I pull back. The rain is filling the gaps and dips between the stones outside, driving against the glass in front of me. I take a peek and Sally’s arms have reached for the headrest behind Duncan’s head, bracing herself. Their rhythm grows and outside, the skies have darkened almost to a solid pitch-black.
Only the small internal light of the car pools above their heads.
The courtyard fills with the sound of the rain drumming on the gleaming slate roofs and my face, here inside this cramped but dry roof space, is wet.
How could he? How could she?
Sally. Of all the scenarios that played out in my head, I never thought it would be Sally. How could I be sat here, watching my husband fuck his best friend Martin’s only daughter?
CHAPTER 46
DUNCAN – AFTER
Duncan had arrived early to work. As he came into the surgery, Sally was already there, sat behind the reception desk. He appreciated the sight of her, with her snugly fitted polo shirt and the carefully groomed curls resting on her shoulders. She’d always looked after herself, unlike Claire.
They were alone in the building and it was still an hour before opening time. It was his turn to check the animals on the ward and he didn’t even pause to say hello. He was still smarting from her refusal to come to him when he was too drunk to know better. Never mind her complete radio silence since.
He marched across the waiting area to his consulting room and slammed the door shut behind him.
Sally followed, as he’d hoped she would.
He kept his back to her. The PC had sprung into life and he was shrugging out of his jacket, watching the screen as he heard the door close again behind her. He swung round in anticipation. But she was gone. She’d simply put an envelope on his desk and left.
Duncan stared at the envelope. It wasn’t hard to guess the contents. He ripped the envelope open, scanned the page and launched himself from the room.
‘Are you serious?’
He stood legs apart, flapping the letter in his hand, knowing that he towered over her, even when she was standing.
‘You’re resigning? Is this over that prat of a man who had his own healthy dog killed?’ His lips curled.
‘It’s not about that.’ Sally hugged herself and made to step out from behind the desk.
Duncan had a sudden thought. Frances. That day when she’d overheard him arranging a date. Hadn’t she implied she was going to tell Sally? About his new running partner. But he hadn’t thought she’d meant it, for the same reason she hadn’t told Claire about Sally, she’d liked them both too much. Caught in a dilemma, she’d had no wish to hurt either of them, whatever her feelings about the relationship.
‘Then what is it about?’
Then it occurred to him. Perhaps Sally had found someone else. Closer to her age. His eyes narrowed.
‘You don’t know?’ Sally lifted her head, her body still turned away from him. ‘Ever since Claire’s been gone, you’ve been a complete bastard! And I know you’ve started seeing someone else!’
She flinched as he moved forwards and stepped smartly around the desk.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ she cried. ‘And don’t think that you can change my mind with … that.’
She pulled herself out of reach.
‘It’s over, Duncan. You … me … my job here. I can’t believe you’re seeing someone else, already. I … I thought that after … after a bit of time, you and I would be together properly. I can’t believe how I could have been so mistaken about you. How I’ve been fool enough to hang around for so long! You treat people like …’
She sucked in her breath, as if the effort of speaking the words almost suffocated her.
‘But you weren’t bothered about how we treated Claire,’ said Duncan.
The statement hung in the air between them.
‘That was different, you know that. She stopped loving you a long time ago.’ Sally ground the words between her teeth. ‘And now I understand why! You don’t care about people, not anymore. I’m not even sure you care about the animals! You did once. When I first came here, you charged around the surgery, fixing everyone – animals, staff – but now it’s become something else. A technical challenge, another ring of the till, a step closer in your ambitions.’ She pushed out her chin. ‘And you don’t have any respect for me.’
She swung her body away and then back again.
‘No wonder Claire gave up on you. I hate how you were with Garfield. I know the man’s repugnant, but you took it too far. Ever since Claire, you take everything too far. And I won’t stand by whilst you start seeing someone else. It might be a run here or a drink there, but I know how it starts. I’ve been there, remember? I don’t want to be with you anymore. It’s clear you don’t want to be with me. Not properly.’ Her mouth tightened, as if determined not to give way to any sentiment of love. ‘And I can’t continue to work here, either. I’ve given you one month’s notice, as per my contract, then I’m gone!’
‘So, you’re going to jack all this in for the sake of a nasty old man!’
‘Haven’t you heard a single thing that I’ve just said? No. I don’t like what he did, any more than you, it was hideous! But you can’t manhandle an old man and threaten him the way that you did, don’t you see? Are you so obsessed with what’s going on in your own head that you don’t care about other people anymore? Or even what they think? Are you going to do the same to the next girl as you’ve done to Claire and me?’
Duncan didn’t reply.
‘You don’t care about me,’ she said. ‘You never did! You don’t care about any of us! It’s all about consumption with you. The posh house, the nice things, sex …’ She almost spat the last word.
‘You like those things too!’ said Duncan.
‘Yes – I do. But they’re not as important as the way you treat people. You’ve lost sight of that, Duncan. Sure, you can press my buttons, and I can press yours, but it’s just sex, Duncan – with you, it’s just sex!’
Duncan visibly flinched.
