The woman leans her mop against the reception desk and gives me a considered look.
‘I don’t believe in it, myself,’ she says. ‘Nothing’s ever happened to me.’
I notice she’s wearing a tiny gold cross around her neck. When she says this, it glints and sparkles in the sunlight coming through the windows.
Then she turns away, shaking her head and smiling an annoying little smirk so I pelt down the steps and out across the gravel drive towards the entrance gates with their carved pineapples on top. I wait for the next bus and spend the rest of the morning explaining to teachers why I was too late to make assembly.
Jake comes up to me during break-time. Tie too short. Shirt un-tucked and crinkled. Trousers baggy and falling down around his skinny hips.
Not fair. If I even so much as wear an ear hoop the teachers are down on me like a ton of bricks and all of the girls have to wear their hair in ponytails or hair-bands during the day. My hair’s too fine to be worn in either of those ways but there’s no point arguing with the teachers or you just get shoved into detention after school.
So I’m just sitting on a wall banging my heels against the brick and watching a couple of girls try to scratch each other’s eyes out when Jake comes up to me all casual and says, ‘Awight?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘At least, I think so. There’s some weird stuff going on at home but apart from that.’
‘Yeah?’ says Jake, but I can tell that he’s not interested in what’s going on at the manor. He’s looking me up and down and hopping from leg to leg.
‘So,’ I say, trying to get his attention back. ‘Good half term?’
Jake lets his dark blue eyes rest on me for a moment.
‘It was OK,’ he says. ‘Sorry we never got to meet up in the end though. I kind of, erm, like, missed you.’
Then he goes all red and turns away to fake interest in what’s going on in the football field.
I smile. I’ve decided to be nicer to Jake. It’s good to hear that somebody likes me.
The bell rings for afternoon double maths. I groan and get up.
‘Don’t s’pose you fancy doing something later?’ says Jake, staring at the ground and kicking the gravel into dust. ‘Film or something?’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to ring Mum but say I’ll see you outside school at four?’
Jake nods and slopes off for an afternoon of chemistry.
I head into maths feeling like it’s my birthday and Valentine’s Day all rolled into one.
A night off from the manor! I can’t wait.
Mum’s a bit edgy when I call her just before four and explain that I’m going out for a couple of hours with Jake.
‘It’s not that I don’t trust you,’ she says. ‘Or Jake. It’s just – well, you know what it is.’
I do know, but I don’t want to bring the subject up on the phone so I just say, ‘I know, yes, but I’m nearly fifteen and we’ve been going out over five months and I’ll be fine and I’ll see you just after supper. OK?’
Mum agrees. I can hear the anxiety in her voice. She’s been given new pills by the doctors, which are supposed to stop the worry, but some days it seems as if they’re not really working.
I hang up and shake my fair hair out of the horrid ponytail just in time for Jake to come strolling out of the school and in my direction.
We go to the precinct and Jake pays for us to see a film in 3D which is kind of cool and although it’s a stupid film I really enjoy having one night where I don’t have to worry about weird atmospheres and strange noises.
I let Jake put his arm round me in the film.
I feel kind of safe and warm.
Afterwards we go to Pizza Express and I wolf down a Four Seasons. When I eventually look at my watch and realise I ought to be getting back to Mum and Dad, it’s like somebody has poured a bucket of cold black water over my head and all the happy feelings start to snake their way out of the building to be replaced by little thrills of fear and nerves.
‘Let’s walk back,’ says Jake.
We walk down the long main road towards the manor and just as we turn the corner and it comes into sight he slips his hand into mine but, although I’ve got used to it, by then I can see the large square whiteness of the house with its green shutters and great expanse of parkland and I’m feeling like I want to ask Jake’s parents to adopt me quick.
‘Funny place you live in,’ says Jake as we reach the huge gates. ‘Kind of like some posh person’s house from the last century.’
