‘If you made the time to talk to her properly, you’d see it too,’ he adds.
Crossly, she rounds on him.
‘What do you expect me to do, Tishk? Welcome Cara back into our lives as though nothing ever happened? You of all people know what Anita was like after Matty died because you grew up next door to her and saw it with your own eyes. She was a shell, broken beyond any hope of recovery. The cancer might’ve killed her, but she was dead inside long before that and I can’t forgive Cara for that.’
Tishk nods. ‘I do understand now is an emotional time for you and that you’re grieving. But I can’t stop thinking about what life must’ve been like for Cara growing up in foster care, knowing her family didn’t want her. It must’ve been horrendous.’ He pauses. ‘She still maintains she never killed Matty and, if I’m honest, it’s hard not to believe her.’
Karen is astounded. ‘She was the only person with him when it happened. There was no one else downstairs. You can’t possibly believe that ridiculous ghost story she came out with. Thanks to her, our family became an international laughing stock, with every aspect of our lives ripped to shreds by the press. I haven’t forgotten all the TV crews camping out here, the constant knocks on the door by reporters, even if you have.’
‘I’m not saying that,’ he answers slowly.
‘You didn’t know how she really was. The months before Matty died, she was an absolute horror. She bullied other children, as well as him.’
‘I know what Amir’s told me and it sounds like her behaviour was down to her being terrified and exhausted from being awake all night because she was convinced she was hearing things.’
‘Exactly!’ Karen crows triumphantly. ‘She thought she heard noises, but no one else in the house did. It was her illness, the delusional disorder.’
‘If she was ill and couldn’t help herself, isn’t that even more reason to show her some compassion?’
Thrown by his comment, Karen slumps back down into her chair. ‘I can’t believe you’re taking her side.’
‘I’m not trying to pick a fight, Mrs J. It’s just that Cara’s not in a great place either. She’s vulnerable and she’s got no one.’
Karen shakes her head. ‘I can’t help her. Not in the way you want me to.’
Tishk sighs and she is grateful when his phone suddenly rings, puncturing the moment.
‘Hello?’ he answers.
Even from where she’s sitting, Karen can hear the caller is hysterical and instinct tells her that it’s Cara.
Frowning, Tishk leaps to his feet, asking what’s wrong but seemingly not getting any sense from her. ‘The table’s upside down? How?’
Karen gets to her feet too. ‘What’s happened?’ she mouths.
‘I have to go,’ Tishk mouths back, pulling his coat off the back of his chair. Then he speaks firmly into his phone. ‘Cara, I’m on my way. I’ll be two minutes. Stay on the line and keep talking to me.’
Karen grabs his arm. ‘Wait, what’s going on?’
His frown deepening, Tishk holds the handset away from his mouth for a second. ‘It’s something about some furniture being moved downstairs.’
‘Why has that upset her so much?’
‘She’s saying Limey Stan did it.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cara
We are going round in circles, Tishk and I. He is trying to come up with a plausible reason for why the coffee table is upside down in the middle of the front room and I keep telling him there isn’t one. His refusal to accept that while I was asleep the furniture was being rearranged is infuriating. Why is he persisting in not believing me?
‘Are you sure you didn’t tip it over without realising?’ he asks me again.
I shoot him another exasperated look. ‘I told you – I would’ve remembered that. Plus, it’s been moved into the middle of the room.’
‘Have you been drinking today?’
Embarrassment floods through me and colours my cheeks. My drunkenness after the will reading was a one-off, but Tishk obviously now thinks I get so wasted during the daytime that I regularly stagger round the house sending furniture flying. ‘No I haven’t. The table was upended on purpose and it wasn’t me who did it,’ I reply hotly.
Tishk made me tea with lots of sugar after he arrived and I’m clutching the mug with both hands for warmth. The adrenaline surge triggered by my discovery of the table has subsided and now I’m shivering like I’m freezing cold. We’re in the kitchen, sitting at the small table that’s pushed against one wall. The room really isn’t big enough to accommodate a place to sit and dine and I should move the table and chairs out of the way when the estate agent returns to take the pictures.
