“Buhdie!” Ruby shouted gleefully and screamed in delight as the bird took fright and flapped its wings to take off.
“Oh God, why didn’t you say?” groaned Sue, running a gloved hand over her face in embarrassment. “No wonder Will was pissed off earlier with me burbling on about Gabriel like that. I thought they always came as a matching pair? What the hell happened?”
Martha removed the lid from her cup and blew on the coffee to cool it down before attempting to take a mouthful. Then, with a sigh, she turned to Sue.
“It all kicked off around the time Gabriel signed up for Ghosts R Us as the resident medium,” she said. “We went round to his for drinks because he had a big announcement to make and we had just popped the cork on a bottle of champagne when Gabriel told us all about the TV show and next thing I knew himself and Will were in a massive shouting match with Will going on about integrity and Gabriel going on about not wanting to be a bloody tour-bus guide all his life and it ended up with Will storming out and me having to go after him. There’s been no contact between them ever since.”
They sat in silence in the early winter sunshine. Martha turned her face toward it, trying to absorb as much of the last rays of heat as she could before winter set in. She felt Ruby press against her leg and rubbed a hand across the blonde curls as the child searched, oblivious, for the packet of raisins that she knew she might find in her mother’s handbag, beaming to suddenly discover instead a small chocolate bar. Ruby held up the spoils of her search to her mother expectantly and Martha relented, pulling open the wrapping and handing it back to the child.
“Oh, you jammy thing, Ruby!” exclaimed Sue. “I’m bloody starving!”
Martha laughed aloud. “We finished breakfast an hour ago!” she observed, grinning at her friend. “Oh, shut up,” replied Sue grumpily. “Don’t you even remember giving up cigarettes? Give us a bite, Roobs – there’s a good girl!”
The toddler obliged and Sue pretended to take a bite, rewarding Ruby with a grin and a kiss on the cheek. She sat back and sighed deeply, taking in her surroundings.
“Seriously, Martha, don’t you ever look at your life and think how weird it is?” she enquired, looking at her friend side on, trying to gauge the response to the forward question.
Martha shifted in her seat and closed her eyes to the sun again. “What do you mean weird?” she asked. “I’m divorced – one beautiful, if chocolatey, daughter – living with my partner who I love very much in a beautiful house – with my second children’s book being published in the spring and a part-time job that I actually enjoy . . .” She opened her eyes and tilted her head to one side. “When I put it like that, I think I’m pretty bloody lucky!”
“Actually you’re right,” agreed Sue. “But the whole . . . ghosty bit? Will out all night videotaping nothing in the dark and then you spending hours going through the nothing trying to find something that might not exist? And the fact that his former best friend actually makes a living on TV talking to alleged ghosts, in possibly the worst TV show I have ever watched in my life? I mean, come on – you saw it last night – you could clearly see that pebble was thrown by the sound guy. And when that ‘whooo’ sound happened, everyone looked in the direction of the doorway, except Gabriel who looked directly at the actual source of the sound . . .”
“You mean the cameraman!” Martha giggled at the memory.
“Exactly! The cameraman! And as for it being live – I mean the editing was just horrific! What about that bit where they flicked away from the presenter and then flicked back and she had a slightly different jacket on!”
Martha laughed and then cringed inwardly at the thought that Gabriel was a part of the wretched thing. It was such a sham – she could understand why Will was angry with his friend for being part of it when they had both worked so hard, for so long, to establish themselves as reputable – Will as an investigator, and Gabriel as a medium.
“It’s no weirder than spending a weekend at a convention of bog-snorkellers,” retorted Martha, referring to one of Sue’s favourite assignments of recent years. “Or hanging out with white supremacists, or greengrocers –”
“Oh, come off it, Martha – all of those things are real!” laughed Sue. “And don’t diss the bog-snorkellers – I’ve befriended one or two online!’
Martha laughed even harder. “You talk about things being real and then you make friends on the internet? I’m going to be ousted as your actual friend because you have virtual bog-snorkeller buddies now?” Her laughter stopped as she saw Sue suddenly sit up and grow serious, staring into the distance across Princes Street Gardens. “What’s up?” she asked, looking frantically around for Ruby who, smeared with fudge and chocolate, was playing with the hood on her pushchair. Momentarily reassured, she followed Sue’s gaze across the park and finally saw what had made her friend sit up. It was a familiar figure standing on the path a short distance way, dressed in a long black coat, a bright red scarf knotted at the neck.
“Speak of the devil and all that, but isn’t that Gabriel?” asked Sue.
Martha leaned forward for a closer look but there was no mistaking him, even behind the sunglasses. Beside him, on the ground, lay a spilled cup of some hot drink, the contents draining away toward the edge of the path and into the grass.
Gabriel seemed to be focused on something straight in front of him. He looked tense, poised as if trying to catch better sight of something or someone in the distance. Suddenly they saw him shout and raise a hand, as if trying to catch someone’s attention. And then he broke into a run, in pursuit of something or someone that he was intent on catching. Except to Martha’s eyes, and Sue’s, there was no one there. They watched as a couple of passers-by stared after Gabriel as he pursued his imagined quarry, the long black coat flying behind him.