‘Well, that’s what it is,’ I say. ‘Five centuries, in fact. The last family to live here owned it for over a hundred years.’
I’m sounding a bit like Dad on one of his research highs so I stop quick and let Jake peck me on the cheek. His mouth is warm and smells of popcorn.
‘Look after yourself, yeah?’ he says.
His voice is more serious than usual and his eyes look dark and concerned. Maybe he’s noticed that I’m not really quite with it at the moment.
I watch as he turns away and lopes off down Weston Drove.
Then I trail up the enormous semi-circular drive and ring the bell of Weston Manor.
Dad is really in his element tonight.
There are two big groups of adults going round the house for the ghost hunts and Dad’s job as Keeper is to welcome them and give them some history of the house and its occupants before passing them over to the two female guides who will take the groups around the big state rooms, up to the bedrooms and then down to the basement kitchens.
The guides are both wearing fancy dress. Just looking at them makes me want to giggle. One of them, a fair-haired lady with a pretty, round face, is dressed a bit like a giant white fairy in a glittery white dress with wings attached to the back. The other has dressed like a cross between a Victorian servant and a mad witch, all in black with a pointy hat, long black skirts and buttoned-up high boots with stripy socks.
‘Nice that they make the effort, isn’t it?’ says Dad as he clears his throat and shuffles his notes ready to welcome the visitors to Weston. ‘Do you want to go round with one of the groups, Tabs? You’re almost an adult.’
I shudder. Just the thought of going upstairs again, even in a big group of people, doesn’t appeal very much.
‘No, I think I’ll go back to the flat and see Mum,’ I say. ‘Tired, you know.’
I’m still feeling happy after my evening with Jake but Dad doesn’t need to know all that.
‘Well in that case, could you show Mrs Spencer to the ladies’ loo on the way?’ says Dad. I sigh but smile at Mrs Spencer and take her out of the entrance hall through a door to the left and into the public toilets.
As she disappears into a cubicle, I glance around the room and wonder what it used to be. There’s a huge white arched door on one side of it, blocked in now. Maybe it’s always been a loo. Or maybe it was a room for the butler to clean silver in? It’s cold, in any case, and the black-and-white tiled floor makes me feel dizzy if I look at it too long.
I’m standing looking in the mirror at myself and listening to Dad’s voice booming out from the morning room and wondering if I should chop my hair short, and Mrs Spencer is rustling about and flushing in her cubicle and then I feel a slight tickle on my neck, like somebody has just touched it very gently and there’s a sudden strong scent of soap or washing powder. I’m staring in the mirror trying to see what it is when Mrs Spencer comes out of the cubicle and says, ‘Spider alert! You’ve got an enormous one on your neck.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I snap. In fact I didn’t, but I hate spiders.
‘I’ve got it,’ she says, brushing the back of my neck with a sharp movement. ‘That was huge! Must have fallen from the ceiling on to your hair.’
She bustles off back to the ghost hunt without needing my help any longer. I can still hear Dad talking in his big booming Keeper’s voice.
The smell of soap has vanished.
I stare at the floor.
The spi
der sits where it fell and then it scuttles off towards the big arched door.
It’s minute. Tiny. If I’d seen it on myself I wouldn’t have freaked at all. Mrs Spencer must have an eyesight problem.
‘Strange,’ I say but everyone’s gone so I go back towards our flat to see Mum, and, as I walk down the corridor past the grand dining room, somebody rushes out from the darkness within and brushes past me so fast that I can’t see who it is. So I turn around and stare behind me and all I see is part of a blue dress whisking round the corner back into the entrance hall.
I stand for a moment, my head in a whirl.
In the background I can hear the comforting boom of Dad’s voice and the laughter of the people on the ghost tour. ‘She must have been late for the tour,’ I say to myself. Somehow it seems important to say this. ‘Visitors are often late.’
Then I turn the key into our flat and slam the door behind me.
It’s dark inside so I call out, ‘Mum?’ and then I realise she’s watching TV in the lounge in the dark.
