Evie's Ghost

by Helen Peters

  Anna didn’t speak for a few seconds. Then she started walking again. “There’s nothing much to tell, really. You know your mother was still at university when she had you. Her mother had been very ambitious for her, and she thought Lara should have you adopted so she could carry on with her studies unhindered, as she put it. Well, Lara wouldn’t hear of that, and they had a huge falling-out. Lara refused to ask her mother for any support after that, which made things very difficult for her. I don’t imagine she’s had a lot of trips away in the last thirteen years, has she?”

  None at all, actually. But Anna probably knew that already, since she seemed to know everything.

  “And then her mother died before she had a chance to make things better,” said Anna. “Very sad. But your grandmother hadn’t had an easy relationship with her own mother, and unfortunately these things often repeat themselves in families.”

  It was raining hard now. Raindrops pattered like drumbeats on the leaves above us and dripped down on our hair and clothes.

  “I invited your mother to come here and live with me when you were born,” said Anna. “Did she tell you that?”

  “Really?”

  I didn’t mean to sound quite so surprised, but Anna didn’t seem like a person who’d enjoy sharing her space with a mother and baby.

  “Well, I have a spare room, and I’d known her since she was a little girl, so it was the least I could do. But she only stayed one night.”

  I didn’t blame her. I was surprised she’d stayed at all, once she’d seen the state of the place. Mum’s a very tidy person.

  “She was in a terrible state, poor thing. You were so tiny, and she was exhausted. She had terrifying nightmares about a mother and child being separated. Well, not exactly nightmares, more like hallucinations, I suppose, because she claimed she never went to sleep at all.”

  Suddenly I felt cold all over.

  “What did she see?” I asked, and my voice came out all weird, like there wasn’t enough air in my throat.

  Anna looked at me in surprise. “I’m not scaring you, am I?”

  I shook my head. Anna smiled. “There’s nothing for you to worry about. It was only natural, I suppose, that your mother was having nightmares about a separated mother and child, considering what she was going through.”

  “What did she see?” I asked again. “In these hallucinations?”

  “She said she heard a baby crying next to her bed. It must have been you, of course, but in her state of exhaustion she was convinced it was the ghost of a long-ago baby. And she said she heard a tapping at the window, which must have just been a branch, but she thought it was the baby’s mother, knocking on the windowpane.”

  “Did she … did she see who was tapping at the window?”

  Anna looked at me incredulously. “Evie, we’re three floors up. How could anyone have tapped at the window? It was just the wind knocking a branch against the glass.”

  “But did she go and look?”

  “No, she was far too scared. She ran into my room in hysterics, with you clutched in her arms. She said she couldn’t stay in there for one more second.”

  “What time was it, when she ran out of the room?”

  Anna laughed. “It was thirteen years ago, Evie. I’m afraid I can’t recall that level of detail.”

  But I had to know. I had to.

  “Was it before or after midnight?”

  “I really can’t—”

  Then she stopped.

  “Actually, I do remember. It’s funny you should say that. She said afterwards that she’d just heard midnight strike when the noises started. I said the striking of the clock must have half woken her and she must have been in some sort of strange state between dreaming and waking. But she wouldn’t go back in there. I gave her my room instead.”

  “Had you told her the story about Sophia Fane? Had she seen the writing on the glass?”

  Anna shook her head. “No, I don’t think she saw the writing. She wasn’t in the room long enough, and she was preoccupied with you anyway.”

  “And when you swapped rooms, you didn’t … hear anything … in the spare room? Or see anything?”

  “Not a thing. Slept like a baby. And I’ve had various guests over the years, who have all slept perfectly well in there too. Poor Lara. She wrote to me afterwards to apologise, poor thing. She said she’d been exhausted and sleep-deprived, and she couldn’t believe she’d got herself into such a state.” She looked at me with concern in her face. “You look stricken, Evie. Honestly, there’s no need to worry. It was only a dream.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Double Midnight

  At the entrance to the burial ground, I parted from Anna and continued to the village alone. I walked along the lane very slowly, my eyes to the ground, thinking.

  So the ghost appeared at midnight. That is, the normal midnight, when Anna’s clock struck twelve. That was when it had appeared to me last night, and when Mum had heard the tapping, thirteen years ago. But Mum hadn’t gone back in time and, somehow, I had.

  Did Mum run out of the room before the second clock struck midnight? The clock that apparently didn’t work any more, but presumably was working two hundred years ago? Was it this phantom second midnight that transformed the house into how it was back then? Could that explain how Mum heard the ghost at the window, but didn’t go back in time?

  Or was it that Mum didn’t actually go to the window and see the ghost, so it couldn’t beckon her into the past like it did to me?

  Suddenly, with a strength of feeling that took me by surprise, I really, really wanted to know what was going on. That night, I decided, I would stay awake until midnight and see if the house transformed again.

  I was terrified of being in my room at midnight. The thought of going through that again made me feel sick. But now that I knew Mum had had the same experience, I wasn’t quite as scared as I had been before. At least I knew I wasn’t the only freak in the world.

  And I really wanted to see more of the house two hundred years ago, and the people who lived there.

