by Sue Wallman
We hear Tatum shout, “Guess what? There are lots of roses back here!” and Evan brings his hand down. We stand up.
She’s fiddling about with the latch on the gate.
“Can you meet later?” Evan asks me.
I don’t want Ivy to think I’m abandoning her to look after Poppy on her own, or to make an enemy of Tatum. “It’s hard with the others,” I say. “But, maybe I could leave the house later this afternoon for a run and meet you?”
“Perfect,” he says. “It’s a date.”
I grin. A date?
“Come to my house. The address is in the Roeshot House folder. Any time’s fine.”
What about your parents?
He reads my mind and adds hastily, “Mum and Dad are visiting some friends today.”
Tatum is beside us. “Where’s Ivy? No, don’t tell me. She rushed back to check on darling Poppy. She needs to let go a little, don’t you think?”
TWENTY-TWO
Auntie Gabs is still in bed when we get back. Ivy sighs and explains it as being “one of those days”. Poppy says Clive has been round to look at the attic window and the loose carpet on the stair. He’s fixed the carpet, and he wants someone else to look at the window to work out how the bar could have become dislodged.
“I told him Mum was asleep but he could come in. That was OK, wasn’t it?” says Poppy. Her eyes are big and anxious.
“You probably should have asked him to come back another time, but don’t worry,” says Ivy. She’s put some food on the table, arranging the cheese on a wooden board to look appealing, like her mum would have done. The bread has been warmed up in the oven.
“At least the stair is safe,” I say.
Poppy eats her usual tiny amount and Ivy does the usual cajoling. I pick at some carrot sticks and cut myself a thin slice of cheese. There’s so much cheese for us to get through. The fruit bowl is overflowing. With only four of us sitting round the table, it feels off-kilter. Tatum takes some ham Ivy has sliced from the big chunk in the fridge and pushes it into a soft piece of bread. As she eats, she watches back footage of Margery with the volume up until I tell her to stop and nod in Poppy’s direction.
“Who’s that old lady you’re speaking to?” asks Poppy.
Too late.
“Evan’s grandma,” lies Tatum smoothly. “It’s for my school project about Pinhurst. People’s memories. Interesting things that have happened in the village. Like your ghost.”
“Oh,” says Poppy.
“Have you seen the ghost again?” Ivy asks.
“No,” says Poppy, “but I’ve been waiting for her.”
“Don’t tell me about it here,” says Tatum, picking up her phone. “I want to interview you properly, but I want the right setting. The conservatory. Good light, and atmospheric with the cracked panes of glass and those knobbly old geraniums.”
“How’s that atmospheric?” asks Ivy, but Tatum’s already on her feet.
“I’ll go and set it up,” she says, leaving us to put away the lunch things. “Give me five minutes.”
“Poppy, you don’t have to do the interview,” says Ivy.
“I don’t mind.” Poppy gets up and brings her plate to the dishwasher. Her legs are stiff and she’s walking in her strange way.
Ivy and I go with Poppy to the conservatory, where she settles herself on a metal chair. She crosses her legs. Her knees are like bulges and I feel horrible for thinking before that she might be faking her illness.
“Looking good, Pops!” says Ivy. “Don’t be nervous.”
“I’m not,” says Poppy. She glares at her sister.
“Okaaaay,” says Tatum. “Now…” She presses record. “Please can you tell me about the ghost you saw.”
Poppy describes her again. I listen out for the little details to see if they’ve changed, but they haven’t.
“How d’you know the ghost was old if you didn’t see her face?” asks Tatum.
“Because she was bent over.” Poppy hunches forward to demonstrate. “Her hair was long and grey.”
“What was she doing?”
“She was standing by Rose’s grave. Looking. Maybe she was talking too.”
“Tell us why we should believe you,” says Tatum, and Poppy looks confused.
“She was real. I did see her.”
“But you didn’t touch her?”
“She was outside,” says Poppy. “I couldn’t touch her.” She sounds panicky. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Actually, I do believe you,” says Tatum. She’s not looking at her screen any more but directly at Poppy. “I’m not surprised at all that you saw a ghost.”
Poppy’s face relaxes.
