“I don’t understand. You’re saying that someone else has a key, or someone has broken into your house?”
“I don’t know. I only know what I see, or rather what I think I see. It’s usually at night. Take last night for example. I woke up at, must have been gone two AM, and I could have sworn the cat had been pawing at my covers. I battered it aside, as you do when you’re half-asleep, and then I heard the floorboards at the end of my bed. That was enough to wake me up because Jasper isn’t heavy enough to make the floorboards creak, and besides, it sounded like someone was standing there.”
Judy had picked up her sandwich whilst Lisa had been talking but her stomach was no longer rumbling. Her mouth was dry, and she swallowed as she put the plate down. Her appetite was the last thing on her mind.
“You must have been dreaming.”
Lisa nodded, but then shrugged. “I don’t blame you for thinking that. My dreams are not what you’d call normal by any means, but it wasn’t a dream. I’m sure of it. I turned the light on and just as the room lit up, I saw—” She broke off as a boy from the next table bumped into theirs spilling Judy’s coffee.
“Oh God, I’m sorry about that,” the tired mother said, grabbing the boy and dragging him back to his chair.
With the interruption, Lisa’s face had gone pale. Her eyes had glazed over and her head had tilted a little. She wasn’t paying attention to Judy or the troublesome kids, but was staring beyond, at some place over by the serving counter, against the far wall. Judy tried to get a look at what had caught her attention, but a large group of office workers chose that moment to crowd in, searching for tables.
“You OK?” Judy asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.”
“What did you see in your room?”
A little colour had returned to Lisa’s cheeks and her eyes locked with Judy’s.
“A woman. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there was a woman in my room last night.”
“Not Ellis?”
“No, it wasn’t tall enough to be Ellis.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No, I didn’t want to scare him.”
“Who do you think it is?”
Lisa shook her head. “Literally, no idea.”
“Have you called the police?”
“I always lock the front and back doors. The police will think I’m mad.”
“You’ve got to do something though. You can’t let this continue.”
“I am doing something. I’m talking to you.” Lisa’s expression lifted a little. “Jemma told me about some of the things that have happened to you.”
“She always was one for a story.”
“About the doors appearing in your friend’s house. About the things he kept in his basement. She says you can see things.”
“Lisa, if I could help, I would. But Jemma’s exaggerating. There’s plenty of stuff Jemma doesn’t know.”
Lisa picked up her plate. “So, there is some truth in it? You sense things. You’re perceptive. In a spiritual sense I mean. Last night, you felt something in my house. When I came back into the kitchen, you were acting weird, something had spooked you. And then I saw the woman in my room. You sensed her, didn’t you?”
Judy’s mind was a tumble of ideas and fears. This was the world she was trying to escape from, and Lisa was encouraging her to embrace it.
“I don’t know what I felt. A draft most likely.”
“Don’t give me that. Why are you denying it? If I could do what you can do, I’d be totally owning it. Look at those idiots on TV. Most of them are frauds, you can just tell. You’d make a mint if you put yourself out there.”
Judy shook her head. “It’s not like that.”
“Well, maybe I’m getting carried away with it, but forgetting that, won’t you help me out? I can’t go on like this. What does she want with me?”
“I don’t know how I can help.”
“Come around again. Spend some time in the house. Tell me if you sense anything unusual. All I want is reassuring that I’m not going mad.”
“Right. I’ll think about it.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. I’ll think about it.”
And as she took another bite of her panini, Judy realised that she wasn’t ever going to escape this terrifying life, this curse of hers that lay waiting, just beneath the surface.
6
Judy had met Jemma at the bus stop, much to Jemma’s annoyance. Judy was determined to keep Jemma close after Adam Cowl’s people had threatened her last year. She’d drop her off at school every day if she could, but Jemma wanted that time with her friends on the bus before the day began. Perhaps it was just her way of showing her independence, and that her mum really didn’t need to mollycoddle her.
Once the bus had pulled away, leaving the pair of them alone, Jemma seemed to relax, and let her mum take her school bag.
“Good day?” Judy asked.
“Same old.”
Jemma proceeded to tell Judy about the substitute teacher they’d had in PE who’d made them run over the sand dunes for an hour in an attempt to tire them out.
Adrian’s BMW was parked outside the house by the time they arrived home.
Judy frowned. Why would Adrian be here?
As they approached the car, Adrian got out and closed the door behind him.
Jemma gave him a quick hug then went inside leaving the two adults alone to talk.
“Is everything OK?” Judy asked.
“I wanted to see you after what happened at the restaurant.”
“Do you want to come in?”
Adrian shook his head. “I suppose I can’t really stay. There are some things I need to finish at work. Those flats don’t let themselves and if I let the pedal up, there’s a few in the office that will coast through the rest of the day instead of filling up appointment slots.”
Judy was back to being worried. “If it’s about Lisa, she’s fine. The adoption is on her mind, but it doesn’t mean that she’s thinking any differently about you.”
