‘Are you home for good, Mum?’ I say as we enter the flat.
Mum strokes my hair out of my face. ‘I’m home for you at the moment,’ she says. ‘That’s what matters. Me and Dad will sort out the other stuff later.’
Dad flushes when she says this but he goes out for takeaway and we try to have a normal family evening in front of the television, and all the time I’m aware of the manor just sitting there outside our door and waiting for me to do goodness knows what. I wonder if maybe the talk with Sid has somehow exorcised the spirits and that they might get bored with trying to frighten me now.
Then Ben starts playing up and kicking my legs so I pull a face and shout, ‘OW!’ and then he does it again, only harder and this time I feel teeth biting at my foot, so I yell even louder and try to toss him off my leg. But he carries on messing about so I have to keep shouting even though Mum and Dad are trying to watch television and in the end I just really lose my temper and I shout, ‘Ben! Will you STOP that, please?’ And then I realise that the television has gone quiet because Mum has switched it off at the remote and, even though Ben has stopped biting me, I’m aware that the sofa is kind of wobbling under where I’m sitting – and then I see.
It’s Mum.
She’s crying.
Great silent shaking sobs into her hands. They’re pressed right over her face and her shoulders are going up and down.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ says Dad. ‘Well done, Tabitha. We’ve been back five minutes. And now this.’
‘It’s not my fault if Ben’s biting me!’ I say.
Mum cries harder but she’s looking up at Dad through wet eyes full of hatred.
‘Don’t you DARE blame Tabitha for everything!’ she says. ‘We’re hardly in a position to blame HER, are we?’
Dad makes a groaning noise and goes over to stand by the window. Mum’s crying so hard now that I’m frightened. Ben gets off my leg and goes to hide under the kitchen table.
When Dad turns round he looks furious. He glares at me and I sink against Mum for comfort.
I know what’s coming.
Nobody’s dared say it to me for well over a year. They’ve been hoping I’ll grow out of it, I suppose.
But I haven’t.
‘Tabitha,’ says Dad. He looks more like himself again now, less angry and just tired.
He comes over and crouches at my feet in a most un-Dad-like way. I’m not used to him being smaller than me.
He takes my hands in his big warm ones and then he says it.
‘This has got to stop.’
Chapter Seventeen
It’s a hot summer’s day just one year ago and I’m playing out in the Pavilion Gardens with Ben.
The Pavilion is right in the centre of town. It’s always looked quite weird having such a grand palace surrounded by parks and shops and traffic and normal life. The carved gothic towers stretch up over the surrounding buildings so that wherever you are, you can always see how to get back there.
We have a private bit of garden because Dad’s the Keeper so it comes with our large flat. There’s a gate, which leads out of the walled garden and on to the main road, but Mum and Dad always keep it locked to stop the public from snooping around and trying to peer into our home.
It’s worked, or at least, up until now.
I’m supposed to be looking after Ben.
‘You’re thirteen now,’ Mum says. ‘Old enough to have some responsibility.’
Mum loves living at the Pavilion. Sometimes she sneaks out of our flat at night and goes downstairs to the Great Ballroom to dance. I followed her once and watched her twirl and stretch around the red carpet under the high domed roof.
I don’t love the house so much.
My mates reckon it’s the coolest thing ever when they come over after school and I show them around a palace with Dad’s bunch of keys jangling like skeleton bones on my hip, but I’ve kind of got used to it now.
Sometimes it stinks.
I told Mum once after a really bad night when I hadn’t had any sleep and she sighed.
‘Big houses have very old and complicated plumbing systems, Tabs,’ she said. ‘It can sound a lot like other things. But it’s just pipes and water.’
Pipes and water.
Er, right.
Sometimes I think Mum must see me as a bit of an idiot or something.
I mean – there’s no way that what I hear in the night is ‘pipes and water’.
So on this hot summers day, Mum and Dad go off to the Palace Theatre down the road and they leave me in charge of my four-year-old brother and we play on the swings that Dad has put up for us and we eat a picnic supper of scotch eggs and ham sandwiches. Ben goes to sleep on the picnic rug so I wander into the flat and get some ice cream out of the freezer and then decide that I want the chocolate sauce that hardens into a crispy shell, so I hunt through all Mum’s cupboards and when I go back outside with a bowl for myself and another for Ben I see that the rug is empty.
I don’t panic.
Not at first.
Ben is always off hiding and then springing out to surprise you, so I look behind all the big trees and shout, ‘Coming, ready or not!’ And then after a while it does seem very quiet in the walled garden so I go into the flat and look around just in case he’s slipped back in and then my heart starts to thud a bit harder and another five minutes pass so I start to yell his name out quite loud around the garden and there’s no reply.