“What d’you think the ghost wants?” asks Tatum conversationally.
“I’m … I’m not sure,” says Poppy. “She was just there.”
“I think Alice is worried,” says Tatum. “Her sister is out for revenge. Terrible things are happening, aren’t they? Baz … Jakob…”
So slowly it’s not noticeable at first, Poppy shrinks away from Tatum.
Tatum lowers her voice. “Why d’you think you’re the only one who’s seen her?”
Poppy blinks nervously. “I don’t know.”
“Are you like Alice? Do you have secrets too?”
Poppy emits a high-pitched sob. It skewers me and has Ivy rushing towards her sister.
“Stop filming, Tatum,” says Ivy. “That’s enough. You’re scaring her.”
TWENTY-THREE
I wait until Poppy is settled on the sofa with Ivy looking through magazines before I get changed into running gear. Tatum is in our room, looking over the footage of her interrogation with Poppy.
“Why did you have to be so cruel?” I ask as I quickly take off my jeans and pull on my leggings.
Tatum says, “She’s not a baby. She’s the one who wants the attention.”
“So you don’t believe her, even though you said you did?”
Tatum raises an eyebrow. “I’m keeping an open mind. If you ask me, with this weird house, anything is possible.” I turn my back to change into a sport bra and rummage in my suitcase for a T-shirt. My hoodie is half under the bed. I slide it back out and put it on.
“Tatum?” I say at the door. “How did Jakob fall last night?”
“Ivy tripped on the loose carpet.” She gives me a direct look. “Why? You were there too. What d’you think happened?”
“Did you film it?”
She shakes her head. “Despite what you think, I don’t film absolutely everything.”
“Just … the twist of fate prediction,” I say, as I do up the zip of my hoodie. “It’s … scary.” I’m not brave enough to tell her it was also very convenient for her documentary, and I think she might have had something to do with it.
Tatum nods vigorously. “Yep, it’s scary.” She runs her finger across her lip a couple of times. “I must put on some lip balm. My lips have got so dry. I tell you, this house is bad for my health.”
“I’m going for a run,” I say, picking up my running shoes. I’ll put them on somewhere else; I don’t like being on my own with her any more than I have to – it’s as if she enjoys making me feel uneasy.
“Hang on, Leah. What’s up with your aunt? Why’s she taken to her bed like somebody in a costume drama?”
“She has days like this,” I say. “Since my uncle died. Although I thought she was over them, because last year it seemed as if she was back to normal. She’ll probably be all right tomorrow.”
“I didn’t know Ivy’s family was such a bunch of oddballs,” Tatum says. “I might not have come here if I’d known.” She climbs under her duvet. “Enjoy your run.”
I go into the bathroom, brush my teeth and check my face in the mirror. No truly horrific spots. I think about borrowing Tatum’s mascara, but use my own slightly dried-up one instead, in case she notices, then I lace my running shoes and go downstairs to take a quick photo of Evan’s address from the house folder in the hallwa
y. It feels like sneaky, un-Amigo-like behaviour, but it’s easier not to say anything to Ivy, not before I’ve actually done this anyway. My stomach gurgles, unsettled. I look through the kitchen blinds before I leave. The sky is marbled white and grey like a kitchen worktop, and the temperature’s dropped. I take my hat and scarf from my coat. Gloves will be a pain so I’ll pull my hoodie sleeves over my hands.
I yell goodbye to Ivy and run to the end of the drive. As soon as I’m out of sight and I have a signal, I stop and search Evan’s address on my maps app, memorizing the route. I check for a message from Jakob, but there’s nothing. I take a selfie looking sad, with “Missing You” at the bottom. Before I send it, I add “LOTS”, then “Please tell me you’re OK”.
It’s good to run and have some time away from the others to think. I’m not sure Roeshot House will ever be the same for me again now I know its secret. Memories of Baz’s death and Jakob’s fall won’t fade anytime soon either. Cold air stings the back of my throat as I pick up my pace and forget to close my mouth for a few seconds. I like the rhythm of my running shoes on the pavement. It helps to block out the swell of anger against Tatum and my increasing worry about what she might do next.