‘I thought your feelings about Claire and Joe were completely understandable. Your relationship with Claire was … complicated, I know that. But …’ Sally caught her breath. ‘I can’t do this, Duncan. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. What we did was all wrong, I see that now. In so many ways. I need to move on with my life, to be with someone who actually cares about me. Who’s worth me. I want a family. A proper family – I don’t mean loads of kids and the whole country dream thing, I know that’s what you think. I mean people around me who love me.’
Her voice faded away, as if the word love was too hard a thing to say. She clutched her hands to her chest in an oddly youthful gesture, her ribs rising and falling as she sought to calm herself.
‘Is this Frances telling you I’m too old for you? Has your dad found out?’
Duncan knew that Martin would murder him if he found out.
‘Dad’s got nothing to do with this. He doesn’t even know.’
Duncan heaved a sigh of relief.
‘You’re just trying to deflect this from yourself,’ she said. ‘You need to take a long, hard look at yourself, Duncan Henderson. Not everyone …’ She gave a sort of half-smothered hiccup and stopped speaking.
Her next words were quieter, slower.
‘I thought I understood you. But I don’t think I ever really understood you, Duncan. I just wanted to.’
She lifted her head and looked directly into his eyes.
‘I can’t stay here. I can’t work for you anymore. I’ll work my notice, give you time to find someone else. But you and me – we’re through.’
CHAPTER 47
CLAIRE – AFTER
The gloom falls like a blanket over my head. The air inside the Hall is stagnant, redolent with the scent of decaying wood. Slowly, my eyes adjust. There’s a fireplace and panelled walls and a staircase cascading from above. White streaks of daylight stream down from the open roof and bird shit stains the banisters.
It’s in a far worse state than I remembered. How quickly nature has reclaimed its own.
The sunshine glitters through the windows, the dancing pattern of leaves trapped in the cracked and broken glass. It’s not hard to imagine those three ghostly servants drifting down the corridors. I give a shiver. I’m intruding on someone else’s space, unknown figures from the past frowning at my trespass, painted eyes swivelling to follow my shape. I shrug the feeling off. There are no paintings, no furniture, no objects at all, only dead leaves crunching under my feet.
I take the corridor to my left. As I pass between familiar rooms, drips of water fall from over my head and the chill air whistles around my legs. I swing my head round. Somewhere behind me I’m sure I heard a door bashing to and fro. It’s just the wind, playing with an empty house, albeit bigger than some, with doors and windows and rooms like any other. But the scale of the place has always been overwhelming.
I don’t like it here. I have never liked it in here.
In the drawing room, I step up to the fireplace. There are markings in the stone lintel, a series of wheel-like shapes with overlapping circles. They are witch marks, the same witch marks as in my cottage, symbols to ward off evil spirits. Didn’t the estate agent say something about them being a feature of the area? I suppose it makes sense, given the age of the place and the beliefs that people had then. Although the current building is younger, the whole estate must have been originally medieval, or at least dating back to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. And the lintel might have been reused from whatever was here before. Except these markings …
I let my fingers trace the shapes – they look more recent. I have a sudden thought that this place may have been visited by local pagans, used for some secret ceremony. Like the stone circle up at Stanton Moor. But no, now I am giving way to the same superstitious nonsense as those who condemn paganism, unaware of what it’s really about.
Duncan brought me here once. It was the first time I ever saw it, long before Joe arrived. We were in our second year as students.
When I’d first met Duncan, he’d been much fitter than I and keen to push me further. Every weekend had seen some kind of physical activity: walking, climbing, sailing, cycling – the Peak District was known for all that. Duncan had the lean body of a cyclist with not an inch of spare flesh. I liked the fact he spurred me on. Left to my own devices, I’d have headed for the galleries of Manchester or Leeds, or the grand rooms and sweeping gardens of Chatsworth House, followed by the gift shops and a cream tea. I wasn’t a naturally physical type. He left me out of breath and heaving.
As a compromise, he brought me here. We’d already sneaked into the valley several times by then. On that particular day, we were exploring further. We hid our bikes in the shrubbery and entered through that open front door. It was his idea of another romantic adventure. I knew what he had in mind and the anticipation had us both excited. He took my hand and led me down a corridor.
‘Let’s try down here,’ he said.
‘Are you sure? I mean, what if someone’s here?’
‘Are you kidding? Look at the place!’
He laughed and tugged my hand harder.
We peered at the grandeur of the rooms, spaces that must once have been decorated to impress. The plasterwork was ornate but sodden and crumbling. The wallpaper, elaborate but peeling. Sunlight streamed through freshly wet windows, throwing rain shadows across the floor. The odd fragility of the light flashed through diamond-leaded shapes, lending each room a delicate translucency, as if the whole building had been shrouded in a grey sequinned veil. I soon forgot my reticence. I was fascinated. It seemed to me the Hall was a corpse bride, hiding in her woods.
We took another corridor, down the other wing. The rooms were smaller, each one leading to the next, each one more functional than the last. There was no fancy plasterwork or wallpaper here, only horizontal bands of grey and blue paint that flaked to dust beneath our hands. There were shelves and cupboards and rooms with stone windows, deep enough to keep the sun out and the cold in. We stumbled on the kitchen, a huge room with a solid black range filling one wall. Cast-iron ovens and giant griddles were driven into the brickwork like the cave homes etched into an Italian mountain. There were hooks and spikes of every dimension, enough to satisfy any medieval torturer.