“But that’s just it isn’t it? I mean, she must be thinking differently about us. Up until Sunday, we were the only parents she would talk about. Now, we’re the second-class citizen parents. She’s thinking of her birth parents instead.” His voice was full of frustration and until now Judy hadn’t really considered what it must feel like being on the other end. How would she feel if Jemma started to consider someone else as their mother? Even the passing thought was enough to cause a shiver.
“I don’t think it’s as black and white as you think.”
He nodded. “But how can you know?” There was a steely glint in his eyes that she didn’t much care for. “You know she’s ill don’t you?”
“No. No I didn’t. What’s wrong with her? She seemed fine when I saw her earlier.”
Adrian tapped the side of his head. “Ever since she was in primary school, we’ve had concerns about her behaviour. It started when she tried to stab a boy in her class with a pair of scissors she was using to cut out farmyard animals for a collage. The psychiatrists said it was likely to be a phase that she would grow out of. Something to do with testing boundaries. But she kept on pushing those boundaries. By the time she was in high school they were prescribing her Valium.”
“Wait, I’m not sure you should be sharing this with me. I don’t want to hear any more.” But that was a lie because Judy desperately wanted to hear more. All of it. A new light had been cast on part of Phil’s family and as much as she found hearing the news from her father-in-law slightly horrific, she couldn’t not think that as Phil’s twin, was there a tendency towards that blip in mental health? It might explain a lot.
“I’m guessing she’s told you about the dreams.” Adrian raised an eyebrow. “She has, hasn’t she?”
“She’s told me she has some trouble sleeping. She thinks there’s someone coming into her room at night.”
Adrian nodded, like a man who knew the answer before he hea
rd it. “A woman perhaps? Only, she can never quite see her?”
Judy nodded, embarrassed by talking about her friend behind her back.
“She’s been telling her psychiatrists the same stories since she was a little girl. None of this is new.”
“I had no idea.”
“No reason why you should. For the past twenty years, she’s been making excellent progress with her doctors and the medication she’s on has really helped her focus. I’m only telling you because I’m worried that her behaviour at the restaurant was the start of a new deterioration in her mental health.”
“She was fine at the dinner. I didn’t see anything different about her.”
Hadn’t she? It was an unusual meal. Lisa hadn’t broached the subject of the search for her birth parents until after they had served dessert. Now that she reconsidered the evening, there was an undeniable tension in the air. Conversation had seemed stilted, driven by Faith and Judy and throughout it all, Lisa had been eating her food and giving one-word answers, often not speaking unless prompted by her dad. And there was that lack of presence, like she was thinking about other places. Judy had put it down to her having a bad day because she was never like this in her company or was it the awkwardness of a meal with Lisa and her parents when that was usually reserved for Christmases? And of course, Phil was no longer here to bring both parts of the family together.
“She was distracted, no doubt, by what she wanted to talk about,” Adrian continued, “but I’ve seen her in that place before and it’s generally only a few steps away from when she needs to see a doctor again.”
Adrian wasn’t just upset about the thought of Lisa searching for her birth parents, he was concerned about her mental health and what this search might do to her. And he was right to be concerned. Was Lisa ready for this? What if her birth parents didn’t want to see her? There were reasons Lisa and Phil had been put up for adoption, so many reasons, and Judy could only think of bad ones. There would be surprises ahead and Lisa was unlikely to find any happy news waiting for her.
Adrian stepped forward and Judy thought for a terrifying moment that this usually stoic figure was moving in for a hug. Instead, Adrian reached for her hand and took it gently. He gave a gentle squeeze, then let it drop. “You don’t have to respond. I just thought it was the right thing to do. For her wellbeing and your own. I know that she’s important to you, perhaps more so now that our Phillip is no longer with us.”
Judy nodded. “She is important. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“No one does. So, I’d appreciate it if you could do me a favour.”
“Of course.”
“Let me know how she is. She’s not returning my calls. If you think she’s deteriorating again, and you don’t get the impression she’s getting any help for it, I’d like you to let me know.”
Judy frowned. “I’m not sure I can do that.”
“I’m not asking you to spy on her,” he said, “I just want to know if the rest of the family need to step into help. You would want the same if this was Jemma we were talking about, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Judy sighed. “Yes, I’ll let you know. But, don’t give up on trying to get through to her yourself.”
He nodded. “I’ll never give up on her. She’s foremost on my mind. Always will be. But I’ve got to get back. Like I say, those lazy arses in the office will run my business into the ground if I let them.”
Adrian opened his door, then paused. “One more thing,” he said, “Faith thought it would be a nice idea to take Jemma up to the lakes for the weekend. Give you a couple of days break and a chance for us to spend some time with Jemma. We’ve already got a cottage booked. The wifi’s not meant to be so good, so we might even get to tear her away from her phone.”
He smiled, but his expression remained cool.
“OK. I’m not sure. She’s got a lot of schoolwork.”
A tilt of the head and the smile had evaporated. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”
“Sure. I’ll let you know.”
Adrian left, and she stood there, watching, until he drove off. He waved, she waved, then she headed inside, closed her front door and leant back against it. Her head was full of new thoughts and she didn’t even know how to begin processing everything that Adrian had told her.
Was Lisa making the whole thing up?
