by Amanda Mason
Lewis and Nina go to the bar for more drinks while Lucy tries to pull herself together, rubbing at her face with a tissue as Hal finishes his drink and finds an excuse to check his phone.
You’re so fucking wet, Loo.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
Nina and Lewis are talking at the bar. Lewis can’t help glancing back at their table and although neither of them looks happy, Lewis in particular seems disappointed.
‘That’s OK,’ Hal says, glancing up, ‘it’s obviously all a bit … difficult.’
Nina leads the way back to the table, Lewis following in her wake, and Hal puts his phone away, murmuring a thank you as Lewis places his beer on the table. Lucy scrunches up her tissue. ‘I haven’t thought about Simon, about his book, about any of it, for years,’ she says, which is almost true.
‘Neither had Dad, I think. But he’d obviously been going through all his notes and recordings, and …’ Nina hesitates. ‘He was planning a new edition, I think,’ she says. ‘I’ve been trying to work out what it is he wanted to include, but there’s so much … He was going to go back to Iron Sike Farm, though, I found the correspondence with the new owners and … well, I went there, you know, a couple of times, to look around, just to get a sense of the place.’
‘I know,’ says Lucy. ‘I saw the photographs.’
‘On your own?’ says Lewis. ‘You went to the farm on your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘You never said.’
‘Don’t, Lew, please.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘The thing is, it’s what he wanted,’ says Nina, ‘and this weekend has been amazing. We’ve been able to gather new data, findings that support Dad’s book, and with your account of what happened—’
‘You’ve already got my account,’ says Lucy.
‘Yes, but you were just a child; now you can make your own case.’
‘We don’t need to make a case.’
‘We?’
‘My mother and I.’
‘That’s not what she said in her emails. She seems very … interested.’
‘She’s ill. My mother is ill, I told you that. She fell. She fell because you’d managed to confuse her so much she went wandering around the garden, chasing – and she—’ Lucy’s on her feet now, reaching for her coat, but Nina doesn’t notice, she’s rooting through her bag again.
‘If you’d just take a look,’ she says.
Lucy shouldn’t have called, she shouldn’t have come. ‘Stay away from us,’ she says, determined not to cry again, ‘and stay away from the farm. Stay away from my mother and stay away from me.’ She knocks against the table, spilling their drinks as she pushes past, and then she’s gone.
‘Well,’ says Lewis, ‘that went well.’
Nina gathers her documents together, ordering the photographs, using the activity to regain control, to calm herself, to think. ‘If she’d just listen,’ she says. ‘If she’d just give us a chance.’
‘You should have told me,’ says Lewis. ‘I’d have gone with you. To the farm.’
Lucy Frankland. It had occurred to her that she’d have married, of course it had, but not that she’d have changed her first name, too. Nina wonders if all the children have followed suit; she hasn’t asked Cathy too much about this, she hadn’t wanted to scare her off. She wonders if Lucy is still married. She hadn’t noticed a ring. She picks up a photo of Loo, the little girl her father knew. She’s sitting in the garden holding a book in her lap; her smile is sweet, if a little uncertain. There’s no sign of this child in the woman she just spoke with. The tangled dark hair is now held back in a neat plait, her clothes are casual but sober, discreet. Loo has vanished.
Nina puts the photo on the table. Lewis is frowning as he stares out of the window and Hal just looks plain pissed off. ‘Shit,’ she says, ‘shit, shit, shit.’
Lucy is halfway along the street when the phone in her pocket buzzes. Blue Jacket House. It’s Jean. ‘Lucy, I’m sorry to disturb you, but your mother is asking for you.’
‘What’s happened?’ That little jerk of anxiety making her breathless, her pulse thudding in her throat.
‘Nothing. Sorry. It’s nothing, really. She’s – she’s a little distressed and she’d like to see you.’
‘Distressed?’
Jean lowers her voice. ‘That’s right. If you could come back to the house?’ She must be worried about being overheard.
‘Of course. I’m not far away. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Lucy puts her phone in her pocket and glances back towards the pub. At least they’ve had the good sense not to follow. There’s unfinished business there though; she’s not at all sure Nina was listening to her or that she’s managed to put her off. She should have been firmer, clearer, but there’s nothing else she can do tonight. She turns and walks quickly up the hill. The town is quiet, a fog has rolled in from the sea, smothering the wind, and the night air is damp, cold. She keeps her head down, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, replaying the conversation from the bar in her head. Simon, she thinks. Dead.
The main gates to the care home are locked and she has to stop and think for a moment before she can remember the code for the smaller entrance set slightly to one side. She punches in the numbers, slips through the gate, and makes her way up the gravel drive.
All that time the two of them used to spend, watching him.