  Most of all, I wanted to find out more about Sophia Fane. Because a question was worming its way into my head.

  Sophia’s ghost had begged me to help her. So if I had the power to go back in time, did that mean I might be able to change the past?

  It’s amazing how much junk food you can buy in one small shop. If Mum could have seen the contents of my basket, she would have died of horror.

  Anna gave me money for food so I didn’t have to spend my emergency fund. I did spend some of it though. Polly had said I wouldn’t normally have to wash up, but I wouldn’t have put it past that savage Hardwick woman to make me wash a load more pots and pans purely for her own sadistic amusement. I wasn’t going to put my hands through that agony again for anything, so I bought a pair of rubber gloves. If I didn’t have to wash up, I could give them to the poor scullery maid. I couldn’t imagine how sore her hands must be.

  On impulse, I also bought a box of chocolates for Polly. I took the gloves and chocolates to my room as soon as I got home, so that Anna wouldn’t see them and ask awkward questions. Although she wasn’t back yet anyway. Too busy getting excited about skeletons, clearly.

  My phone still wasn’t working. It was spookily quiet in the flat and I felt very alone. I unplugged the radio in the kitchen and took it to my room. Then I got out my sketchbook and pencils and sat on the bed.

  Drawing is my favourite thing. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been drawing. Some of my teachers get mad at me for doodling in the margins of my books, or on my hands if I don’t have a book. They don’t believe me when I tell them I can’t help it, but it’s true. If there’s a pencil or a pen within range, I have to pick it up and draw.

  I sketched Sophia Fane in her beautiful white dress. Then I drew her father, with his angry red face. I drew Polly and George and the fat cook and evil Mrs Hardwick. My favourite person to draw was Charles Ellerdale, with his vast stomach like a balloon
at full stretch.

  I didn’t draw Alice. I was too disturbed by that look of hatred she’d given me.

  I didn’t have a meal and Anna didn’t offer me one when she came home. When I got hungry, I just ate one of the many snacks I’d bought.

  As day turned to evening, I started to get really nervous. My stomach churned whenever I thought about midnight.

  Nobody was making me do this, I reminded myself. I didn’t have to go through with it. I could have asked Anna to swap rooms, and then we’d have both slept normally.

  But for some crazy reason I actually wanted to go back in time again. Now that I knew that when I went to sleep in the past, I would wake up back in the present, it felt quite safe. I could go back to the past every night. And, to be honest, that would be a lot more fun than hanging around here dying of boredom for another three days. I could live in the past at night and just sleep through the tedious silent days in Anna’s flat.

  So if I wanted to go back in time again, there was nothing else for it. I would have to stay in my room until the second clock struck midnight.

  I would have to face the ghost.

  It happened exactly the same as it had happened the previous night. I had thought I’d be prepared this time, but the howling in the chimney was just as terrifying as it had been before, and the tapping on the windowpane still stopped my heart. But at least I knew now what would be waiting for me when I looked out of the window.

  I pulled the curtains aside. And there was Sophia Fane, with that wild, haunted look in those eyes that stared straight into mine.

  The second clock began to strike. Sophia raised her hand and beckoned to me.

  “Help me,” she mouthed.

  I felt sick with terror but I forced myself to extend my hand towards hers. I placed my palm flat against the windowpane. Sophia’s hand didn’t move, but she continued to look intently at me.

  “I will help you,” I said. “I promise. I will come into your time, and I will find a way for you and your baby to stay together. I promise.”

  Sophia continued to look into my eyes. I peeled my hand from the cold glass pane and walked towards the bedroom door. My heart was beating so hard it hurt.

  As I passed through the doorway, I felt the same strange dissolving sensation I had felt the previous night. And as the door closed behind me, I felt myself becoming whole again. I was wearing the same clothes I had worn last night, with the corset tight around my ribcage and the itchy woollen stockings on my legs. And I was back in Sophia Fane’s house, with its carved doors and blue walls and patterned rug, and the polished floorboards gleaming in the light of the wall lamps.

  My heart was beating with excitement now, not fear. I really could travel through time! I could come here every night!

  Suddenly I had a thought that filled me with panic. I would only be in Anna’s flat for three more days. So I only had three days to help Sophia escape from her father and keep her baby.

  Or did I? Because I didn’t even know how the time travel worked yet. Would time in the past have moved on, or would tonight be a repeat of last night?

  I knew only one thing for certain. Sophia Fane was imprisoned on 27th April 1814. So the first thing I needed to do was to find out the date. And that shouldn’t be too difficult, surely.

  I was about to head downstairs when I realised I’d forgotten to bring the washing-up gloves and the chocolates. If I went back into my bedroom, would my things be there?

  Slowly and carefully, I turned the shining brass knob and opened the door a few centimetres.

  Somebody was breathing softly in the darkness. If this really was Sophia’s room, then presumably that was her, asleep in bed. I couldn’t see the bed from here and I didn’t dare open the door any wider in case I woke her.

  Long curtains were drawn across the window. I could make out a fireplace where, in my time, the wind howled in the chimney behind a blank wall. There was a carpet on the floor and a lot of heavy-looking furniture. The walls were covered with framed pictures.

