Don't Look Back

by Ben Cheetham

  Rozen peered at the photo through her bifocals. “What handsome boys. Which one is Henry?”

  Ella pointed him out. Rozen studied Henry as if committing his features to memory before returning the photo. “So you’re religious?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You said you thank god every day.”

  Ella smiled uncertainly. “I don’t know if I’d say I was religious. I try to keep an open mind to the possibility of something... else.”

  “And what about you Adam?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe in any of it.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  Adam’s sad eyes looked into Rozen’s cheerful ones as if he might find the answer there. “I don’t really know.”

  “Do you believe in love?”

  Adam flicked Ella a glance. She was looking into her teacup, but he could tell she was listening for his reply. “Family,” he answered, skipping around the question like a rabbit narrowly avoiding a snare. “I believe in family.”

  “Family is love. That’s what Mother used to say. I don’t have a family of my own. Father died when I was very young and Mother wasn’t a well woman. I cared for her until her death. By which time I was fifty-one. Far too old to learn how to share my life with a husband.”

  “What do you believe in, Miss Trehearne?”

  “Rozen, please.”

  “Rozen.”

  “I believe in everything. A world of possibilities.”

  “Except for when it comes to yourself and marriage.”

  Rozen’s smile reached a millimetre higher. “You’re very perceptive, Adam.”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “So Mr Mabyn tells me. I’m afraid I haven’t read any of your books.”

  “I don’t imagine they’d be your sort of thing. They’re a bit gruesome.”

  “Oh I don’t mind that. I like something gritty. I suppose that’s because I’ve led such a sheltered life. Are you working on a new novel?”

  “No... Actually yes, but...” Adam trailed off awkwardly.

  Ella came to his rescue again. “Adam has been having some problems since the accident. I suppose you could call it writer’s block.”

  “I see,” said Rozen. “And you’re hoping a change of scenery will clear it. Well, if you’ll forgive the pun, you’ve come to the right place. Writers, indeed artists of all kinds, have always been drawn to this area in search of seclusion and inspiration.”

  “We’re not here just because of my writing,” said Adam. “Our son has been having problems too.”

  Rozen spread her hands as if to say, Of course. “In many cultures twins are believed to be two halves of the same spirit. How does one recover from such a loss? But if Henry can make a recovery anywhere, then it’s here. There’s nowhere better in the world to be a child. The sea, the fresh air, the freedom. Tell me, Adam, how did you feel when you arrived here?”

  “I suppose I...” He faltered as if admitting something shameful. “I felt OK.”

  “And when was the last time you felt OK?”

  “Before Jacob died.” As if justifying himself, Adam added quickly, “It’s so beautiful here.”

  “Yes, it’s beautiful. It’s more than that though. There’s a mystery here – not only in Treworder, but the entire peninsula – a magic that other places have long since lost.” Rozen chuckled softly. “You must think I’m a batty old woman.”

  “No of course not.”

  “Yes you do, I see it in your eyes,” Rozen said without a hint of offence. “And when I tell you about Fenton House you’ll think it even more so. But if you decide to live here you’ll soon find out I’m anything but.”

  “Decide,” said Ella. “Does that mean we can live in Fenton House if we want to?”

  “A final decision will only be made once all shortlisted applicants have been interviewed,” Mr Mabyn put in matter-of-factly.

  “Mr Mabyn is right,” said Rozen. “I apologise for getting ahead of myself. From our brief conversation, I believe you to be very much deserving of Fenton House, but the final decision is not mine to make.”

  “Whose is it then?” asked Adam.