I ring Mum’s mobile but it’s switched off for the theatre.
She said that if there was an emergency I should call the Pavilion security guard, so I ring his number and he turns up a few minutes later in his dark uniform and hunts about with me a bit. Then says he reckons he should ring the police and that’s when I notice that the gate in the brick wall is open. I run out on to the main road in a panic and start shouting Ben’s name really loudly and there’s loads of cars jammed up in a queue outside and groups of people standing about in the middle of the road and when I go back into the garden and into the flat, the security guard is standing in our lounge talking to a load of other people in uniform. At first, I think they’re his friends from the Pavilion and then I realise that they’re all looking at me in a particular way and that they’re actually policemen. After that my head goes dark and swimmy and somebody tells me to put it between my legs. Then Mum and Dad are back and Mum is screaming, ‘NO! NO! NO!’ over and over and Dad is trying to comfort her and neither of them look at me.
They don’t look at me for days after that.
It was my fault, you see. Somebody else might have left the gate unlocked but I was supposed to be looking after Ben.
And I didn’t.
Which is why he came back to haunt me and . . .
I’ve been looking after him ever since.
Chapter Eighteen
Mum, Dad and I leave Weston Manor two weeks later.
We have to.
I’ve had two sessions with a new counsellor. I have to talk about Ben and my feelings about his death and so far it seems to be going kind of OK.
But Dad says we need to start a new life and that he can’t be a Keeper in a grand house any longer. He’s going to look for a day job at a museum and we’re to live with Gran until he can afford to buy us a new house of our own. I’m going to stay at the same school though, which is kind of cool. I’ve had a chat with Jake and tried to convince him that I’m not raving mad and I think he understands. We’re going to meet up in few weeks, although I don’t know if he will turn up and, in a way, I’d understand if he didn’t. I hope he does, but he’s seen all my weirdness now and let’s face it, Tabitha Grey is never going to be ‘normal’.
‘We need to put you first,’ Dad says to me. ‘Get you sorted out.’
Thing have changed at the manor anyway.
Dawn has left.
Dad never mentions her. Neither does Mum. It’s like it never happened, except that Mum and Dad are also going to counselling now to try to save
their marriage.
We move out of Weston on a rainy July day.
Dad’s car is pulled up outside ready. For a moment the four of us stand in a line looking up at the manor.
It looks back from its dark green shuttered eyes and white face.
Mum’s hair blows around her face. She’s struggling not to cry.
Dad stares at the manor and I can tell he’s missing his job as Keeper already.
I look up at the building and I don’t feel an awful lot. Not any more.
Empty, on the whole.
I’ve used up all my emotion. Nosebleeds have stopped too.
There’s a tug on my hand.
Ben.
He looks fainter now, less real. I can see through his stomach to the grass on the front lawn behind. I look down at his dark head and I let go of his hand.
‘Go on,’ I say. ‘I can’t look after you any more.’
I push him in the direction of the manor. He takes a few trembling steps away from us. His family.
I get into the car quick. Mum and Dad are already in and Dad starts up the engine.
‘Bye, Weston,’ Dad says. He puts the car into gear and we start to move.
‘Bye,’ I echo.
Ben stands on the top step staring after us. He looks so small and alone that my heart contracts.
‘Look at him,’ Mum whispers. ‘He never smiles any more.’
I grip her shoulder.
‘You mean,’ I start. ‘You mean – you can see him?’
Mum nods. There are tears running down her cheeks.
‘Always have, Tabs,’ she says. ‘And it was my fault as much as yours. You see – it was me who forgot to lock that gate.’
The car swings out of the drive, crunching over the gravel.
I don’t want to, but something makes me turn round for a last look.
Ben’s still standing by the big entrance door to the manor.
He’s not alone.
There’s a woman wearing a long black dress. She takes his hand.
They go inside and shut the door.
Acknowledgements
Weston Manor is based on Preston Manor in Brighton, Sussex. I’d like to thank the staff for their help in promoting and researching this book, in particular Paula Wrightson whose tremendous enthusiasm for the project has shone throughout. Thanks also to Margaret Muskett for introducing me to Preston Manor in the first place, to Tim Brown of the Paranormal Investigation Group Sussex for his early advice when I was researching the book, to Imelda Joanne Thomas for sharing my love of all things unexplained and to Leah, Philippa and the team at Egmont for all their hard work and encouragement.
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The Haunting of Tabitha Grey Page 13