Jessica's Ghost

by Andrew Norriss

  And she wondered, too, what would happen if what Roland’s friend in Australia suggested came true. What if the urge to return to the hospital did grow to the point where she needed to be there most of the day, as well as all of the night? How would she manage if she could no longer be with her friends? What would she do if …

  A movement in the road beneath her interrupted her thoughts. There was someone she recognised walking up the hill. It was a girl from Francis’s class at school – Lorna, Lorna Gilchrist – and Jessica wondered what she was doing.

  It didn’t look as if she had been in an accident, and it was too late to be attending one of the clinics, so she was probably visiting a relative or a friend, Jessica thought. Except that, at the top of the road, instead of entering the hospital, Lorna turned left and walked across the tarmac to the entrance to the multi-storey car park.

  It was an odd place to go on her own. It was past ten o’clock, the sun was setting, and the car park at night was not a place that Jessica liked to walk through alone, even as a ghost. There was supposed to be a security guard at the entrance but he wasn’t always there … and why was Lorna on her own?

  Jessica found herself drifting out of the window and through the air above the road. Maybe she was meeting someone. Maybe the person she was meeting had a car parked there and was waiting … But no, that couldn’t be right, because now Lorna had emerged from the staircase on to the top floor of the car park, and there wasn’t a car or a soul in sight.

  The fact that she was alone did not seem to bother Lorna. She was carrying a small bag and she walked straight over to the parapet at the far side and looked out over the town. In the deepening twilight the lights of the city spread out below her, sloping down to the floodlit cathedral, with its huge central tower. In one quick move, Lorna pulled herself up on to the parapet, swung her legs over and sat there, staring out at the view.

  It made Jessica a little nervous. The car park was built on a hill and the drop on that side was six floors, straight down to an area of concrete paving. If Lorna were to slip, or if she lost her balance for any reason, she could kill herself. But Lorna clearly wasn’t worried. She took out a worn, stuffed dog from her bag, sat him on the parapet beside her, then leaned forward and peered down to ground below.

  It was only then that Jessica realised what was happening.

  She knew exactly why Lorna was here, and what she was planning to do.

  She was going to jump.

  Lorna was going to jump.

  26

  Jumping from the roof of the car park was something Lorna Gilchrist had been planning for some weeks and both the time and the place had been carefully chosen. She had worked out the height required for someone of her weight to kill herself in the fall – she was a clever girl, and good with numbers – and she had calculated that, as long as she fell head first, the forty odd metres to the ground were more than enough to break her neck.

  She was not quite sure when she had made the final decision. It had crept up on her in the last few months, but there was no doubt in her mind that it was the right one. She could not carry on with things as they were, and there was no other way out that she could see. In the circumstances, jumping headfirst from the top storey of a car park seemed not only reasonable, but absolutely the best thing to do.

  Eight months before, Lorna’s father had gone missing. Mr Gilchrist was a solicitor who went to work one morning and didn’t come back. No one knew what had happened to him. Mrs Gilchrist did not know if her husband had been run over by a car, kidnapped, or suffered a memory loss. Nor did anyone else until, after five months of uncertainty, a policeman arrived at the house to say Mr Gilchrist had been found, and that he was working as a waiter in London, living with a girl he had met at a bus stop. Since the day he left, Lorna had not seen or heard a single word from him.

  It was a shock, a terrible shock, but Lorna might have coped if, at the same time, things hadn’t been so bad at school. She never knew why Denise Ritchie and Angela Wyman had decided to tell stories about her – she supposed that, for some reason, they didn’t like her – but, whatever the reason, it was very painful.

  It was Denise who spread the story that Lorna wet her pants at school and had to bring in clean underwear and change twice a day. She would say it as if she felt sorry for Lorna, but when in class she put a hand up and asked for the window to be opened because there was a smell, everyone knew what she meant, including Lorna.