7
Judy woke and stifled the scream that had partially formed in her throat. With barely a thought, she reached for the bedside light, her arm so used to finding it in moments of midnight terror that she found it effortlessly and clicked it on. The shadows were banished, and she was left blinking against the drab walls of her bedroom. Her breath hung in the air before her, and she dropped her head back on the pillow, then clasped her hand in front of her mouth to stop herself sobbing.
What the hell had that been about? The dreams never lingered, dismissed as soon as the light came on, only the feelings remained. Loss and fear. Her two bedfellows.
She counted the doors, then took her notebook from the bedside table and recorded the number. Two. One for the door and one for the en-suite. No change there.
Her hands were cold, and she tucked them under the covers and considered turning the light back off. After a few minutes deliberating, and chasing ideas and half remembered dreams, she sighed, took her phone from beside her and grabbed her dressing gown from the chair at the end of the bed.
On the landing she paused, listening to the light snoring of Jemma through her open bedroom door. She’d taken to sporadic speaking in her sleep, but whenever Judy mentioned it to her, Jemma could never remember. Was it a sign that something else was going on? What if this ability that Judy had, was passed on through the generations? Please no, don’t let that be the case. From her experience over the last few months, it wasn’t anything that she’d want her worst enemy to have.
Adrian’s visit had left her thinking about what was going on in Lisa’s life. She’d never mentioned that she’d been suffering from any mental illness. Phil’s death could only have made things worse.
After making a tea, Judy took the iPad from the kitchen table and wandered into the lounge. From the back of the sofa she lifted the fleecy throw and settled herself down in the armchair.
If there was anything she’d learnt since Ravenmeols and her experience with the Adherents of the Fourth, it was that you didn’t let your friends down. Seth and Malc had saved her not just once but twice, and they could so easily have left her to fend for herself.
They didn’t. And she wouldn’t for her friends. Judy opened the browser and started to search.
Equipment for ghost investigators
8
Lisa woke to Jasper’s meowing. Reaching out to sooth him, her hand brushed the empty space beside her where he would often stand, waiting for her to get up.
“What’s up, puss?”
Groggily, she ignored the cold bedroom and tossed aside the duvet, getting to her feet. Jasper was at the end of the bed and now that he knew she was awake, he’d intensified his call. It was a call reserved for showing off his latest catch from outside, and Lisa braced herself, expecting to find a mouse, most likely half alive with guts spilling out.
It wasn’t a mouse.
Jasper lifted his head and meowed again, a hint of fear in his mournful moans. He brushed against her legs, keeping his distance from the thing at the base of her bed.
She blinked against the sight.
But that’s impossible, she thought.
With a trembling hand, Lisa bent and picked up the anachronistic object.
A child’s teddy bear.
It had a brown body made from felt that looked matted and worn. The legs and arms were made from a different pink and white striped material and made the whole thing appear a rather odd throwback to a less sophisticated time.
And she remembered it.
She dropped it like it might sting her and hurried downstairs where she heard Ellis tal
king in the kitchen.
A pang of jealousy struck her as she recognised the voice.
Nina had started working at the same digital marketing company as Ellis and Lisa only a week ago. Ellis had moved quickly with this one. Together, as housemates, they had a comfortable, friendly relationship that allowed them both to work and live with none of the problems she’d had with previous tenants.
“Oh sorry, didn’t know you had a guest,” Lisa said.
“Hi,” Nina said, then smiled and picked up a plate with two rounds of toast on it. Lisa tried to ignore the fact it had been made with the granary loaf she’d bought yesterday. It didn’t matter. Both her and Ellis put into a shared grocery budget. None of this food was hers or his.
“Hey, do you want some breakfast?” Ellis asked. He was already dressed in his favourite pink shirt and was halfway through his own toast. Nina leant across and brushed aside a crumb hanging from the edge of his mouth. Lisa tried not to roll her eyes.
“I’m good thanks. I’ll get my own. You two get back to it.”
“Kettle’s just boiled. We’re running low on milk though. I’ll pick some up on the way home.”
“Right.”
Nina smiled. “It’s a great house.”
“Thanks. My dad helped me find it.” Lisa didn’t point out that the house belonged to her dad’s property business.
“That’s nice,” Nina continued. “Don’t know what I’d do without the bank of Mum and Dad.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve always had to pay rent. He’s not that generous.”
Nina laughed nervously. “If only they were, eh?”
Lisa smiled but directed her next question at Ellis. “Don’t suppose I can cadge a lift?”
He glanced at his watch. “Afraid not. I promised Nina we’d stop off at her’s before we went in.”
Classy lady. Obviously, she hadn’t meant to spend the night then. Judging by the three bottles of wine on the countertop, they’d be working with delicate heads all day.
“OK. Well, best not keep you then.” Lisa opened the cupboard looking for a plate. Empty. A glance at the sink told her where they were. Ellis may well be fair when it came to contributing to groceries, but he sucked big time with the housework. She was always having to do the dishes, along with most of the vacuuming. A rota existed but Ellis treated it as more of a guideline than a firm commitment.
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