The fact I can even make a mental note shows I’m calming down. Yet the question of who moved the table niggles away at me: if I didn’t knock it over (and I know damn well I didn’t), who did? When I called Tishk, I blurted out it must’ve been Limey Stan again, but I’ve since convinced myself, and him, I only said it because I was upset and not thinking straight. As I silently remind the nine-year-old me who is currently screeching in my head that he’s returned to haunt me again, Limey Stan only ever showed up at night and this was four o’clock in the afternoon. It’s someone playing a trick, it must be.
‘Karen’s behind it, she has to be,’ I declare. ‘She wants me gone and she’s trying to freak me out so I’ll pack up and leave.’
‘It wasn’t her. I was with her when you called.’
I stare at Tishk, shocked. ‘What?’
‘I’m friends with the whole family. I go round every Wednesday afternoon at the same time for coffee.’ He says it glibly, as though it shouldn’t have any bearing on my feelings, but it jolts me to hear he is close enough to my aunt that he visits her house once a week. ‘So I was there when you say this happened,’ he adds.
‘It’ll be one of the others then. Uncle Gary.’
Tishk shakes his head. ‘He’s at work, as are Ryan and Natalie before you ask. Look, they wouldn’t think to stoop to something like this. It’s trespassing for a start, because you changed the locks, so they couldn’t use their key. It’s also harassment, trying to force you from a home that’s now legally yours. I can’t see any of them risking getting into trouble with the police. They’re not like that, trust me.’
Trust. Now there’s a word. I don’t know what or who to apply it to right now. Certainly not Tishk now I know he’s cosy with my aunt. How do I know he won’t rush back round there after this and tell her everything I’ve said? ‘If it wasn’t Karen, my uncle, my cousin nor his girlfriend, who else could it have been?’
Was it Tishk?
The intrusive thought startles me. Why on earth would he be the culprit? He’s my friend, he’s been nothing but supportive. Yet I can’t help myself asking him what time he went round to Karen’s. I was asleep in Matty’s bed for a while, so there may well have been a window of opportunity for him to somehow sneak in here first.
Tishk sighs and crosses his arms. ‘I’ve told you, it wasn’t her,’ he says, and I realise he’s misunderstood me and he thinks I’m trying to suss out if there was time for Karen to have crept in before their meeting. The fact he didn’t react as though I was accusing him lessens my unease. If it was him, surely he’d have reacted more suspiciously? ‘I think you knocked it over and didn’t realise,’ he adds.
Nine-year-old Cara chooses that moment to launch a foot-stamping tantrum in my head. You know who did this, she’s shouting at me. I grip my mug tighter, my pulse quickening, as I dare to contemplate the unthinkable, that she’s right and it was something, rather than someone, who moved the table – the same something that preyed on our house twenty-five years ago.
I glance across the kitchen to the hallway door. Next to it there used to be a set of steps with a seat on top – not quite a chair, not quite a stepladder, but a contraption somewhere in between. Mum used to sit us on it to administer Savlon and plasters to grazed knees, but my mind drifts back
to one night in particular when it was about three in the morning and she’d sat me on the steps and given me a mug of hot chocolate to calm me down after another night-time scare.
‘It was just a bad dream, sweetheart,’ I remember her saying as she stroked the crown of my head and encouraged me to take small sips of my drink so I didn’t spill it down my nightie.
‘But Mr Blobby was by my bedroom door and I couldn’t get out,’ I’d protested. ‘Limey Stan put him there to scare me.’