She jumps about a mile high when I poke my head round the door.
‘Tabitha, you gave me a fright!’ she says, shifting along the sofa to make room for me. ‘Did you have a nice time with Jake?’
I nod but I’m too embarrassed to go into details.
‘What are you watching?’ I say. The television is jumping about in strange zigzags and two scared-looking presenters are being filmed with night-vision cameras.
‘Silly rubbish,’ says Mum. ‘It’s this programme where two people go into haunted houses and try to film ghosts. Most of it’s made up for the cameras but it’s weirdly addictive when you get into it.’
I shudder and get up to make myself a hot chocolate.
When I come back Mum has fallen asleep with the remote in her hand so I click the television off and cover her with a blanket. Then I read in bed and wait for Dad to come in.
‘It was brilliant,’ he says when we’re sitting in the lamplight at the kitchen table.
‘Did you see anything?’ I say, studying my feet in their pink slippers. I kind of know what his answer is going to be.
‘No, not really,’ says Dad. ‘But they enjoyed looking round the rooms in the candlelight. One person reckoned that they’d heard a voice but nobody else heard it so it’s a bit difficult to say.’
He yawns and drains his mug of coffee.
‘Early start tomorrow,’ he says. ‘And you should have been in bed hours ago. It’s only Monday. Don’t want your schoolwork to start suffering.’
I groan. I’m about to head off to bed when I remember something. ‘Dad,’ I say. ‘What about that woman in the blue dress? Did she enjoy it?’
Dad frowns and clicks off the kitchen light.
‘I don’t recall anyone wearing a blue dress. Most people were wearing jeans. But then again I couldn’t see everything. It was pretty dark in most of the rooms. Night, Tabs.’
He leaves me sitting there in the dark.
A chill creeps up and starts to penetrate my heart.
Chapter Ten
There’s not much point trying to convince Dad that I really did see somebody rush out of the dining room last night.
He just comes up with an irritating scientific explanation for everything, or else he tries to make out that my imagination is running away with me.
‘Old houses have draughts, Tabs,’ he says. ‘You of all people should know that.’
I growl. It’s the next day and I’m eating toast and cereal in the kitchen with Ben playing hide-and-seek under the table.
‘Dad,’ I say. ‘I’m not mad. I saw her dress as clearly as I’m seeing you now.’
Dad ruffles my hair in a really annoying way.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he says. ‘We all know what you’re like about seeing things, Tabs.’
Mum shoots him a look when he says this.
‘Don’t start that again,’ she hisses. Her pale face is half-hidden under her wing of brown hair and she’s wrapped up in a thick pink towelling dressing gown even though it’s about ninety degrees outside.
Dad sighs, grabs a triangle of toast from my plate and gets himself ready for another day compiling his new brochure on the manor. He’s got a photographer coming today to take glossy pictures and encourage even more visitors to pour through the heavy doors.
‘Our brochure will be the best yet,’ he says. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Are you going to put in any photos of the family who used to live here?’ I say. ‘That Lady Eleanor woman?’
Mum and Dad exchange another weird look. They do a lot of that lately.
I hate it.
‘It’s a fair question!’ I say.
Dad grabs his jacket from a hook by the door and bolts off into the manor, leaving Mum to deal with me.
‘You don’t need to know everything all the time, Tabitha,’ she says. ‘And I don’t want to hear any more from you. We’ve come here for a fresh start. Remember?’
Then she blows her nose and heads off towards the shower.
I can’t concentrate at school.
OK, that’s partly because Jake keeps looking over at me during assembly. I keep wondering if he’s gone off me or if we’ll go out again soon. I check my phone all day and there are no texts or anything, so my good mood deflates like a tyre and I land myself with yet another detention for not paying attention to the teacher in biology cos I’m half thinking about Jake and half thinking about the weird things that are going on at Weston Manor.
