‘Mum, I’ve got to go. The builders are on my doorstep,’ she lied.
‘Righty-ho, well take care won’t you Juliet. Are you eating enough? You’re not too lonely up there I hope.’
‘I’m fine mum. Are you and Dad okay?’ Jules added as an afterthought.
‘Of course we are. In fact, we are opening a new tour - famous characters of bath. You must come see the costumes we’ve got and the local drama kids helping us. It’s all so theatrical.
‘Okay mum I will. I’ll call you soon. Bye.’ Jules clipped the cover of her mobile shut without waiting for her mother’s response.
Thirteen
A magnitude of thoughts battled for attention inside Jules’ head as she made her way into the house.
Something her mother had said troubled her, but before she could put her finger on it, another wave of guilt had started to works its way into her body, curdling the hot anger marching through her veins.
Why had she flipped out at Rich? She wondered again.
She seemed incapable of being her usual cool self around him. He had nothing to do with The Daily’s story and could hardly be blamed for Phillip spewing his pathetic lies to the trashy tabloid. She would have to apologise, Jules thought with a sigh of resignation. But for now she had her house to herself for the first time since arriving in Cottinghale and an unending supply of hot energy to expend.
Despite her dark mood, Jules felt her spirits lift as her eyes scanned the progress they’d made. In the four days since she’d woken up with Max’s tongue slobbering in her ear, the old living room ceiling had been torn down, and just as Terri had promised, her brother had plastered the lot, hiding any trace of the hole that had been there only last week.
Even the majority of the dust had gone, thanks to Dan and Jason’s endless sweeping.
Tomorrow she would pack up her belongings from the guesthouse and finally get the peace she’d longed for since the first time she’d set foot in the house. Even with the beautiful landscape stretching around it, Cottinghale had taken on a suffocating feel. She seemed incapable of taking two steps out of Mrs Beckwith’s front door without someone stopping for a friendly chat.
With Terri’s help also coming to an end, she could finally be alone again.
The feeling of relief did not last long. Jules soon found her mind jumping back to Philips story about her. She didn’t know why Philip would do it, or how Guy had arranged it, but she knew Guy was behind it somehow. There was no level that he wouldn’t stoop to in order to boost his career, she thought as the anger and frustration wound its way around her body in a tight grip.
It hardly seemed real. The millions of people that would be reading about her, not to mention staring at her picture as if she was just as famous as Guy; and yet every time she allowed herself to relax, to believe the newspaper had moved on, another story appeared.
For the first time since it had began, Jules allowed herself to wonder if another story would follow. A sliver of fear embedded itself under the surface of her thoughts like a splinter. Jules pushed it away, shifting her focus back to the house.
Scanning the empty rooms, she searched for something that would release the hot energy bouncing through her. If only she had a spare wall to knock down, she thought.
Then her gaze fell onto the dirty grey carpet that covered the hallway and the stairs. She’d never taken up a carpet before, but how hard could it be? Jules wondered, eyeing the disgusting threadbare wool, which she suspected was the cause of the lingering stale smell that flooded her nostrils whenever she entered the house.
Springing into action, Jules jumped up the creaking stairs and dived into the bathroom. In less than a minute, she had swapped her jeans for the loose freedom of her overalls and was back in the living room, a Stanley knife in hand.
Gripping the knife in her clenched fist, she drove the blade into the carpet, dragging it the entire length of the room. She wanted to picture Guy’s face, or even The Daily’s bright blue logo underneath the sharp gleam of the blade, but she had to stay in control or she risked damaging the floor underneath. Although knowing her luck in the house so far, the floorboards would be rotten.
Suddenly, as she worked her fingers between the slit she’d made, Jules heard something from upstairs. She held her breath, listening to the sound of floorboards moving above her, her anger momentarily forgotten.
‘Hello,’ she called out. ‘Terri? Is that you?’
A slow breath eased out from her lungs as silence filled the house. Old houses always made strange noises. She berated her foolishness and turned her attention back to the floor.
The carpet seemed unwilling to release its hold on the house. Each tiny piece Jules managed to pry away felt like the tight fingers of a grip clinging to life.
Rolling up the sleeves on her overalls, Jules wormed her fingers under centimetre after centimetre of carpet, ignoring the painful cramps gripping her hands and thinking of nothing but the slow progress she was making.
By the time Jules had worked her way to the stairs the light had begun to fade from the sky. She had moved non-stop, freeing chunk after chunk of carpet and dragging them outside before heaving them into the skip.
With the carpet gone, she could just make out thick planks of rich dark wood hiding underneath another decade’s worth of dust and dirt. With a good scrub and a treatment of varnish, the swirls of the natural wood would match perfectly with the skirting boards, picture frames and doors.
At last something was going right, she thought, allowing herself to smile for the first time that day.
Jules felt suddenly exhausted. As the day had worn on, the anger had melted away with it, leaving behind a tiredness that lay heavy on her mind and body. She should stop. Go back to one of Mrs Beckwith’s delicious casseroles and crawl into bed. But as Jules looked towards the final bit of carpet covering the stairs, she forced her throbbing muscles to continue working. Another few hours and she would be finished.