Martha stood, suddenly, and thought about calling to him, but he was too far away now so she simply watched as he ran after something that wasn’t there or that only Gabriel could see.
Sue looked at Martha in confusion. “What’s he running after?” she asked, puzzled. “Can you see anything?” She looked again in Gabriel’s direction, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Martha sighed as he vanished from view. She shook her head and sat back down. “I don’t know, Susie,” she said, staring at where he had been. “But I have a funny feeling it wasn’t someone that’s been breathing any time recently.”
Silence fell between the girls as they watched the park, curious to see if Gabriel might reappear, but there was no sign. A touch on her shoulder made Martha jump suddenly and she shrieked, grabbing her coffee cup tighter in her hand as she turned. Instant relief washed over her as she saw Will’s face smiling at her, his expression sheepish, his eyes ringed with tiredness.
“Will!” she exclaimed. “You frightened the life out of me. What the hell are you doing here?”
Will wrestled Ruby upwards so that she could wrap her arms tightly around his neck.
“Wull,” she said, snuggling into him, a sure sign that nap time was looming.
Will rubbed Martha’s arm apologetically and smiled. “Got your text to say you were coming here and I had to follow. I couldn’t sleep.” He lowered his voice. “I’m really sorry for being a grumpy so-and-so earlier.”
Sue, politely, continued to stare in the direction where they had seen Gabriel, pretending not to listen, though overhearing them was unavoidable.
“Sorry to you too, Sue!” called Will in an exaggeratedly loud voice, acknowledging this.
She didn’t turn, just raised a hand, the movement also exaggerated for humour – a gracious wave. Will smiled. “I was just really tired and – well – you know that certain subjects set me off.”
Martha smiled back and rubbed a hand gently across his cheek, taking in his boyish face underneath the small black woollen cap he wore. She tugged the end of his striped scarf, knotted at his throat. “Forgiven,” she grinned.
“Excellent,” he replied. “Now I’m starving, so who�
�s for an apology brunch? Sue?”
Sue turned and replied almost as quickly as Will asked the question. “Yes, please!” she barked. “Where do I go to sign up for that?”
They laughed as Will indicated that she should link his arm. “This way, please!”
Martha protested, half-heartedly. “Seriously guys, we’ve only just had breakfast!” but was ignored completely by the others who set off laughing back across the park in the direction of Princes Street. She didn’t care that they didn’t answer her. With the hand that wasn’t holding the coffee cup, she took the handle of the pushchair and began to follow them . . . but not before, burning with curiosity and concern, she took one final look back in the direction where she had seen Gabriel run.
CHAPTER 6
November 2nd
A train pulled slowly out underneath her as Martha crossed Waverley Bridge on her way back to work at lunchtime. She’d needed to pop over to a bookshop on Rose Street to pick something up for Will and the walk had been brisk and enjoyable on yet another sunny winter’s day. A few of the shops on the way along Princes Street had already been decked out for Christmas, and even though she knew it was very early – too early in fact – Martha couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect of her first actual festive season in Edinburgh. The previous year, Will had visited his parents in Cornwall and she and Ruby had gone to her dad’s in Oxfordshire but this year they were having Christmas, just the three of them, in their own house and then having Sue and Simon and Will’s sister Lucy to stay for Hogmanay.
As she strolled past the majestic facade of the Scotsman Hotel, she thought about how she proposed to decorate the huge house and enjoyed mental images of the fire crackling in the living room, of Ruby opening gifts on Christmas morning, of Will and her relaxing, enjoying old movies and mulled wine. She was lucky that she worked only three days a week and had plenty of time to get herself organised for her fairytale Christmas. And who knew, maybe Dan would cough up his missing maintenance money between now and then and that would make things a little more comfortable.
As she walked, Martha allowed her mind to drift back to the previous year when she and Will had celebrated Christmas a week early with Gabriel at Will’s apartment. Martha smiled as she remembered how she swore she’d never move to Edinburgh but as the weekend commutes grew more and more arduous on her own with a demanding toddler, and she grew more certain about a future with Will, she had relented and promised to move on a temporary basis the previous February. She had never left. They had purchased Calderwood in the autumn, needing what Will called a proper family home.
The previous Christmas had been the precursor to all of that and they had shared champagne and smoked salmon with Gabriel, sitting up until the wee hours, playing board games and laughing. Martha sighed and wondered if somehow this year might be the same – if something could ever be done that would bring the two men back together?
She glanced upward at the buildings on the Royal Mile and realised that she was back at her workplace without realising it. She chastised herself for not taking more note of her surroundings. She had grown to love Edinburgh city centre, adored working right in the heart of the Old Town, a stone’s throw from the Castle, from St Giles’ and from tourist haunts such as the Grassmarket. She loved this time of year with the brown leaves crunchy underfoot and the trees taking on their bare appearance for winter. In two or three months she would be filled with a longing for sunshine as the weather grew colder and any Christmas snows became either a dirty sludge or a worsening hazard but for now she loved to take it all in as the air grew cold and crispy and first frosts formed.
