Evie's Ghost

by Helen Peters

“Good evening, Mr Ellerdale,” she said in a flat monotone.

  “Miss Fane, what a very great pleasure.” He grasped her hand and kissed it. “Would you do me the very great honour of standing up with me for the next two dances?”

  Sophia said nothing, but she let him take her arm. She had rearranged her face into a blank mask.

  They walked towards the centre of the room, where several couples were lined up facing each other. The men bowed to their partners, the women curtsied and the dance began. The couples moved towards each other. Mr Ellerdale trod on Sophia’s toe and she winced.

  He stepped back and bumped into a young woman standing behind him. She stumbled, and the drink in her glass splashed down the front of her dress. The man standing next to her turned to Mr Ellerdale and said something. Although we were too far away to hear their words, I could tell by the look of surprise and anger on his face that Mr Ellerdale had said something rude in response.

  I looked at Sophia to see how she was taking it. And when I saw her expression, my heart stood still.

  Mr Ellerdale turned back to her with an ingratiating smile, and her face became a blank mask again. But, for a few seconds, I had seen the mask slip. In those few seconds, the expression on her face had been desperate.

  And now I knew for certain.

  The girl at my bedroom window was Sophia Fane.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The End of the Day

  Polly grabbed my arm and hauled me upright. “Come on, Evie. I need to check the bedroom fires, and you must finish those pots, or we’ll both be for it. I’m supposed to be training you up.”

  I couldn’t imagine anything worse than scrubbing more pots right now, but I didn’t want to make trouble for Polly, so I followed her back to the scullery.

  It was freezing down there after the heat of the ballroom, and by the time the pans were finished, my feet ached, my head throbbed and my hands were rubbed raw from the sand and stinging horribly from the vinegar. A red stain was coming off my fingertips. When I took my hands out of the water to dry the pots, I couldn’t believe it. It was blood, seeping through my skin.

  Polly popped her head around the door.

  “You done, Evie?” She picked up a drying cloth. “Let’s get these last few pots dried and go to bed. You look dog-tired.”

  “Look at my hands!” I said, holding them out. “They’re actually bleeding.”

  Polly gave me a sympathetic smile. “Hurts something rotten, don’t it? But don’t worry, they’ll soon toughen up. You’ll grow a hard skin, like mine.”

  She held out her hands. They were rough and red and covered in lumps and calluses.

  “Not very pretty, are they?” she said. “Rough as sandpaper. I’ll never get a husband with hands like these. But at least they don’t hurt as much as they used to. Now, did Hardwitch show you your room?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sharing with me. Where’s your box?”

  “Box?”

  Polly’s eyes widened. “Ah well, never mind,” she said cheerfully. “At least you’ll be earning here. You’ll be able to buy another set of clothes before long.”

  Buy another set of clothes? I had a flash of panic. What if I actually had travelled to the past? What if I couldn’t get back?

  No. That was ridiculous. I couldn’t have travelled to the past. It wasn’t possible. It must just be a really vivid dream. It couldn’t be anything else.

  From a cupboard, Polly took out two candles set in tin saucers and lit a splinter of wood from the embers of the fire. She lit the candles and handed one to me. I followed her through the hall and up the stairs. The lamps had been put out and our candle flames were the only light. They made long, spooky shadows on the walls and they gave off a smell like rancid meat.

  Up and up we climbed, to the very top of the house, where a narrow green door so low that I had to duck to get through it opened on to a low-ceilinged passage. Polly led the way to a door at the far end.

  It opened into a small room with a sloping ceiling. There were two narrow iron beds with white covers. Between the beds stood a table with a large bowl and jug on it. There was a little wooden chair and a tiny window with a thin curtain. The white walls and the rough floorboards were bare.

  Polly set her candle on the table, sat on the bed and started to unlace her boots.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

  Polly frowned as she tugged at a lace. “The what?”

  “The bathroom.”

  Polly laughed. “There’s no bathroom here. What sort of place are you used to?”

  “Oh … er … but … where do you go to the toilet?”

  She frowned again. “The what?”

  I searched my brain. What word would they have used in those days?

  “The WC?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, you funny London girl.” She reached around to the back of her dress and untied her apron.

  “The lavatory?”

  “Oh!” Polly laid her apron over the back of the chair. “What odd words you use up in London. There’s a servants’ privy behind the stables, but you can’t go outside now. George will have bolted all the doors. But there’s a chamber pot under your bed.”

  A chamber pot? Did that mean what I thought it meant?

  I bent down and lifted the blanket that hung over the side of the bed. Sure enough, there was a big white china potty sitting on the floor.

  No way was I using that.

  I stiffened in horror as a thought occurred to me. Polly wasn’t going to use hers, was she? Not while I was in the room? Please, no.

  Under her dress, Polly wore a corset. I must be wearing one too, I thought. That would explain the tightness around my chest.

  Over the corset, Polly had something tied around her waist – a length of ribbon with a flat fabric pouch hanging from it. She untied it and slipped it under her pillow.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Polly frowned at me in bewilderment, as though she couldn’t believe my ignorance.

