, who has an admirable policy of finding and publishing new writers.
To Paul Richardson, filmmaker, who answered my many questions about cameras, and software, and filming in general with endless patience and generosity. Any mistakes or omissions are, of course, mine, not his.
To Bidi Iredale, who shared her experience of caring for a parent living with dementia, and who allowed me to steal her childhood home and do terrible things to it.
To Wendy Havelock, author of the finest text message ever sent – the one that insisted I go along to that creative writing class I was dithering about. She believed I was a writer long before I did, and I doubt any of this would have happened without her.
To my sister and brother, because only children don’t really get it.
To my brilliant Mum, and to all of the above, my love and thanks.
Amanda Mason was born and brought up in Whitby, North Yorks. She studied Theatre at Dartington College of Arts, where she began writing by devising and directing plays. After a few years of earning a very irregular living in lots of odd jobs, including performing in a comedy street magic act, she became a teacher and has worked in the UK, Italy, Spain, and Germany. She now lives in York and has given up teaching for writing. Her short stories have been published in several anthologies. The Wayward Girls is her debut novel and was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers prize.
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2019 by
ZAFFRE
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Copyright © Amanda Mason, 2019
Cover design by Alexandra Allden
The moral right of Amanda Mason to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–78576–707–4
Hardback ISBN: 978–1–78576–713–5
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–706–7
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