When I’ve finished ten minutes later the toilet door is still firmly shut but one of the mayor’s party is shifting from leg to leg and looking pointedly at the door.
‘Is there still somebody in there? Do you think they’ve collapsed?’ says a lady in a violet suit with black-rimmed glasses. ‘Perhaps we should knock?’
I nod and tap very softly on the door, and then a bit louder when there’s no reply.
‘Why don’t you go downstairs and use the visitor lavatories there?’ I say, because the guest is looking as if he’s about to burst.
I watch the party go down the dark staircase, chatting amongst themselves and I feel proud of myself for a moment.
I gave a talk about the house and people enjoyed it.
And nothing happened, more to the point.
Except I’ve maybe got an unconscious member of staff on my hands now.
Dad’s given me one of his walkie-talkies so I press the button like he’s shown me and after a moment or two he comes bounding up the stairs in his usual way, two at a time.
‘Dad, you’ve got lipstick on your cheek,’ I say.
Dad laughs and wipes it off.
‘Never mind that,’ he says. ‘What’s going on up here?’
I point at the door of the servants’ toilet.
‘You shouldn’t really let people use this,’ sighs Dad. ‘It’s part of the visitor exhibit.’
I roll my eyes.
‘Dad, there is a LADY stuck in there,’ I say. ‘She might be ill. Or dead. Could you please stop telling me off and DO something?’
Dad knocks twice on the door but there’s no reply. ‘Stand back,’ he says, just like men do in films. Then he runs at the door and kicks it open with his boot. The door flies open with a bang, hitting the wall inside.
There’s nobody there.
I go in and look up at the window.
It’s tiny, only big enough for a cat to squeeze through and not a solid-looking woman.
Even Dad looks a bit confused.
‘Are you SURE that she went in there, Tabs?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She was in a hurry.’
‘Well,’ says Dad. ‘She must have somehow got out again without you seeing.’
‘Not possible,’ I say. ‘I was standing right here all the time. And how do you explain the door being locked from the inside?’
I can see Dad struggling to explain this one, but his radio crackles into life again and it’s Dawn telling him to come back downstairs. So he bounds off again and I follow because I don’t want to be left up here with all the empty four-poster beds and the library.
For the rest of the afternoon I hand round plates of sandwiches and top up glasses of wine and champagne and I watch Mum making a big effort to talk to guests. I admire her pale-pink lip gloss and her shiny brown bun and the way that she’s managed to dress in a floaty lilac top and leggings and still look a million times more classy than Dawn with her flashy lipstick and tight top.
Dawn is over in the corner of the dining room by the Chinese lions surrounded by the press from the local paper.
Dad keeps looking over at her with a sour expression on his face.
I’m pretty sure Mum sees.
After a while she excuses herself and goes back to the flat where Ben has been left locked in on his own with me checking him every half hour and to the safety of her sleeping pills and bedroom.
By six o’clock the guests have all gone and the caterers have come in to clean up the mess. Dad supervises them and I go back to the flat to tell Ben all about the afternoon.
He listens with his eyes wide, as usual. He’s too little to be trusted at these posh events. There’s always the risk that he’ll charge into somebody’s legs and cause them to drop their food or hide behind a chair and leap out, giving some old man a heart attack.
‘There’s a lot of stuff going on here, Ben,’ I say after I’ve told him about the guests. ‘A lot of stuff that I don’t understand.’
He tucks his little hand into mine and we watch some rubbish reality TV programme about people learning to be opera stars until Dad comes back in much later to cook us omelettes for supper. Mum surfaces and gives us a tight smile and skirts around Dad without touching him or talking to him and surely she must be able to smell what I smell?
Perfume.
Dad smells of Dawn’s perfume.
That night my father sleeps on the couch.
Chapter Thirteen
Jake comes to visit.
Mum says it’s OK so I spend all Friday morning getting ready in my bedroom.
I really want to make more effort with Jake now. I feel like I’ve been taking him for granted and Gemma agrees. So I’ve texted him loads this week and he’s replied to most of them.
I look at my pale reflection and lank hair in the mirror and something in me kind of snaps.
I’m fed up being tired and stressed and anxious.
I reach for a red dress that Mum bought me but that I haven’t yet worn. It’s short and flippy and has two spaghetti straps. I put on black ballerinas and then I reach for my make-up case and add a bright red lipstick and dark eyeliner.
I dry my hair upside down until it stands out in a dark blonde cloud around my head and then I survey the results in the mirror.
A different sort of girl stares back at me.
Tabitha, definitely. Not Tabs. Not today. I look about five years older than usual.
I top the look off with some mascara and spray shine stuff all over my head and then I float into the lounge for Mum’s approval.
‘Oh!’ she says, looking a bit shocked. Then she sees my expression and smiles.
‘You look nice, Tabitha,’ she says. ‘I like it when you make a bit of an effort with your appearance. Very striking.’
I glow. It’s not often that Mum praises me these days.
Ben giggles so I know I must look kind of OK.