  Rozen looked at him with a queer twinkle in her eyes. “It’s time I told you something about Fenton House’s history. The house was built in 1909 by Walter Lewarne, an industrialist who was born hereabouts and made his fortune in London. Walter lived alone. He was not a sociable man and never married. As I’m sure you know, Walter committed suicide. No one knows the exact reason why, but he was heavily in debt and facing bankruptcy. After Walter’s death, my grandfather, Anthony James, bought Fenton House. Grandfather passed away in 1935. When my grandmother Nessa followed him in ’37, their only child Winifred – my mother – and her husband Benedict Trehearne moved into the house with their young son George. I was born the following year and when war broke out a year after that Father enlisted and was sent to France. He never returned. But please don’t think that means I had an unhappy childhood. Quite the opposite. Unlike many girls of my social standing, I wasn’t sent away to boarding school. Mother employed home tutors. I suppose because she was lonely and wanted to keep her children close. We never discussed her reasons, but I was happy to be with her. She was a magnificent woman – beautiful, elegant, kind. And The Lizard was a paradise for me. I spent every spare minute exploring its coastline, learning its secrets.”

  Rozen fell silent, a distant look in her eyes as if she was enjoying old memories. She sighed contentedly. “We lived like that until the morning I found Mother collapsed in her bedroom. She’d suffered periodic bouts of ill health over the years and always managed to get through them. But not this time. She was diagnosed with pernicious anaemia. The condition had gone untreated for so long it had damaged her nerves. Her doctor wanted to hospitalise her, but she refused. She was an extraordinarily strong-willed woman. She was too weak to get out of bed for several months. We had to hire a live-in nurse and a nanny. I was eleven at the time. George was thirteen. When I was sixteen, I took over Mother’s care. I looked after her for thirty-five-years. In 1989 she developed stomach cancer. Once again, she refused to go into hospital. Three months later she was dead and, for the first time in my life, I was all alone. Or so it seemed.”

  Rozen nibbled cake, letting the cryptic remark hang in the air for a moment before continuing, “At this point I should perhaps tell you about my brother George. He moved to London aged eighteen to attend university. After graduating he relocated to the south of France and we fell out of contact. At the time of Mother’s death I hadn’t spoken to him in several years. He returned for the funeral and the reading of the will. He brought his wife Sofia – a radiantly beautiful young woman – with him. She was twenty-four. George was fifty-three. They had a six-year-old daughter – Heloise. George was, I suppose, what you could call a playboy.” There was no judgement in Rozen’s voice. It was a simple statement of fact. “Father had put a considerable amount of money into trust for him, which he came into aged twenty-one. But that had long since been spent by the time of Mother’s death. I’d seen the will. I knew George was to inherit Fenton House, and I was to inherit this.” She spread her hands at the room. “A former cottage for workers at the house.”

  Once again, Rozen’s voice was neutral. She appeared to harbour no resentment that the house had gone to George despite all the years she’d spent caring for her mother. “I assumed George would sell the house and return to France, but I was wrong. After the funeral, he moved in there with his family. I later learnt that he owed a large gambling debt to several casinos in Marseilles. George, Sofia and Heloise lived at Fenton House until 1996 when, again as I’m sure you already know, all three of them disappeared. They were simply there one day and gone the next. When, after several months, it became apparent that they weren’t coming back, I took up residence in Fenton House once again.”

  A shadow seemed to fall over Rozen’s face. The sparkle in her eyes dimmed. “Now you know a l
ittle about George, let me tell you about the day Mother died. It was the darkest of my life. There was no big final moment. No goodbyes were said. Mother had been in terrible pain, but that day she seemed quite comfortable. We were talking about something. I don’t remember what. Midway through the conversation, she closed her eyes. At first I thought she’d dropped off to sleep, but then I realised she’d stopped breathing.”

  Rozen paused as if gathering the strength to continue. “When the ambulance took Mother away the house felt strange. Not in an eerie way. In an empty, hollowed out way. I felt as if my world had ended. I sat up the entire night with one thought on my mind – was there any point in continuing living? It was just before dawn when I saw something that answered my question.” The light in her eyes flared back into life. “And suddenly, as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes, my grief was gone because I knew Mother was still with me.”

  “Did you see your mother’s ghost?” asked Ella.