Mr Blobby was an enormous Swiss cheese rubber plant that sat in a pot on the upstairs landing, named after the TV character whose eponymous pop song had been a favourite of mine and Matty’s that year. That particular night the usual tapping and creaking noises had woken me up, but when I’d gone to investigate, I’d opened my bedroom door to find Mr Blobby blocking my path. I was so terrified to see him there, I screamed the house down, then ran back to bed and hid under the covers. When Mum came to see what the matter was, she said I must’ve had a nightmare because Mr Blobby was in his usual corner at the top of the stairs and nowhere near my bedroom door. She even opened the door again to prove it. But I know what I saw and it was that plant, leaves the size of my head, spread across the threshold so I had no means of escape. Something had moved it there and moved it back before Mum got up …
The same something, the nine-year-old me shrieks in my ear, which upended the coffee table.
‘Are you okay?’ asks Tishk.
I take a deep breath to bind myself to the present and nod at him reassuringly. I dare not share my suspicions based on a rubber plant called Mr Blobby – he’ll assume I’m losing the plot, like I’m starting to think I am. I will the voice in my head to shut up and, thankfully, it does.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking I wish this was hot chocolate rather than tea,’ I say, pasting on a smile.
‘Sorry, tea was all I could find. Your cupboards are a bit bare.’
‘I know, I need to go shopping.’ I thought I had brought enough supplies for at least a week, but they are dwindling fast and Mustard is also running low on reward treats.
‘Why don’t you do an online order, save you the trouble of going out?’
‘I like food shopping. I find it oddly relaxing, even when it’s busy.’
Tishk looks troubled. ‘Do you really want to venture out in public though? Not that I think you shouldn’t,’ he adds hastily, ‘but I’d be worried about people’s reactions if they recognise you.’
‘I’ve been concerned about that too, but I can’t lock myself away indefinitely or only take Mustard out in the early hours when everyone’s still asleep. It’s not fair on him. But nor do I want to have to deal with dozens of Jims shouting in my face.’
When I told Tishk about my encounter at the cemetery, he said I should make a complaint. I’m realising he can be rather officious and has very clear ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong, which is a far cry from how he was as a teenager, breaking his curfew and sneaking out at all hours.
‘But I’ve also been thinking about something my foster mother said to me before the will reading: who’s going to recognise me really? You did because you knew me from living next door, but the man at the cemetery only guessed who I was because I was standing by my family’s grave. If he’d met me in the street, he wouldn’t have had a clue.’
Tishk nods. ‘True. If I’d met you in passing, I don’t think I’d have guessed straight away that you were Cara Belling. Your hair is much darker and short now and your face is thinner.’
‘Exactly. So I think I’ll be okay doing a supermarket run.’
‘I can come with you if you want.’
I want to say yes, but something’s stopping me. I’ve grown to like Tishk in the short amount of time we’ve spent together. Maybe it’s because he’s that bit older, but he’s different from the men I usually gravitate towards – he’s funny and kind and doesn’t appreciate how attractive he is, which is attractive in itself. In different circumstances, I might’ve made it known I like him, but discovering he’s friendly with Karen means I won’t be throwing caution to the wind any time soon. For the time being, I shall keep him at arm’s-length, until I know for sure what his motives are.
‘No, I’ll go alone. If we bumped into anyone you know, it could be awkward. I’ve got enough stuff to see me through until morning, so I’ll go then. Is there anything you need while I’m there?’
‘Actually,’ he grins, ‘can you get me some hot chocolate? You’ve given me a craving for it and I don’t think I’ve had any since I was a kid.’
‘Sure, I can do that.’
He pauses and I can see he’s weighing something up, so I tell him to just say whatever’s on his mind.
‘Actually, I was wondering what it was like growing up in foster care.’
I shrug as though the question is no big deal, but a hard ball of tension immediately forms in my stomach.
‘I was one of the lucky ones. The couple I was put with were lovely to me. Are lovely to me,’ I correct myself. ‘I’m still close to them.’
‘You must have really missed your parents though.’
The ball tightens.
‘At first, I suppose. Then I got used to being away from them.’
He pauses again, taking in my answer. Then he leans forward across the table. I inch backwards in my seat in response.
‘You asked me the other day if your mum ever mentioned you.’
The ball expands now, pushing up against my lungs and rendering me breathless. I nod at him to continue.