  “It’s my pocket, of course,” she said. “Do you not have a pocket?”

  I smoothed my hands down the sides of my dress. There was an opening on each side. Through the slits, I could feel my own corset and, tied around my waist, a piece of ribbon with two fabric pockets attached to it.

  “I do have pockets!” I said, and then wished I had sounded slightly less delighted.

  Polly gave me a look that made it obvious she thought I wasn’t quite all there. To be honest, I didn’t blame her.

  I felt inside my pockets, but they were empty. I wondered what Polly kept in hers that was so precious it had to be hidden under her pillow at night. I wanted to ask her, but then I’d probably have sounded even more stupid.

  Polly was undoing the fastenings on her corset. I would never be able to undo all those buttons and hooks with my sore and bleeding hands. But I couldn’t ask Polly for help. She already thought I was an imbecile. Anyway, all I wanted to do was sleep.

  I set my candle on the bedside table, sat on the bed and started to take my hairpins out. That hurt my fingers too. But lying on hairpins all night would be even worse.

  “Evie!” shrieked Polly.

  I jerked upright. “What— AARRGGHH!”

  Icy water cascaded over my head and down my dress. I leapt from the bed.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you mad?”

  I pushed aside the dripping curtain of hair plastered to my face and glared at her.

  “Is that your idea of a joke or something?”

  “Your hair was on fire,” she said. “I had to put it out. Sorry.”

  But she didn’t look sorry. She started to laugh, and her laugh was so infectious that I started laughing too.

  “Your face!” she said. “Your face when you glared at me through your hair!”

  “Was it really on fire?”

  “Of course it was. It was dangling in the candle. Look.”


  She lifted a section of dripping hair from the side of my head. One part of it was several centimetres shorter than the rest.

  “Oh, no!” I wailed. “There’s a great lump out of it!”

  I touched the blackened ends. They came off on my fingers.

  “Never mind,” said Polly. “It won’t show once you put it up. You need to take more care with your candle though.”

  “I can’t sleep in these clothes now. Everything’s soaked.”

  Polly crouched down and pulled a rough wooden box, about a metre long, from under her bed. It was padlocked. She pulled her pocket out from under her pillow and took a key from it. So that was what she kept in there.

  “There’s another shift in here,” she said. “We’ll hang your clothes over the chair to dry.”

  “Thank you,” I said, as Polly handed me a long white nightshirt. I put it on and flopped down on the mattress. I didn’t care how hard and lumpy it was. Never in my life had I been so grateful to go to sleep. It had been the weirdest night of my life. But I was too exhausted even to wonder what was going on any more. All I could do was hope against hope that I would wake up in the morning in Anna’s flat and this would all have been a dream.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Thirteen Years Ago

  Light filtered through the curtains. The mattress was hard and the pillow was lumpy. The sheets smelled weird. My feet ached. I was wearing something strange.

  My heart jolted as images flooded into my head. Polly … the ball … the washing-up … Mrs Hardwick … the girl at the window…

  I sat up and stared around the room. My suitcase lay on the floor where I had left it, the contents spilling on to the rug. The bedroom door was flat and modern and painted white.

  With a hammering heart, I got out of bed and opened the door.

  Dull cream walls. Horrible brown carpet. Ugly radiator.

  Everything was back to normal.

  So it had been a dream. An unbelievably vivid dream. So vivid that I wondered whether I had actually gone back in time.

  I felt relieved, obviously. But, weirdly, a part of me was a little bit disappointed. I definitely hadn’t expected to feel that. But it would have been amazing to be able to travel through time.

  I walked back into the room and closed the door. My fingers hurt as they pressed the handle. I looked at them.

  My hands were red and raw, and covered in little cuts.

  A strand of hair fell over my face. It smelled weird.

  It smelled burned.

  I stared at it numbly for a minute. Then, with shaking fingers, I pulled the hair on the left side of my face in front of my eyes. My stomach lurched as another strange smell hit my nostrils.

  Vinegar.

  My head started to throb. With a hammering heart, I spread out my hair in front of my face like a curtain.

  In the centre of the curtain was a gap, where one section of hair was several centimetres shorter than the rest of it.

  My hands shook as I touched the shortened ends. Bits of dry, blackened hair crumbled off on my sore fingers. I stared at the desiccated flecks. My legs felt weak. I plonked myself down on the bed.

  So it hadn’t been a dream. It had really happened. I really had travelled back in time.

  I didn’t know what to think. My head was spinning so much that I couldn’t think.

  A knock on the door made me jump.

  “Evie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, you are awake,” Anna said, coming in. “I was almost starting to worry.”

  “What time is it?” I asked, looking for my phone. And then I remembered.

  “Nearly eleven,” Anna said.

  “Eleven! I never sleep that late.”

  “Well, you must have needed it. And you must be hungry too. There isn’t much food in the house and I need to walk to the burial ground for a site visit, so I thought, if you came with me I could point you in the direction of the village shop. And I could show you round the burial ground, if you like.”