  Angela, not to be outdone, started the story that Lorna stole things from the local shops, though she always insisted, as she passed this on, that she was sure it wasn’t true. Then, if something ever went missing from someone’s bag at school, she would sigh and tut and make it clear that, sadly, she knew who was probably responsible.

  There were literally dozens of such stories, each of them more cruel than the last, and although at first few people believed them, over time they gathered a certain strength. Then Denise came in one day with the story that Lorna’s father had run away with a girl not much older than Lorna, who he’d met at a bus stop. And when it turned out that was true, people wondered if some of the other stuff might not be as well.

  A doctor, if she had seen one, could have told Lorna that she was clinically depressed, and explained how this affected the chemistry of her brain. But Lorna had not spoken to a doctor. She had not spoken to anyone about how she was feeling. Instead, she had come to the lonely conclusion that it would be simpler for everybody if she climbed to the top of a multi-storey car park … and threw herself off.

  So this was why she was here, Jessica thought. This was what had been drawing her back to the hospital each night. Suddenly it all made sense. She was here to stop Lorna from jumping. To stop her making the mistake she had made herself, but … there was a problem.

  Lorna could not hear her. Jessica called across the car park, then shouted and waved and finally moved over to the figure sitting on the parapet and floated in the air in front of her, urging her to move back to safety, begging her to think again. But Lorna could neither hear nor see her. Why this should be so – why the one person who most needed to hear her could not – Jessica did not know. But Lorna clearly had not the least idea that she was there.

  Jessica thought of her friends. If she could tell Francis, Andi or Roland, what was happening, they would be able to call for help. Or they could come up here and talk to Lorna themselves. Tell her that they knew, better than most people, how she felt.

  But her friends were still in a car somewhere on the road, travelling back from the theatre. She quickly thought herself to Roland’s house, to see if they had returned early, then checked at Alma Road in case Mrs Boyle had gone there first, but there was no sign of them and Jessica returned to the car park. She sat beside Lorna on the parapet and wondered desperately what else she could do.

  Who else might be able to help?

  And suddenly, without thinking, she found herself back in her old bedroom in Aunt Jo’s house. One moment she was sitting with Lorna in the car park, and the next she was standing in the corner of the room where her bed used to be, while opposite her, Aunt Jo was sitting at the desk by the window, writing a letter on the computer.

  ‘Auntie?’ said Jessica. ‘Auntie, can you help?’

  Aunt Jo did not answer and the only sound was of her fingers tapping at the keys.

  ‘Auntie!’ Jessica found herself shouting. ‘It’s an emergency, please! You have to help!’

  But shouting made no more difference here than it had in the car park with Lorna. Aunt Jo could not hear her, and Jessica felt a rising frustration. ‘You’ve got to hear me!’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘I need you to help! She’s going to kill herself!’ She stepped forward and tried to grab her aunt’s shoulders, but of course there was nothing to grab. Her hands slid straight through her body …

  … and Aunt Jo stopped typing.

  With her hands frozen above the keys, she lifted her head to one side, as if she thought she ha
d heard something.

  Jessica moved her body very close to her aunt’s so that the two of them almost merged.

  ‘Listen,’ she spoke directly into her aunt’s ear. ‘You have to go to the hospital. Do you hear me? Lorna’s going to kill herself and you have to go there. You have to go there now!’

  Aunt Jo still did not move.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ In a gesture of frustration, Jessica swept her hand through the computer and, with a brief plink, it turned itself off. ‘Listen to me! You have to go to the hospital. The hospital! You have to go there. There’s no one else. You have to stop her …’

  There was a bemused look on Aunt Jo’s face as she turned in her chair and looked carefully round the room.

  ‘The hospital … You have to go to the hospital … You have to go there now …’ Jessica was repeating the same phrases over and over again, half of her body still merged with her aunt’s.

  And Aunt Jo, still with that slightly puzzled look on her face, stood up. Jessica followed her as she left the room and walked slowly downstairs. She stopped in the hallway, to put her head round the sitting room door.