As I turn into Evan’s road, I slow down, nervous. It’s more rural than Donna’s road, with farmland interspersed between houses, and none of them alike. Evan’s house is like a series of outbuildings which have been glued together. There’s a skip in the drive and a couple of long ladders chained together down the side. A cat sits in an empty birdbath in the overgrown front garden.
I hesitate outside his front door and then, as if it’s red-hot, I push the doorbell. The door opens almost straight away and he’s there.
“Hey! Come in.”
I step into his blissfully warm house. I can feel the underfloor heating even before I’ve taken off my running shoes. I remove my hat, scarf and hoodie and leave them in a clothes puddle in the hallway to stay warm for my return journey, my mobile on top.
We walk into a large but cluttered kitchen. All the surfaces are covered with misshapen pottery vases, wooden bowls, photos and jars of dried food.
“I make the wooden bowls,” says Evan. “Mum does the pottery. Her pieces are wonky on purpose, by the way.”
By the oven there are three wooden bowls, nestling one inside the other. I pick up the smallest. It’s completely smooth, the colour of cooked pastry, with all the gradations from golden brown to almost burnt.
“I like carving birds best,” says Evan. He lifts a round little wooden bird from a cluttered shelf on the dresser. “This is my wren.”
I take it from him, holding it carefully in the palm of my hand, its tiny little feet super-delicate. “I don’t know what a wren looks like, but this is impressive,” I say. “You know Steve, who we think ran over Baz and didn’t own up? He paints birds. On little canvases. He spends hours on them. He paints like this…”
I scrunch my shoulders and screw-up my face. Evan grins at my unflattering but entirely accurate impression. “I love carving things. It’s way more satisfying than putting up shelves and all the boring jobs Dad wants me to do.”
“My dad’s hopeless at anything practical.” I wish I hadn’t said that. I don’t want to think about Dad now.
I hand back the wren, while Evan reaches for teabags and mugs. I lean against the work surface and tell him how different Pinhurst is to where I live. I describe the sea wall, with the waves crashing below our feet, the Fish ‘n’ Chip Shack, the fat seagulls and the things we find at low tide. Shoes and polished stones, plastic buckets turned white by the sea and once a whole rusty bicycle.
Evan moves away to fetch milk from the fridge. He pours it into the mugs and hands me one. “I still haven’t had breakfast yet. D’you want a pancake?”
“Sure,” I say, though my body’s on too high alert to contemplate eating.
He gathers the ingredients for a pancake batter, and before he makes it, he chops up a banana, pours some chopped nuts into a bowl, stands on a chair to locate a jar of Nutella at the back of a cupboard, finds an almost-finished maple syrup bottle and turns it upside down, cuts a lemon in half and flicks the pips at me, and spoons out the manky bits from the sugar bowl on the table. He makes the batter effortlessly, without a recipe.
I move next to the hob to watch him pour the mixture into a pan. The first pancake fails and ends up as unappetizing lump. “It’s times like this we need a dog,” says Evan as he dumps it into the food waste bin. “Sorry,” he says, stricken. “I shouldn’t have said that. That was insensitive.”
“It’s OK,” I say.
“You know, I regret saying that about the cars and Baz. Now you’re convinced it’s Steve’s fault and it might have been a delivery van, or even someone turning around in the driveway.”
“But it’s likely to have been him, isn’t it?” I say.
“It’s a possibility. Listen: the next pancake is going to be awesome, yeah?”
I watch him pour the mixture. It firms up much more quickly than the first. It definitely looks more like a pancake.
“Stand back,” says Evan. He flips it high and catches it perfectly. “Whoa. Class act. This is yours.” He slides the pancake on to a plate and hands it to me.
I add some Nutella and banana and take a couple of bites as he makes two more pancakes, piling them up on a plate. He squeezes lemon over the top one, then scatters sugar, rolls it to the width of a marker pen and eats it.
“You want a turn?” he asks, pushing the pan handle towards me.
I’m unprepared for the breath-catch in my throat as I swirl the batter into the pan: the last time I made pancakes was in our old house with Dad, before he left and life changed. Dad was all about squeezed lemon and sugar. “Simple pleasures,” he’d say. Now, with Amber wanting a baby, me not knowing half the time if I want to see him or not and his job looking precarious, his life is far from simple.