Dad pops back at coffee time.
‘Since when did you start wearing aftershave?’ Mum asks him. ‘No, it’s all right. Don’t answer that.’
She goes off down to the basement, clutching her pointe shoes in their pink box.
Dad looks kind of flustered and his cheeks are redder than usual. He doesn’t even go on about my outfit being too old for me, which is unusual.
‘I won’t be coming back for lunch today,’ is all he says. ‘All right?’
I nod.
This means I get Jake all to myself. He won’t mind Ben, but the main thing is that my warring parents will not be around. Mum will be asleep and Dad will be – doing whatever Dad is doing. I don’t want to think too much about that.
I’m ready way too early. Jake isn’t due for another hour so I pace up and down in the flat, checking my reflection every two minutes and re-applying lip gloss. At last I see him coming up the semi-circular drive and gazing up at the house like people always do when they visit for the first time. A few minutes later there’s a soft knock on the flat door and he’s standing there, all clean-smelling and tall with his fierce blue eyes smiling down at me.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘I bought you these.’
He holds out a pile of DVDs and a bag of Maltesers.
I blush.
‘Come in,’ I say. ‘D’you want a coffee?’
Jake’s staring at me like I’m a stranger.
‘You look different,’ he says. ‘You don’t usually wear that sort of lipstick, do you?’
I grin.
‘Like it?’ I say. I’m determined to be flirty and confident today. I’m not letting the house get to me and I’m going to make Jake see that I’m exciting and fun to be with.
‘Erm, yes,’ says Jake in a polite voice. ‘I think so. Nice dress.’
I flick my hair back and put instant into two cups, all the while watching him look around our flat.
‘This is really cool,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think it would be so big.’
‘Well, it’s not really, compared to the rest of the
house,’ I say. ‘Maybe I’ll take you round later if you’d like?’
I don’t really want to. But everybody who comes here wants The Tour, and I’d rather do it myself than have to cringe watching Dad do it, all puffed up and self-important.
I figure that if Jake is with me, I’ll be safe.
I make us a pile of cheese sandwiches and fetch juice from the fridge and we sit down with Ben and watch a DVD about a man and a woman who are destined never to meet. It’s quite funny and even Ben laughs a bit. For a moment I forget where I am and just enjoy sitting next to Jake with his arm pressed up against mine and when he thinks I’m not looking I watch him sideways out of the corner of my eye and enjoy the way that his eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs.
We’re so engrossed in the film that we jump when Mum comes in from downstairs, her cheeks flushed and her eyes lit up in that peculiar way that only comes from her dancing.
‘Hi Jake,’ she says. ‘Good to see you. I don’t know why Tabitha hardly ever has you over.’
I shoot her a furious look. Mothers are SO embarrassing.
‘Sorry, Tabs,’ says Mum. ‘But welcome, anyway, Jake. You guys got enough food?’
I gesture at the pile of sandwiches and raise my eyebrows a few times at Mum, so she gets the hint and goes off to get changed.
‘Sorry about that,’ I say. ‘Why are parents always so annoying?’
Then I realise what I’ve said and flush scarlet. Jake only has a dad. His mum died when he was a baby and his gran helped bring him up.
‘Sorry,’ I say, yet again. ‘Shall I just shut up now?’
I shove a triangular sandwich in my mouth and make a face.
Jake laughs and we watch the end of the film with his arm draped around the tops of my shoulders so that I go all tingly.
Mum comes back into the room dressed in jeans and a khaki jacket and with her rucksack on her back.
‘Going food shopping,’ she announces. ‘Be good. And – Tabitha?’
I twist my neck to look round at her.
‘Yeah?’
‘You know I love you heaps, don’t you?’ she says.
Omigod.
Why do parents always have to say these things at the worst possible moments?
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I mumble, turning my face away from Jake so that he can’t see my unattractive red burning face.
Mum gives me another look, which I can’t work out at all, and then she slips out of the flat with Ben hanging off her skirts.
‘She’s nice, your mum,’ Jake says. ‘Pretty. And kind, I reckon. I wish I still had my mum sometimes.’
This is so unexpected coming from a BOY that I nearly choke on my cheese and pickle.
I stare at Jake’s chiselled features and I think: Perhaps I could love you after all.
When I’ve washed up the plates and Jake’s dried them, I take a deep breath and ask if he’d like the tour of the manor now.
He nods, so we lock up the flat and head off down the long corridor outside, with sunshine streaming through the Edwardian glass windows and lighting up bits and pieces of furniture inside the big rooms.
‘Wow,’ says Jake as I take him into the dining room. ‘Can you imagine actually eating your dinner in here?’
I shudder. The table is laid for about twenty people with silver knives and fish knives and the glass goblets are out today too because a school group has been round on an educational trip. The Chinese lions preside over it all as usual, teeth bared into ugly snarls.
I take Jake into the elegant drawing room and he sucks his breath in sharply with admiration at the ornate furnishings and floor-to-ceiling windows that open on to the gardens of the manor.