‘Well, she did. Often. She would ask me if I remembered you and then we’d talk about what it was like growing up around here. She liked to reminisce.’ He hesitates. ‘When you asked me the other day, I didn’t know whether to be honest, in case it upset you. But she didn’t forget about you.’
The ball explodes, hollowing me out. Knowing she used to talk about me is far worse than thinking she didn’t. How could she discuss me like that with Tishk, like I actually mattered, after she and Dad sent me away?
‘Did she ever say why they left me in foster care?’ I ask with evident bitterness.
He leans even closer. ‘I asked her once. I don’t know why, but one day we were chatting and I suddenly got angry that she could be so casual discussing her memories of you, when we both knew where you’d ended up.’
‘What did you say?’
He looks abashed. ‘I asked her why she’d left you to rot in foster care like an unwanted puppy. I didn’t mean to be that rude, it just came out.’
‘I’m glad you were. What was her response, then? Why did they leave me to rot?’
He leans away from the table and rakes his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t think she answered me,’ he says unconvincingly.
‘Yes she did. I can tell by your face. Go on, what did she say?’
‘I don’t want you getting upset again,’ Tishk says, looking pained.
‘There’s nothing you can tell me about my mum that would upset me more than her and my dad placing me in foster care in the first place. I just want to know why they left me there.’
‘I’m sorry, Cara. She said it was for your own good.’
Chapter Thirty
The New York Times
10-18-94
World News Briefs
England – The county of Essex, situated east of London, is typically synonymous with girls called Sharon and Tracy wearing strappy white stiletto shoes as they dance around their handbags at infamous nightclubs like Tots in Southend. But presently it is the backdrop to an altogether more fascinating breed of being – ghosts.
The British media is gripped by a tragic killing involving two children … and a paranormal entity that goes by the name of Limey Stan. Six-year-old Matty Belling was found suffocated in his home in the Essex town of Heldean in July and police held his nine-year-old sister, Cara, responsible for his death. She is currently hospitalised. Yet in police transcripts leaked to the media, Cara has d
enied culpability and claims her brother died at the ‘hands’ of a ghost called Limey Stan that had been haunting their three-bedroom family home for many months. It is this aspect of the story – whether a ghost is capable of committing murder and whether the ‘Heldean Haunting’ is a hoax – that has inflamed reporters and caused a stampede of TV crews from around the globe to descend on the small, landlocked town, including one from CBS, which will air a special news report this evening at 10 p.m. ET.
Chapter Thirty-One
Cara
The next morning, I drive to Morrisons on the outskirts of town. There are a couple of supermarkets nearer, but this is one of those vast superstores with a zillion parking spaces and it means I can pull into one farthest away from the store, with no other vehicles nearby. Mustard, familiar with the drill, settles down on the back seat to await my return.
I venture warily up the first aisle, clinging to the trolley handle as though it’s a swim float. I am still feeling shaken by the incident with the coffee table and I barely slept last night, churning over my conversation with Tishk, and the anxiety both have triggered is not combining well with how vulnerable I feel coming out in public like this. I probably should have waited until I felt calmer to go shopping, or ordered online as Tishk suggested, but, in truth, I wanted to escape the house and its memories for a couple of hours … except now I am here, all I want to do is hide away again.
Yet pretty quickly it becomes obvious that my fellow shoppers are more engrossed in the produce and products they are selecting than other customers milling around them and I begin to relax as I fill my trolley with fresh fruit and vegetables, then swing into the next aisle, meat and poultry.
It takes me a good forty-five minutes to complete my shop. It’s always slower when you’re in a new store with an unfamiliar layout and this particular Morrisons also stocks clothing, electrical goods, books and magazines, so I browse those aisles as well. Then I turn a corner to be confronted by shelves heaving with Christmas decorations and related paraphernalia, which pulls me up short. Usually I spend Christmas in Morecambe, but I honestly don’t know how I feel about that after what happened with Anne at the cemetery, but I do know she and John will be terribly hurt if I don’t go.
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