  ‘I’m just going out, George,’ she said, and without waiting for a reply, picked up a set of car keys, and walked out of the front door.

  *

  Lorna was exactly as Jessica had left her, sitting on the parapet with her bag and her stuffed dog, staring out over the town.

  Jessica sat down beside her.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ she said. ‘Aunt Jo’s on her way. She’ll know what to do. She’s done training in this sort of thing. You just have to wait till she gets here. Fifteen minutes, that’s all.’

  She hoped that she was right. She had followed her aunt down to the front door and watched her climb into the little car parked in the driveway. She had sat in the passenger seat while Aunt Jo had set off on the road to the hospital, but then decided to return to Lorna.

  Not that there was much she could do now she was here. Lorna still gave no sign of being able to hear what she was saying, but Jessica kept talking anyway. She told Lorna about her own experiences, about her mother and her grandmother and about coming to live with Aunt Jo and Uncle George. She told her about dying and being a ghost and being stuck and, as the minutes ticked away, she began to think it might be all right.

  Then, with the hands on the big clock on the hospital tower behind them showing five to eleven, Lorna took a deep breath and stood up. She stood on the parapet, the warm breeze riffling through her hair and clothes, stared down at the concrete below, and took a half-step forward.

  ‘No!’ Jessica cried out. Aunt Jo would not be here for another five minutes at least. ‘No, you mustn’t. You mustn’t. You have to wait!’ She floated up to stand in front of Lorna, pushing her back with hands that disappeared into Lorna’s chest. ‘You’re not going to make the same mistake I made. I won’t let you …’

  Lorna could not hear her, but as Jessica continued to shout and plead, she could see in the girl’s eyes the same puzzled expression that had been on her aunt’s face. As if some tiny part of her was aware of what was being said, though her conscious mind had no idea what it was.

  27

  When Mrs Boyle got back from Southampton, a little before eleven, she dropped Francis and Andi off in Alma Road. Francis was climbing out of the back seat, still saying thank you, when Jessica appeared behind him.

  ‘Francis! You have to help!’

  ‘Jessica?’ He spun round. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s Lorna. Lorna Gilchrist. She’s the other one.’

  ‘The other what?’ Andi was climbing out of the car to join him. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Lorna’s on the top floor of the car park at the hospital. She’s going to jump.’ Jessica already had the feeling it was taking too long to explain all this. ‘You have to come up there. Now. She can’t hear me!’

  ‘You want us to …’

  ‘The hospital car park. Top floor. Now!’ shouted Jessica, and she was gone.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Mrs Boyle had wound down her window and was looking anxiously up at Francis.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I wonder … could you drive us to the hospital?’

  ‘The hospital? Why? Are you feeling ill?’

  ‘It’s not me,’ said Francis, ‘but something bad is going to happen at the car park, and it’s very important we get there as quickly as possible. Can you drive us?’

  If it had been anyone else, Mrs Boyle would have wanted the answers to a great many questions before she drove anywhere, but this was Francis making the request, and all she did was turn on the ignition and put the car into gear.

  ‘Don’t forget your seat belts,’ she said, as she pulled out into the road.

  It took a little under two minutes to drive the mile and a half to the hospital. As they drove up the hill, Roland, peering out of the windscreen from the passenger seat, was the first to see the small figure silhouetted against the dark sky at the top of the car park.

  ‘There she is,’ he pointed. ‘Up there.’

  Mrs Boyle swung the car up a ramp to the entrance and halted in front of the barrier. She was about to suggest that it might be quicker for Francis to walk from there, but he and Andi were already out of the car and running through the entrance.

  A pair of arms shot out and grabbed each of them by the collar. The security man had emerged from his post and his beefy hands were firmly clasped around the top of their shirts.