  “Er, thanks?” I said. “But just the shop will be fine.”

  My phone was still completely dead. I asked Anna if we could go to a repair shop but she said she wasn’t going into town today.

  “I could get a bus,” I said.

  “You could. The next one’s on Tuesday.”

  I stared at her but she didn’t appear to be joking. She looked at me and laughed. “You really are a London girl, aren’t you? You’re in the country now, Evie. Things are different here.”

  Oh, you don’t have to tell me, I thought. You have no idea how different.

  It wasn’t tipping down like it had been the previous day, just drizzling in that depressing way that makes the whole world grey. On either side of the driveway was a strip of grass, bordered by wooden fences. Behind the fences were modern houses. “The gardens were supposed to be gorgeous in the old days,” said Anna, “but nearly all the land was sold off for building when the house was converted into flats. There’s just this bit of lawn left now, and a little patio at the back. They kept the lovely old gates though, and part of the original wall there.”

  I suddenly remembered something.

  “Is there a clock in the gardens? I thought I heard a clock strike last night, outside the house.”

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t know what that would have been. There’s a clock above the old stable block but it hasn’t worked for goodness knows how long. Certainly not in the time I’ve lived here.”

  We walked through the wrought-iron gates, and I remembered how scared I’d been last night when the cab driver had turned in here. So much had happened since then that it felt like a lifetime ago.

  We turned left, down the narrow, tree-lined lane. The trees were dank and dripping. Fat drops of water splatted on my head and ran down my face. I rummaged in my bag for a tissue.

  “That’s a pretty bag,” said Anna.

  “Thank you.” I was quite proud of my bag, which I’d made from some of Mum’s leftover curtain fabric.

  “It looks hand-sewn,” said Anna. “Did somebody make it for you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  And she actually looked impressed.

  “How could I find out more about what really happened to Sophia Fane?” I asked.

  She seemed surprised. I tried to look as though I was just very interested in history.

  “Your best bet would be the local records office,” she said. “That’s where the old church records of births, marriages and deaths are kept. But nobody seems to know much for definite about Sophia Fane, so I can’t imagine there’s a lot to find.”

  “Can we go to the records office?”

  Anna looked at me curiously. “Of course, if you’d like to. It’s not open at weekends, but I could probably arrange a visit next week.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That would be great.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you’re interested in history. Your mother never mentioned that on the phone.”

  “Too busy drooling over her perfect new husband, probably.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, yes. She did say you were finding it a little difficult to accept the idea of a stepfather.”

  Oh, did she, indeed? Thanks very much, Mum. I wondered what else she’d been saying about me behind my back.

  I shrugged. “Well, I’ve never had a father, have I? My dad left before I was born, and Mum and I have always been fine. We don’t need anyone else around.”

  Anna frowned. “Are you sure your mother feels the same way?”

  “Why shouldn’t she? She’s got me.”

  She gave me a sideways glance. “So, this new stepfather – he’s trying to push you aside, is he?”

  “Well, he’s taken Mum to Venice without me, so yes, obviously.”

  “You wanted them to take you along? On their honeymoon?”

  I made a disgusted face. “No, obviously I didn’t want to go on honeymoon with them.”

  “But yo
u’re angry that your mother’s gone away without you.”

  “She’s my mum. Mums are supposed to stay with their children.”

  “And your mother goes away a lot, does she?”

  What was with all these questions all of a sudden? What had she and Mum been talking about?

  “Not a lot,” I said.

  “But she’s neglecting you, is she, now she’s got Marcus?”

  The mere mention of his name irritated me. Well, it’s an annoying name, isn’t it?

  “No,” I said. “She’s not neglecting me.”

  “And he’s horrible, is he, this Marcus? Selfish, cold-hearted?”

  “No.” She was really annoying me now. I wished she’d go back to ignoring me.

  “So?” she said. “What’s the problem exactly?”

  I let out my breath in exasperation. “He’s just … always there, you know? Being annoying.”

  “So his crime is to have fallen in love with your mother.”

  “Exactly. Why couldn’t he have left us alone? We were fine before.”

  Anna smiled. “It can’t be easy, when it’s just been the two of you for so long. But you need to see it from her point of view. Can you imagine how lonely she must have been these past thirteen years?”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “I know she has you, and I know she adores you, as you know full well yourself. But adults need adult company sometimes, just as children need the company of other children.”

  “She’s got loads of friends.”

  “I’m sure she has, but it’s not quite the same. It wasn’t easy for her, you know, giving up her degree and having you so young. And with no help or support from her mother either, after your grandmother suggested having you adopted.”

  I froze. “Having me what?”

  Anna stopped walking. She looked horrified. “I thought you knew. Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.”

  I felt hollow inside. “What do you mean, having me adopted?”

  “I shouldn’t really say anything. It’s up to your mother to tell you.”

  “Well, she’s not here, and you just told me, so you’d better tell me properly now.”