  None of my stuff was here. Everything was completely different. So I probably couldn’t have brought the gloves and chocolates anyway. After all, I hadn’t even got my own clothes on. It didn’t seem as though anything at all could travel between the two worlds.

  Apart from me.

  PART

  TWO

  CHAPTER TEN

  Second Housemaid

  Light streamed in from the high windows on the staircase. Birds were singing outside. It must be morning.

  As I reached the stone-flagged passage that led to the kitchen, I heard footsteps on the stairs above me. I turned to see Polly. Her eyes widened in surprise.

  “There you are,” she said. “Where have you been? I thought you’d scarpered in the night.”

  “Er… I woke up early,” I said.

  “Oh, that happened to me too, my first morning. Give it a few days and you’ll be snatching every minute of sleep you can get.”

  By the back door a man was buttoning his jacket. A narrow camp bed lay across the doorway.

  “This is where George sleeps,” said Polly. “William sleeps across the front door and he sleeps across the back.”

  George? Surely not the same George I met last night? This man had short dark hair and wore a plain brown jacket. He laughed as he saw me staring at him.

  “Don’t recognise me without the wig and livery, do you?”

  “You look completely different,” I said. “Why do you sleep across the back door? To stop burglars?”

  “That’s right.” He folded the camp bed away and picked up something from underneath it. I stared.

  “Is that a gun?”

  “That’s right. Musket.”

  “Do you always sleep with a gun under the bed?”

  He packed the blankets and the gun into a high cupboard on the wall. “To be sure I do. Master’s orders.”

  “Have you ever had a burglary?”

  “Not in my time. But there was one a few years back. William and the other footman – John, it was then – they caught the men and locked them in the pantry. Sir Henry had them up before the judge.”

  “What happened to them?”

  George slid open the top bolt on the back door. “Hanged, all three of them. Brothers, they was, the youngest barely twelve years old.”

  I gaped at him. “Hanged? A twelve-year-old?”

  “Here you are, Evie,” said Polly. She handed me a wooden box full of brushes, and a metal bucket containing sticks and a rough piece of cloth. She brought out a broom and a similar box for herself. Then she led me back to the room where the party was held last night. It was very dark now, with heavy wooden shutters across the windows. Last night’s smells lingered faintly, like ghostly reminders.

  Polly set her box down by the fireplace, so I did the same.

  “You’re second housemaid,” she said, “so you’re on fires. I do dusting, curtains and carpets.”

  She walked to one of the enormous windows and lifted the iron bar that held the shutters in place. She folded the shutters back and the room was filled with light. I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Half past five! No wonder the house was quiet.

  “Polly,” I asked, “what date is it today?”

  “The twenty-fifth of April.”

  The twenty-fifth of April. The same date as it was in the present.

  “And…” This was going to sound unbelievably stupid. But I had to find out. “And what year is it?”

  Polly’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you really not know what year it is?”

  I shook my head. Clearly I was going to have to get used to being the village idiot.

  “It’s eighteen fourteen, you daft ha’porth,” she said.

  The twenty-fifth of April 1814.

  In two days’ time Sophia would be locked in her room for the rest of her life.

  Unless I could do something to prevent it.

  “Stir yourself, Evie,” said Polly. “You need to get on with t
hat fire.”

  I looked at the huge stone fireplace. The grate was filled with crumbly grey ash and the charred remains of logs. What was I supposed to do?

  There was a fireplace in our flat in London but we never had a fire. The grate was filled with pine cones I’d collected in the park.

  “Could you show me, Polly?” I asked. “I’ve never made a fire before.”

  Polly gaped. “Never done a fire?”

  “Well, not like this,” I said hastily. “Ours was different. This is much … grander.”

  “Right,” she said in a businesslike manner. “First you roll up the hearthrug, so it’s out of the way, and then you lay down your cloth to keep the place clean. Then you rake out the ashes like this, see.”

  She took an iron tool from a set hanging by the fire and clattered it to and fro across the bars of the grate, so that the ashes fell into the hearth.

  “Leave the bigger cinders – you can use them to help start the fire. Now, take your kindling out of the bucket and lay it on the hearth there, then sweep out the ashes and put them in the bucket. Now you brush over all the fireplace with this,” she said, taking a short-handled brush from the box. “Then you clean the bars and the fire-irons, first with this oil” – pulling a glass bottle from the box – “rubbed in with this cloth, and then rub them all down with emery paper.” She took out a piece of grey sandpaper. “Then you do them all over with scouring paper. That’s this one. Sir Henry’s very fussy about clean fireplaces, so make sure you do it properly or you’ll feel the back of Hardwitch’s hand. Then you brush the back and sides of the fireplace with blacklead, and rub them dry with this brush here.” She took yet another brush from the box, this one with hard-looking bristles.

  My head was spinning. How many stages of fire-cleaning could there be?

  Polly sat back on her heels. “Got that? When it’s all done, you lay and light the fire. You’ve got your tinderbox there. Now, I must get on with the carpets or Hardwitch’ll have my guts for garters.”