“Nice,” says Evan. “But the real test is in the flipping.”
“Of course,” I say. “You want to see pancake flipping? Watch this!” I check the pancake is loose, before gripping the handle with both hands. With a quick upward movement, I send the pancake flying. It doesn’t go quite as high as I was expecting but it lands like a dream. “Pretty good, hmm?”
“We can do better,” says Evan, and I don’t clock his use of “we” until I’ve added that pancake to the pile, and I slug another lot of batter in the pan. “Joint effort,” he says, and he takes my hands and places them with his on the handle.
He leans against me. I smell the duvet scent of him, oil in a pan, the sharpness of the lemon on the table. His hands feel warm against mine.
“OK, ready?” He lifts the pan and I’m expecting him to count three but he doesn’t. He flings the pan upwards and slightly backwards, but I’m not ready. My body falls back against his, and the pancake pirouettes to the ceiling and comes hurtling towards my head. I yelp, and move back, but Evan moves forward to catch the pancake, which flops over the side of the pan, half in, half out, and I’m wedged uncomfortably between the oven and Evan with an arm that’s been yanked too far out of its socket.
I let go of the pan at the same time as Evan. It crashes on to the hob.
He spins me round. “I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?” He sees me rubbing the top of my arm. “Have you pulled something? Oh, God. Sorry.”
“I’ll live,” I say. I think he trod on my foot too, and my hip is sore from hitting the side of the oven.
He steps away to assess me. “Sure?”
I’m suddenly conscious of the tightness of my leggings, the T-shirt that’s ridden up. “Sure,” I say, pulling down my T-shirt. I hope I don’t have globs of pancake batter in my hair.
He’s holding my gaze and I know what he’s asking.
I reply by taking a step forward. I lift my head ever so slightly and relax my lips. So slowly it’s twitchingly painful, he lowers his mouth on to mine, and we kiss. Properly kiss, so that I taste lemony pancake sweetn
ess and breakfast tea. Every sensuous nerve ending throughout my body is on fire. Every thought is channelled into my tongue and lips, and this soft, closed-eye magic. When I break away to breathe, I laugh and he laughs at me laughing. It takes me by surprise, this outpouring of bursting happiness.
We kiss again, and I think I’m a natural. When we break off, I’m about to say this, but there’s the sound of someone coming downstairs.
“Oh, great,” says Evan with heavy sarcasm. “It’s Lily, my sister. She works shifts at the pub.”
I spring away as his sister comes into the kitchen in a big pink dressing gown, yawning noisily. She’s an older but shorter version of Evan, with a great deal more wavy hair, which is mostly up in a springy ponytail. She has a tiny glittery nose piercing and smudged eyeliner under one eye.
“Oh, hi!” says Lily. “I didn’t know you had someone here, Ev. Sorry. Hi! Oooh, pancakes. Any going spare?”
“Here.” Evan holds out the plate. “This is Leah. She’s staying at Roeshot House.”
“Cheers,” says Lily. “Hello, Leah.”
“Hi. I should be getting back,” I say.
“Don’t mind me,” says Lily. “I’m half-asleep. It was busy last night. Oh – but I heard some insider gossip from someone involved in the Alice Billings case.”
My skin prickles.
“And?” says Evan.
“It seems Rose’s injuries are, and I quote, ‘consistent with someone falling to their death’.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“So it was suicide?” says Evan.
“Or she was pushed,” says Lily. “She probably fell from the roof.”
“I reckon it was the attic,” I say. That window. The metal bar across it, so that it couldn’t happen again. The burial spot nearby. “She could have climbed on to the window seat and got on to the outside ledge.”
“Oh, yeah,” says Lily. “You could be right. That makes a lot of sense. I’m going to tell the group chat.” She sits down at the table and fiddles with her phone.
“Poor Rose,” I say. I picture her standing precariously on the ledge, stretching her arms out and contemplating the fall. I think of the triangulation column on Chandler’s Hill. That sense of letting go. But something feels off. It doesn’t fit with the photos of the exuberant teenager we saw. But, of course, it’s impossible to know what’s going on under the surface.