  There was something in Ella’s voice – something faintly hopeful – that drew Adam’s gaze. She was holding the photo of the twins, unconsciously running her thumb back and forth over Jacob. Rozen beamed at her. “I’m afraid it’s necessary that I don’t tell you what I saw, my dear. What I can tell you is that from that moment on Mother spoke to me every day. Or rather she spoke to me every day that I lived at Fenton House.”

  “So why did you leave?” asked Adam.

  Rozen responded with a question of her own. “Let me ask you something, do you prefer to spend time around old or young people?”

  “It depends who the people are.”

  “That’s a very diplomatic answer, Adam, and I appreciate the sentiment behind it. But if you’re honest with yourself, I think you’ll find you prefer to be around young people. People whose energy and vitality make you feel more alive. Well the dead are no different. It’s a bit like reading a book. They don’t want to look at someone who reminds them of what they are. They want to forget themselves. That’s why Mother warned me I had to leave.”

  Ella frowned. “Warned you. Are you saying you would have been in danger if you stayed?”

  “Not from Mother. But Mother’s spirit isn’t the only one that inhabits the house.”

  “How many others are there?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Nor do I know who they are.”

  “Are they...” Ella sought the right words, “evil spirits?”

  “I can’t say. I can tell you that they never harmed me.”

  “What about your brother and his family? Did they harm them?”

  Rozen turned her palms upwards in a Who can say? gesture. “The prevailing opinion in the newspapers was that my brother’s past had caught up with him and he was forced to find somewhere else to hide from his debt.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  Rozen looked thoughtful before replying in a careful tone, “I believe there are some things we are not meant to understand – things of and not of this world. George held no such beliefs. The only things he believed in were those he could see.”

  Adam let slip a sudden breath of incredulous laughter. He held up a hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Trehearne. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just I’m struggling to take this ghost stuff seriously.”

  “I completely understand,” said Rozen. “I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I hadn’t lived in Fenton House. But please believe me, Adam, when I say that you should take this very seriously. If you are chosen, it may be that you live there for the rest of your life without ever experiencing anything, for want of a better word, supernatural. Or it may be that at some point, like me, you experience an awakening.”

  “What do you mean by awakening?” asked Ella. “Do you have some sort of…” again she sought the right words, “clairvoyant power?”

  Rozen chuckled as if amused by the idea. “I have no special powers whatsoever, my dear. The house has the power.”

  “It’s not built on a graveyard, is it?” Adam joked.

  “Not as far as I’m aware.” Rozen put down her teacup like a full-stop. “I think we’ve said all that needs to be said for now. It’s time you saw Fenton house. That is if you’re still interested in proceeding.”

  Adam and Ella looked at each other. Ella gave a nod and Adam said to Rozen, “We’d very much like that.”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  Mr Mabyn stood up and opened the French doors. “If you’d please follow me, Mr and Mrs Piper.”

  “Aren’t you coming?” Ella asked Rozen.

  “No, my dear. As I said, I’m not welcome there anymore. Perhaps we’ll talk more afterwards. If not...” She extended her hand. “Goodbye Ella. Goodbye Adam. Thank you for your honesty.”

  Chapter 6

  Still stooping as if to avoid invisible ceiling beams, Mr Mabyn led them to a gate in the back garden wall. Beyond it an alley sloped up between neighbouring cottages to a small carpark watched over by a constable. A sign on a farm-style gate read ‘Private. Permit Holders Only’. Mr Mabyn ushered them into the back of a black Mercedes and folded his long frame into the driver’s seat. The constable opened the gate and they pulled onto the lane about fifty metres up from the crowd. The lane climbed out of Treworder through a tunnel of trees. After half-a-mile of fields peppered with hay rolls, they came to a hamlet of thatched cottages and modern houses. The lane was blocked by traffic cones. A man in a luminous tabard moved them aside to allow the Mercedes through. They made their way along a road that ran parallel to the coastline until it met up with the lane where Adam and Ella were parked. Mr Mabyn turned onto an even narrower lane that snaked through fields sleepily grazed by cows and horses.