Keeping her head down and her jaw clenched against the exhaustion, Jules plied the carpet away from each stair as her tired limbs moved up the staircase. She could think of nothing but finishing the job.
Suddenly, a noise broke through her concentration. It sounded to Jules like twigs being snapped beneath her. Before she had time to comprehend the strange noise growing up around her, she felt the first movement from under her feet.
That can’t be right, Jules reasoned as she tried to steady herself. It had to be her own exhaustion which made it seem like she was suddenly on a swaying rope bridge, instead of a safe and sturdy staircase. But even as the thought raced through her head, Jules knew it was something more. The entire staircase was moving around her.
She flung her arms out on either side, one hand scraping against the bare wall, searching for anything that would support her, the other reaching instinctively for the banister which had also started to sway.
For what felt like an eternity, Jules remained in limbo, unable to move as she waited desperately for the staircase to steady itself. Something which seemed to be less and less likely with every passing second.
Then it happened; a strange sensation of weightlessness overtook her as the stairs beneath her fell to the floor with a deafening crash. With nothing to support her, Jules was powerless to stop her body falling with it.
The time between the stairs falling away and her body crashing to the floor could have lasted no more than a second, but it was long enough for Jules to wonder if the entire day had been a terrible dream.
Another horrifying story in The Daily, her rudeness towards Rich, the beautiful floors too good to be true, and now the collapse of the stairs from underneath her.
Just a dream, Jules repeated to herself, as thick clouds of dust flew up around her and she hurtled down over the wreckage, a yelp escaping her mouth as much from landing hard against the floor as from the banister, still in one piece, which crashed on top of her.
Fourteen
‘Well if it isn’t C
ottinghale’s very own celebrity,’ she heard Stan’s gruff sarcastic tones call out as she unlatched the heavy pub door.
It took a moment for her eye’s to adjust to the flickering light of the fire as she entered.
The spinning had subsided on the slow walk from the house, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of detachment pressing down from the back of her head, or the musky smell of sawdust lingering in her nose.
Jules had no idea how much time had passed between the fall and the moment she’d realised it hadn’t been a dream, but it was long enough for an ache to overtake her entire body, pulsing all the way to her bones.
One by one, she had wiggled each of her fingers and toes, relieved to find them still responding to her commands. Somehow she had managed to free fall onto a pile of rubble, with a banister crashing on top of her, and not broken a single bone. Although based on the cries of resistance from her body as she’d clambered to her feet, it had been a close call.
‘Jules.’ Rich strode out from the behind the bar. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. The stairs fell on me,’ she replied, stepping slowly into the cosy warmth she remembered from her last visit.
Rich’s forehead creased with concern. ‘What? Are you ok?’
‘I think so. I can’t get to my car keys, purse... clothes...in bathroom,’ she babbled, unable to string the thoughts together in her mind, let alone form them into sentences. ‘I couldn’t think of where else to go.’
‘Crikey,’ an elderly man chirped from a table by the bar.
Jules turned to the sound of the voice, the movement causing a strange weightlessness to float over her, as if the room was swaying around her.
Within a second, Rich had jumped to her side. Catching her arm in his large grip, he half lifted, half dragged her to the nearest seat beside the man who’d just spoken.
‘Jules, can you hear me? Are you okay?’
‘Yes I’m fine, why?’ she replied. Actually she felt a little sleepy despite the soreness resonating from her limbs.
‘Don’t move. I’ll get you some water.’
‘Whiskey, give her some whiskey boy,’ the same elderly man called out from next to her.
‘I’m really sorry Rich,’ Jules called out to the room.
‘What are you sorry for Lovey? It weren’t your fault,’ the elderly man interjected.
‘Sorry,’ she repeated again as Rich placed a pint of water in her hands.
At that particular moment she couldn’t quite put her finger on what she needed to apologise for but she said it again anyway.
‘Don’t worry about it Jules. Drink the water and then I think you need to lay down for a while.’
‘All my stuff is upstairs. It fell right from underneath me. Bloody house.’
The elderly man cleared his throat. ‘It’s Mrs Mayor.’
‘Don’t start on that now Ben,’ Rich cut in, dropping his knees to the patterned red carpet so his head was level with hers.
‘It’s true; she doesn’t like people meddling with her house.’
‘What? Who’s Mrs Mayor? It’s my house anyway.’ Jules looked between the faces that seemed to float around her.
She shut her eyes and waited for the spinning to subside again.
‘She used to live there,’ Ben continued, his voice rising to include the spattering of people sitting at the bar. ‘Still does if you believe that sort of thing. Died about fifteen years ago now, but Jimmy, her husband swore blind she was still there nagging him day and night. He even left money in his will to send a newspaper up there for her every day. That’s right, isn’t it Stan?’ he called out to the corner.
An indistinguishable grunt resonated from the lone figure on the other side of the room.
‘If she’s dead, how can she mind what happens to the house? Oh I get it, you’re suggesting my house is haunted,’ Jules exclaimed, suddenly making sense of the rather strange conversations she’d had with both Rich and Stan the previous week.