She mounted the stairs to the office over the tiny gift shop selling tartan and shortbread and pushed open the glass panelled door at the top, revealing the cramped and dingy office where she spent her days. It was a million miles away from her previous life in a glitzy advertising office but she loved it. Loved the electric fan heater that she had to keep under her desk to stave off the early morning chill in the air before the central heating kicked in, loved the tiny kitchen area where there was barely room to make tea but which was always stocked with biscuits, and loved the smell of must and old books that filled the room as a whole.
Her work partner, Maisie Gordon, looked up as Martha entered the room and hung her trench coat and scarf on the wooden coat-rack just inside the door. “Hello there,” she said in her soft Scottish accent and returned to reading Heat magazine, incongruous in the current setting, against shelf after shelf and pile after pile of books which were hundreds of years old, covered in pigskin and some barely readable after years of bad storage.
“Did I miss anything?” asked Martha, the stock question when returning from anywhere outside the Old Edinburgh Data Preservation Project as her workplace was known, the clunky title disguising the fascinating nature of the work that they did, taking ancient record books from historic buildings, institutions, clubs – record of attendance, minutes, family trees, diaries – and transferring the data to computer before the books were sent to be preserved. Some of the books that they dealt with went as far back as the 1400’s and Martha every day revelled in the living history that she held in her hands, Scotland’s heritage right there under her fingertips.
She was aware that some might find the work mind-numbingly boring, pointless even, but she adored it – handling the past and learning about real people – how they lived, how they died, what they called their children, their professions. She would sometimes come across a death record for someone whose birth she had discovered weeks before and occasionally took it upon herself to try to find records in between – marriages, children being christened, appointments – all the elements that went together to paint a picture of real lives from the past. Martha loved touching history itself and was slowly gathering enough experience to think about her next writing project – a historical novel but based on real facts and real people.
Martha and Maisie worked as a team with the records – one reading the handwritten information out, the other transferring it to the computer database, both of them often working together to try to figure out a word or identify a strange name for a job or even a disease that might have killed someone. It had taken them a while to find that ‘Bad Blood’, for example, was another name for syphilis – the taker of an entire family of eight infants and then the father and mother after many years, and that a ‘bule’ was in fact a tumour that had killed an elderly man in the Tolbooth parish. There were many more like these and many instances, of course, of the plague that had taken so many lives in the 1600’s.
Maisie glanced up from her magazine, took a chocolate biscuit from the pack in front of her and thought for a moment. “Well, it’s been crazy in here as always,” she observed without a hint of a smile.
Martha grinned. The office was usually so quiet that if the phone rang both of them jumped.
“Like the stock exchange, if the truth be known,” continued Maisie drily. “Actually there was a phone call – put my heart crossways in me!”
Martha sat back at her desk, fishing a pre-packed sandwich from her handbag. “Really?” she asked.
Maisie nodded and continued to munch the chocolate digestive. “Mm-hmm,” she continued. “It was for you as well – some fellah – not Will – I know his voice.”
Martha furrowed her brow as she unwrapped her lunch. “Did he leave a name?” she asked.
Maisie shook her head. “No – said he’d call again over the next few days. Posh English accent he had but no other clues I’m afraid.”
Martha shrugged. “Can’t have been too urgent then,” she said, tucking into her sandwich and looking at the clock. “Bloody hell – two already! Where does lunch hour go?”
Maisie closed over the packet of biscuits and flung her magazine into the recycling bin. “Well, when you’re as busy as we are . . .” she said, finally cracking a smile. “Right then, for the afternoon what do you fancy – Old Greyfriars or, wait for it – New Greyfriars?” She
held up two ancient-looking books bound in leather.
Martha crumpled her nose – one of the books looked fire-damaged and she wasn’t in the humour for trying to identify information on charred paper on such a lovely afternoon. “Left hand,” she said, pointing at the undamaged book.
Maisie smiled. “A very good answer, missus,” she said, “In fact, the only correct answer! Now, let’s see . . . Mhairi Abernethy’s diary is first up this afternoon. Hello, Mhairi, can you tell us your vital statistics, please?”
Martha grinned again. It was a game that they took in turns, pretending to interview the subject in the book for an imaginary and irreverent magazine they’d invented called Plagueboy. Ready to become absorbed in the game, Martha giggled as ‘Mhairi’ started to reply to her interviewer.
CHAPTER 7
1963
It was Sunday. A sunny and warm summer’s afternoon as the girl sat nursing the mug of now-cold tea at a table as far away from the window as she could manage. She’d been there for a couple of hours now, watching the comings and goings of people having hot and cold drinks and cakes; families coming in for ice-cream sundaes and treats. She knew that soon she’d have to finish up and get back on the road if she wasn’t to draw attention to herself. The travelling was harder than she’d imagined, but she knew she had to keep going. She didn’t know where to, but she absolutely had to keep going.
She was tired, however. Her feet ached and her back and ribs were so sore. Thinking of the pain, she was reminded to pull her lank greasy hair down over the left side of her face for the hundredth time and she lowered her head again to look out from under it. The bruise was the sort of thing to definitely get her noticed. But five more minutes here wouldn’t hurt, would it?
The Dark Water Page 3