When the bell goes at the end of the school day I hang around the gates for a while just in case Jake’s going to come out and walk me home, but I see him head off towards the sports field and I realise that it’s the night when his class does extra football practice after school. I go back inside because I’ve got a half-four detention and I spend an hour copying out a chapter of my biology textbook under the watchful glare of Miss Mayfield and then she lets me go a bit early because we’re both sweltering in the hot classroom. I get on the bus and sit in a warm fug of sweat and misery until it drops me off at end of the long road which runs parallel to the manor.
I walk up the front drive and stare up at the house.
It stares back, with its unblinking windows half-hidden behind green shutters.
There are loads of cars parked in the drive which means the manor is full of visitors.
The air is very warm out here but the thought of going inside makes me shiver, so instead I go through the arch on the left-hand side of the house and into the grounds at the back of the house.
The croquet hoops still sit in the grass but there’s nobody there.
I study the hoops close-up but they just look like semi-circular bits of iron.
I glance up at the house and at the window to the library where I stood looking out on the day I saw the three women playing their game.
The curtains are drawn across the window. Dad sometimes does that to stop the sun streaming in and fading the valuable old books.
‘It’s a lovely house,’ I say to myself out loud. ‘You are lucky to live here. Get a grip, Tabs!’ My voice sounds harsh in the silence.
It doesn’t really sound like me.
I glance up towards the house again and then to my right. The tiny church of St Paul and Peter sits surrounded by bushes of pink and purple flowers. It looks kind of calm and safe so I walk away from the manor gardens and through the little gate that joins them to the churchyard.
It’s peaceful in here, although the birds are chirping and there’s the faint sound of organ music coming from inside the church. I pick my way through the gravestones, looking at some of the names, or at least the ones that aren’t so faded with age that it’s impossible to make out even the dates. Some of them are so old that they are angled outwards, like ancient grey teeth falling from a long-dead mouth. I shudder and walk into the church.
There’s no organist there. This puzzles me for a bit but then I see that there’s a tape playing. The tiny church is empty exc
ept for a lady in an apron who is filling up buckets and vases with sprays of white lilies.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a wedding in here on Saturday. Beautiful church, isn’t it?’
I smile and start to walk around. I’m conscious that the lady is watching me over the top of her flowers. Suppose most teenage girls don’t spend their after-school hours wandering around small local churches.
Then again, I’m not most teenage girls.
I walk down the aisle to look at the altar and then down one side of the church. The wall is covered with gold plaques and with a jolt I realise that they are all memorials to the Thomas-Fulford family.
There’s one for Lady Eleanor and another for her husband, Sir Charles. Beneath that is a plaque with two names on – Lucinda and Rose MacDonald, Lady Eleanor’s half-sisters. There are five plaques to earlier members of the family with dates stretching back over four hundred years. And then sticking out on its own next to a pillar is one for John Thomas-Fulford.
‘Captain Jack,’ I say out loud.
There’s a loud cough behind me so I turn around expecting the flower lady to be there ready to boot me out, but she’s still on the other side of the church arranging armfuls of leafy green ferns amidst the white flowers.
‘OK,’ I say to myself. ‘Maybe I should get more sleep.’
This is my new way of dealing with things. I’m going to be like Dad and find a rational explanation for every single thing that happens to me from now on.
I say goodbye to the lady in the church and head back out into the graveyard.
It’s boiling out here now.
When I went in the church it was warm, but now it feels more like the height of an August summer holiday than early June.
I take off my school tie and shove it into my bag, open a few buttons of my shirt at the neck and gulp down water from a bottle.
There’s a buzzing in the air, like crickets or grasshoppers or something you’d hear in a film set in another, hotter country.
‘Summer flies,’ I say to myself. ‘It might be flying ant day.’
I shudder. Dad says that flying ants only swarm on one day of the year and that they are all dead by the end of it. Can’t really see the point of that myself.
The Haunting of Tabitha Grey Page 7