‘Wow,’ he says, yet again. ‘This is like SO cool. You’re lucky, living here.’
As I take Jake into the trophy room and then Lady Thomas-Fulford’s morning room I ponder on that statement.
I don’t feel lucky at all. Just about everything’s been going wrong since we moved in.
Jake admires the photos and miniature paintings in the morning room and then he stands by the desk in the corner for a moment and says: ‘Can you smell lavender?’
I jump. In fact I can, but I’ve been trying not to notice it.
‘It’s the polish that the cleaners use,’ I say quickly. I do not want Jake to think of me as some ghost nut.
‘And something else,’ says Jake as we leave the morning room and I try not to glance in the little servants’ mirror just by the door. ‘Coal, maybe?’
Yeah. He’s right. I can smell coal, just like somebody’s lit an old fire somewhere nearby.
‘Can’t smell anything,’ I mutter. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’
We go upstairs without pausing to look at any of the pictures of brown dogs on the panelled walls. Then I conduct a whistle-stop tour of the grand bedrooms and the servants’ quarters and I don’t tell Jake that in the library I get a whiff of something so vile that I nearly keel over and that in the guest bedroom something or somebody grabs hold of the back of my jeans belt and gives it a good hard tug so that I let out a shriek and have to grab on to the bed to stop falling over.
Jake appears to have forgotten about the lavender and coal smells and he doesn’t pick up on anything else.
We go into Lady Thomas-Fulford’s bedroom and as we pass the huge chest of drawers by the door a photograph of one of her dogs slams down hard on the wooden surface so that I jump and clutch Jake’s arm.
‘It’s your heavy footsteps,’ I say, trying to make a joke of it. ‘You knocked it over.’
I let go of his arm with some reluctance. It feels nice – all muscular and real and warm beneath the sleeve of his long black top.
‘Or else someone doesn’t want us to be in here,’ says Jake with a big grin.
I smile back. Good. He’s not taking any of it seriously.
‘What’s this?’ he asks. There’s a faded album on the dressing table and Jake’s turning the pages. I shoot a nervous look at the security camera.
‘I don’t think you should be touching that,’ I say. But I’m dead nosy and I’ve never noticed the photo album before so I go and stand close to his shoulder, so close that I can feel the heat coming off him – and it’s kind of nice.
‘Loads of old dead people! Boring,’ says Jake, losing interest and wandering over to look at the paintings on the other side of the room.
I flick through the pages. The photographs inside are tiny, blurred and almost all of servants posing outside in the garden at Weston Manor.
I flick through fast because Jake’s getting fed up of waiting – until one of the photographs catches my eye.
A line of female servants in long dark dresses with white aprons and white frilled caps, standing in front of the old sundial which is still outside in the walled garden.
I peer closer.
There’s something about the girl on the far left of the picture.
She’s not smiling, for a start. The others are, but this girl has big scared eyes and her hands are clasped in front of her stomach.
It’s the eyes.
I’ve seen them somewhere before.
Although I don’t much want to, I keep turning the pages of the album and something else catches my eye.
There’s a tiny faded photo of two old ladies standing by a fireplace in the hall at Weston.
I squint to read the caption.
‘Lucinda and Rose,’ it says. ‘Return to Weston, Christmas 1945.’
There’s that buzz in my ears again. It’s faint this time, but it’s there.
I feel dizzy, like I might pass out.
‘Jake,’ I say. I grab his arm and propel him out of the room. ‘I’ll show you the kitchens if you really want but then I think I’d like to go back to the flat.’
I drag him back on to the landing and downstairs and then I ask the new security guard, Paul, to take us down to the basement kitchens where I do my best not to look at the row of black bells hanging down in the corridor or
to think about the unhappy servant girl and the two old ladies in the photograph album. I make sure that at all times I’m standing near Paul.
Jake loves it all. Loves it.
‘Can I come and live here?’ he says. I look at his face and it seems as if he’s only half joking. ‘I really, really like this place. Can’t see what my gran makes all the fuss about.’
Oh yeah. Jake did tell me that his gran doesn’t like the house.
That all seems months ago. But it was only a couple of weeks.
Time does funny things at Weston Manor.
Jake goes at about five after conversation between us kind of dries up. I try to talk to him about the photograph album and the woman in my bedroom and my feelings about living in this house. But he starts yawning and fidgeting and looking at me in a funny way so I shut up and after he’s gone I wander around the entrance hall for a while, looking up at pictures and wondering if Mum’s back yet. I catch a glance of myself in the servants’ mirror outside Lady Eleanor’s morning room and I decide that I do look a bit deranged with the red lipstick on so I wipe it off there and then and head outside. I don’t really want to go back to the flat and sit on my own and there’s something else I want to see without Jake looking at me in that odd way.
I head through the arch at the side of the manor and open the gate into the churchyard. There’s nobody there today so I head right towards the spot where I saw the two old ladies talking.
The Haunting of Tabitha Grey Page 10