  ‘And where,’ he said, ‘do you two think you’re …’

  He never finished the sentence. Nor did he see the blows that landed somewhere below his belt. All he knew was that he could no longer breathe or walk. His grip on the two children loosened and he toppled to the ground.

  ‘I’ll deal with him,’ said Andi, already kneeling beside the body. ‘You go and look after Lorna.’

  Francis went racing towards the stairs. Roland came over from the car and, under Andi’s instructions, helped lift the security man into a sitting position, with his back resting against a concrete post.

  ‘What … what happened?’ he gasped, when he was finally able to breathe.

  ‘It looked to me like you tripped over the kerb there,’ said Mrs Boyle, standing over him. ‘But I’m sure you’ll be all right when you’ve had a bit of a rest.’ She took her phone from her pocket and looked at Andi. ‘I hope no one minds, but I’m going to call the police.’

  Francis emerged from the staircase on to the top floor of the car park and saw Lorna standing on the parapet away to his right. She was poised with her toes over the edge and lifting her arms like a diver getting ready to jump. Directly in front of her, their bodies almost blended together, floated Jessica’s ghost.

  ‘Lorna?’ he called. ‘Lorna, what are you doing?’

  Lorna gave no sign that she had heard him, but she stopped moving.

  ‘Please …’ said Francis. ‘Please … Come down from there.’

  There was still no response, though Lorna did at least remain still.

  ‘You want me to run and grab her?’ A breathless Andi had appeared behind Francis.

  ‘You’d better not come too close,’ Jessica called. ‘Just stay where you are, and keep talking.’

  It was all very well to say keep talking, Francis thought, but what about? What on earth was he supposed to say?

  ‘You don’t have to do this.’ He began moving slowly towards the parapet as he spoke, but still keeping his distance from Lorna. ‘Really, you don’t. Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure we can do something about it, if you’ll just come down from there. There’s people we can go to. People we can tell …’

  The words petered out. He remembered how he had felt in the weeks before Jessica had appeared. How unhappy he had been and how certain that nobody could do anything to help at all.

  ‘Look, I know how you feel,’ he said. ‘Really I do. And I’m sorry. I wish I’d known before. I wish any of us had known
. If we’d known we could have … we could have … Look, please … please come down … please …’

  It was no good. He simply had no idea what to say to the girl in front of him. Maybe Andi was right. Maybe their best chance was to run as fast as they could and try and grab her before she jumped.

  He took a step forward and a hand descended on his shoulder. He looked round to see a tall woman with short black hair standing just behind him.

  ‘Not too close,’ said Aunt Jo, softly. ‘Not yet.’ She called across to Lorna. ‘Hello, Lorna? My name is Joanna Barfield. I’ve come to ask if there’s anything I can do to help. I know it probably seems like there’s nothing anybody can do, but it might be worth hanging on for a moment just to listen. In case there is something. Believe it or not I’ve spoken to quite a few people who feel like you do and … would you like to hear what I said to them?’

  Lorna did not answer, but Aunt Jo did not seem to mind. She simply carried on talking. Afterwards, neither Francis nor Andi could remember much of what she actually said, but Francis always claimed she had one of the calmest, quietest voices he had ever heard. The words flowed out of her mouth like gently running water.

  Occasionally, she would ask a question and, at first, there were no replies, but then she said something about having a niece who had felt the same way and Lorna turned, briefly, to face her. After that, some questions got an occasional nod or shake of the head, and still Aunt Jo went on talking and asking questions but now Lorna started replying to some of them. At first, it was only a yes or a no, but then it was an occasional sentence and still Aunt Jo’s voice went on, gentle as falling snow, persistent as the rain.

  Part of Francis was aware that, behind him, others had made their way on to the roof of the car park. He had heard sirens – the result of Roland’s mother calling the police – and there was the rustle of clothes and the sound of whispering, but neither he nor Andi had dared to turn round. Their eyes were glued to Lorna’s feet, poised on the edge of the parapet.