More rooms led off at the far end and we passed through those, too. Duncan was determined to see it all. Each room was smaller and darker than the one that came before. Pantries for dry goods, larders for meat and dairy, all with wooden planks suspended against the wall. Then we came to a room with a single large stone table drilled with holes. A second door led from the back and beneath the table was a narrow channel etched into the floor. Drainage, I presumed. More stone shelves lined the walls and I tried to think of them stinking with fresh cheese, or running red with the juices of a freshly butchered animal, its legs and feet pointing stiffly in the air, a meat cleaver buried in the middle of its chest cavity.
‘How about on there?’ Duncan said, grinning as he pointed to the stone table.
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ I retorted.
‘I dare you!’ he said.
He pushed me up against the table; I felt it behind my legs. It was like ice. His arms reached around my waist and he hoisted me up onto the surface.
‘Mmm …’ he said. ‘It’s the perfect height.’
I giggled, half in fear and half in anticipation.
‘Should have brought my white cloak and sacrificial knife!’ he said.
He leaned over me, pushing my legs apart and reaching up beneath my T-shirt.
I tugged at Duncan’s hand. Suddenly, I didn’t like it. There was a heavy stench to the place, like in a butcher’s shop, and the light had almost gone. The cold stole over me and somehow it didn’t feel very funny anymore.
Then I heard the bell.
‘What was that?’ I felt breathless and alarmed.
And another. The old-fashioned delicate kind, tinkling softly from the far side of that second door.
‘I don’t know,’ said Duncan. His hand drifted across my skin.
I heard the bell again, a distinct but ethereal sound.
‘There must be someone here!’ I whispered.
I pushed Duncan away, ducking from under him and almost slipping on the rounded groove of the channel under my shoes. Duncan caught my arms, setting me back on my feet.
‘Maybe. You alright?’
His voice had gone quiet too. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. And I didn’t answer. I was looking where he was looking, at the door at the far end of the room. I was too intent on listening for another ring of that bell.
Duncan took my hand.
‘I think we’d better look,’ he said, his voice reticent and hoarse.
We approached the door. I held his hand like a small child at school. Duncan pushed open the door and we entered the room. It was a small sitting room, much more appealing than the kitchens. We heard the sound again and I looked up. On the wall high up to our left was a row of servants’ bells. Each one sat in line beside the next, bigger, smaller, their coils neatly labelled in faded Gothic script, their wires disappearing into the ceiling. The clappers were still shaking.
They rang again, a series of chimes, each one a different pitch and tone, jangling on their spiral leads. It was a light, pretty sound, but one I listened to in dread. I looked at Duncan and his face was frozen in fear. It was more than I could bear.
I tugged my hand free from Duncan’s, and ran.
CHAPTER 48
CLAIRE – AFTER
He’d laughed at me. When he reached the drive where I was waiting for him, he roared with laughter.
‘You surely don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’
‘How was that even possible?’ I cried.
‘The wind and the old wires can play tricks on you,’ he said.
I stared at him.
‘Did you plan that? Was that you? How …’
He laughed
again and pulled me close, planting a big kiss on my lips before I could say a single word more.
We ran through the dark undergrowth of the shrubbery, squealing and shrieking like pigs in a slaughterhouse, found our bikes and raced each other back along the lane.
But Duncan never did explain exactly how that trick of his had worked and I was left wondering what had really happened.
I don’t go into the kitchen wing. I can’t imagine Joe would stay in there. It’s too cold and uninviting. Instead, I stick to the other corridor, the family’s living quarters, checking every room on the ground floor, listening for any sound of Joe. It still spooks me out remembering what happened that day with Duncan all those years ago, along with all this emptiness and decay.
I try to think of voices talking in a room, the clink of teacups and the hiss and crackle of a warm fire. In spite of myself, I picture the butlers’ bells jumping into life on the wall in the kitchen and long skirts rustling up the stairs – the house as it would have been, a home for a rich, contented family, music playing in the distance, children racing down the corridors, a newborn baby sleeping in its cot …
I feel sick. The images of that past life shimmer in my head. I push on, but all I want to do now is run down those front steps and get out, exactly as I did before.
I’m such a fool, letting this place get to me.
I force myself to calm down. It was a prank – nothing but a prank. To this day, I don’t know how he did it. But Duncan enjoyed my reaction.
Instead, I climb the stairs one by one, to what’s left of the upper floor. There’s a room up there where I found Joe once. He’d been about twelve years old. He’d made himself a little nest, with blankets and even a fire in the grate. I gave him a sound telling off; it worried me that he could have set fire to the place or fallen through the rotting floor. Thankfully, he’d been more careful than I gave him credit for. Duncan mentioned the word ‘ghosts’ and Joe promised me fervently he’d never come back. I guess he doesn’t believe all that stuff now.
Magpie: The gripping psychological suspense with a twist Page 20