  The lane curved back down towards the coastline. The deep blue banner of the sea unfurled itself again and windswept hedgerows curled wavelike away from it. The lane ended at rust-flecked double gates about three metres high and topped with spear heads. The gates were set in an almost equally tall stone wall. Swirling iron shapes evoked images of a stormy sea. A TV crew was set up outside the gates. A woman in a ‘Ghost Hunters’ t-shirt was speaking into a camera. Mr Mabyn lowered his window. “This is a private road,” he informed them. “Please leave at once or I’ll contact the police.”

  “We’re happy to pay if–”

  “Miss Trehearne is not interested in your money.” The old solicitor’s dour tone brooked no argument. He remained seated while the camera crew packed their gear into a van. Once they were gone, he got out and unlocked the gates. The hinges squealed as the gates swung inwards. He beckoned Adam and Ella out of the car. He handed Adam a bunch of keys, singling out a large iron one. “That’s for the front door. I’ll be waiting here.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared of ghosts too, Mr Mabyn,” smiled Adam.

  No trace of humour showed on Mr Mabyn’s face. “Ghosts do not concern me, Mr Piper. All that concerns me is carrying out Miss Trehearne’s instructions. With that in mind, I must inform you that if you remove anything – even a single stone – from the house and gardens, you will be disqualified from the selection process.”

  As they started along a gravel driveway, Adam said to Ella, “You were right about the questionnaire. The birds, the dog, the Victoria sponge. And what are the bets that Rozen’s favourite colour is turquoise?”

  Tall sycamores marched up either side of the driveway. Lush lawns freshly mown into stripes were dotted with yews clipped into mushroom shapes and clumps of pale beeches. The borders blazed with red-hot pokers, hydrangeas, rhododendrons and foxgloves whose colours stood out strikingly against the vast blue backdrop. A faux-ruined wall with empty arched windows and half a doorway decorated one bank of a large lily pond. Tropical palms and ferns dipped their fronds into the water. After a hundred or so metres, the driveway widened into a circle with a fountain at its centre.

  Adam and Ella stopped as one and stared speechlessly at Fenton House. It was three storeys of pale grey granite with a triple peaked slate roof, positioned so that its front overlooked Treworder a
nd its back faced the cliffs stretching hazily towards Lizard Point. A circular tower topped by a stone spire stabbed skywards from the right-hand side of the roof. Above an arched porch and a metal-bound wooden door was a tall stained glass window like something from a cathedral. To either side were huge bay windows crowned by crenelated battlements. Gargoyles projected from the corners of the eaves. To the left-hand side of the house was an orangery whose vaulted glass roof glittered with condensation.

  “It’s...” Adam began. “I don’t know what to say. Words fail me.”

  “It feels surreal being here, thinking this could be ours.”

  “I know.”

  “It doesn’t look haunted.”

  “What does haunted look like?”

  “I don’t know, but not this. Maybe if it was a gloomy day I’d feel differently.”

  “It’s just a house, Ella. A very beautiful house, but still only bricks and mortar. It needs a bit of work too.”

  Adam pointed out flaking window frames, green streaks beneath the gutters, slipped roof tiles. He reached to take Ella’s hand. She looked down at his fingers curling into hers, then up at his face. He’d been grey with grief since the accident, but now there was a flush of sunburn on his cheeks. Or maybe it wasn’t sunburn. The furrows that seemed to have been permanently etched between his eyebrows had faded to faint lines.

  Ella squinted up at the circular tower. “That’s where Walter Lewarne hanged himself. Can you imagine him dangling there with birds pecking at him?”

  “He was in debt,” said Adam. “So was George Trehearne. Pretty mundane stuff when you think about it.”

  He eagerly drew Ella onwards. They’d only advanced a few more steps when a robin landed in front of them. The bird puffed out its bright orange chest and twittered at them.

  “It looks as if it’s trying to ask us something,” said Ella.