‘It’s true. Mum swears she hears her, it, talking,’ a voice Jules recognised joined in the conversation.
She narrowed her eyes towards the young couple perched on the barstools
‘Jason?’
‘Dan,’ he corrected. ‘And this is my girlfriend Molly,’ he added, wrapping his arm around the stick thin teenager next to him.
‘Oh sorry. But,’ Jules’ mind struggled to make sense of the situation. ‘This is ridiculous, why did no one tell me?’
‘We did. The other night, you were the one who agreed to the exorcism,’ Dan replied, spinning on his stool to join in the conversation.
‘What? No I didn’t?’ she looked towards Rich, still propped on his knees beside her.
To Jules’ surprise he nodded in response.
‘Where is Terri?’ Jules asked. She would be able to make sense of this.
‘At the footie. Should be back any minute.’
‘She likes football?’
‘Yeah ever since dad left us she’s not missed a Cheltenham home game.’
‘Oh. Where did he go?’
‘Last we heard he is in Spain. Not that we care. I deferred my place at Uni for a year to help mum with the business. Jason’s doing the same once his A levels are finished.’
Jules felt the room closing in. She’d never stopped to consider the reasons behind her rather odd building team. There seemed to be more to gangly teenagers and their mother than she’d first thought.
‘So about this exorcism,’ Ben began again. ‘We were thinking we could combine it with a little gathering. Like our very own bonfire night.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
She could have fallen from the roof straight onto her head and she still wouldn’t be dazed enough to agree to having a party.
‘Look the stairs fell down because…well because they are old stairs,’ she stammered, pushing away the memory of the unexplained creaking floorboards and strange chill which had tickled her skin just before the fall.
Jules ignored the pain that shot from her feet all the way to her head as she stood up, only remembering afterwards that she had nowhere to go.
‘My keys,’ she exclaimed, patting the pockets of her dusty overalls, as if they might magically appear.
‘Jules you really shouldn’t be…’ Rich called out.
The rest of his words disappeared under the sound of a loud phone ringing from somewhere in the pub. Coloured spots filled Jules eyes and she felt her body tumble to the floor for the second time that day.
Fifteen
‘Jules? Can you hear me?’
‘Umm.’ She opened her eyes, blinking through the clumps of sawdust and dirt that had stuck like glue to her eyelashes. A soft glow from a bedside lamp illuminated the room.
‘Jules, how many fingers am I holding up?’ Rich’s voice broke into her consciousness. She could smell the soft hints of his aftershave and felt the warmth of his body leaning over her.
Running a finger across her eyelids, she removed the grit and focused her gaze on the hand waving in front of her face.
‘Four?’
‘Good.’
‘Did I pass?’ she mumbled.
‘Yep you’ll live. Had us scared there for a while though,’ he replied.
‘I seem to be making a habit of waking up in your bed,’ Jules lifted her head from the pillow, relieved to find her vision had stopped spinning.
‘What can I say? I’m irresistible,’ Rich replied, his eyes crinkling with his smile as he sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Can I get you anything? Water? A three-course dinner? Cup of tea?’
‘What time is it?’
Rich pulled up the sleeve of his pale blue jumper. It matched the colour of his eyes perfectly.
‘Seven-thirty.’
‘Feels more like midnight.’
‘You’ve had quite a day.’
As if to remind her, The Daily’s headline from that morning bounced back into her mind, causing a flush of heat to travel across her fa
ce.
It made no sense. A national tabloid had published a story about her. Not Guy, the one who was supposed to be famous, but her. She was nobody. And then it turns out, her house is supposedly haunted by an old woman who caused the stairs to fall down on top of her.
If it wasn’t for the ache pouring out from every muscle of her body she might have laughed at how ridiculous it all seemed.
‘Hey,’ Rich said, his hand resting on her shoulder, ‘Are you okay? I could drive you to A&E?’
Jules’ eyes looked towards him. The blonde stubble on his face had returned.
‘I’m fine really. I was just thinking, it feels like all I ever say to you is thank you and sorry, but I am sorry for what I said to you this morning. I was upset but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’
‘Hey, it’s fine.’ Rich removed his hand, raking it through his hair. ‘I have no idea how it feels to have half the country know about my past, but I’d probably react in the exact same way you did.’
‘I doubt that.’ Jules thought back to her earlier outburst. ‘It doesn’t seem like much phases you. And thank you for helping me and carrying me up here too.’
‘Well thank Stan and Dan too. It took all three of us to get you up the stairs.’
‘What?’ Jules pushed her body up, resisting the desire to cry out as pain shot through her limbs.
‘Sorry, bad joke.’
‘Ha ha,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Just for that you can make me a cup of tea.’
‘Coming right up’
Jules dragged her body up to sitting, resting her back against the pillows as she realised with horror just how much dirt had covered her in the fall, most of which had transferred to Rich’s navy bed covers.
With as much movement as her arms would allow, she swept her hands across the bed, pushing the powdery grey dirt to the floor before Rich returned and she’d have to apologise for something else.
‘Err Jules, what are you doing?’ Rich appeared in the doorway, a tray in his arms.
The Reluctant Celebrity Page 9