She’s just out of sight of the road and not quite in view of the house when she realises that she’s not alone; there’s someone behind her, following her. She stops and turns. She hadn’t noticed anyone in the street, certainly there had been no one close enough to slip in through the gate, so there’s nothing to fear; whoever it is must surely have good reason to be there.
‘Hello?’ She sees it, thinks she sees someone – something fluttering in the dark, a dress, perhaps, or a nightgown.
She’ll catch her death.
There one moment, gone the next; a shadow folding in on itself.
It will be one of the auxiliaries taking a break, or someone arriving for the night shift, perhaps. Someone who knows the code to the gate. She has a vague memory of the staff car park being situated to the rear of the house, and there’s a back road they all use, isn’t there? There’s another gate there, with another code. So she’s perfectly safe.
She stands still, waiting. Apart from the dull, distant wash of the sea, the night is silent. But any moment now, someone will come into focus, and they’ll carry on towards the house together.
She can’t hear anyone, not exactly, but she can—
‘Who’s there?’
—feel it.
Of course, there’s no reason someone arriving at the back of the house would be suddenly walking up the front drive – that wouldn’t make sense at all. Anyway, it’s not that important and she needs to get back to Cathy.
But Lucy finds that she is oddly reluctant to turn her back on whoever might be following her. The house is just around the corner, she reminds herself as she peers into the darkness, the trees and bushes shadows against the night, and the barefoot girl just a story the staff tell each other to pass the time. She’s not real.
Maybe they did follow her back from the pub after all – not all of them, three people couldn’t keep so quiet, so steady in the dark.
‘Hello?’
Nina might follow all on her own, though. She didn’t look as if she was done with any of this yet.
‘You don’t scare me,’ Lucy says, turning, trying to keep her voice conversational, reasonable, ‘so you may as well show yourself.’
She waits, the skin on the back of her neck rising, puckering into tiny goose bumps. Maybe someone is late for work, maybe they’ve sneaked out for a cigarette, maybe someone is as scared of her as she is of—
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Lucy says, forcing herself to turn towards the house. She walks briskly, refusing to give them the satisfaction of looking back, resisting the temptation to run.
>
Jean meets her at the front door.
‘What happened?’ asks Lucy.
‘I don’t know. She rang her buzzer about an hour ago and I went up myself. She was very agitated, she wanted you – but of course you’d gone out.’
Jean hesitates; Lucy can see her trying to find the right words. ‘She said she had to speak to you, straightaway, and when I suggested that she ring you, she said that wasn’t good enough – that she needed to show you.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. She’d been going through her things. She became very agitated, I’m afraid. I had to call for help.’
‘Help?’
‘To get her back into bed.’
Above them, on the first floor, there’s a muffled thump and a door slams.
‘Right,’ says Lucy. ‘I suppose I’d better go up.’
Her mother is asleep. The room is illuminated by the bedside lamp and long shadows lie against the walls. The curtains are open, the darkened window panes beaded with mist. Cathy’s breath is soft, but even.
Did they sedate her?
Surely not.
Lucy walks carefully to the bed. The room isn’t exactly untidy, but someone has knocked over the contents of the dressing table and a pile of magazines on the bedside cabinet has fallen askew. Some books have been taken from their shelves and stacked in unsteady piles on the floor. Propped up against them are a selection of used sketchbooks, a dozen or more.
Lucy crosses the room and pulls the heavy curtains together. She won’t look down into the garden; you can’t see anything anyway, not unless you lean in close.
Cathy sleeps on peacefully, but Lucy can’t bring herself to leave.
She won’t look, she tells herself, as she picks up a book from one of the shelves and takes it to the armchair. There’s nothing there.
Nina can’t possibly sleep. She can’t believe it – she’d got so close, face to face with Lucia Corvino, and still she’d managed to blow it. The long walk from the pub to the B and B has done little to improve her mood. She sits on her bed, surrounded by her father’s files, replaying the conversation again and again, trying to see where she’d gone wrong.
The tapping at the door makes her jump, even though she’s half-expecting it. She’s going through a folder of photographs, Isobel Bradshaw’s work; stuff that hadn’t made its way into the book.
‘Come in,’ she says.
Hal. He closes the door and leans against it. He looks weary; out of the three, he’s had the most to drink, insisting they stay in the pub long after Lucy Frankland had walked out on them.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi.’
‘Do you want to tell me?’ he says. ‘About your dad?’
‘It’s a bit complicated, Hal.’
‘Yeah.’ He’s still leaning against the door, just out of reach. He does that, she’s noticed: he always puts some distance between them, choosing always to sit opposite her, never close by; placing her in frame, fixing her in place. She wonders, from time to time, how he really sees her. ‘It would be,’ he says. ‘But you were going to mention him at some point, I take it?’
‘Don’t be like that,’ she says. ‘Come here and take a look at this. Tell me what you think.’ She holds out a sheet of photos, proofs, black and white thumbnail images.
He doesn’t move. ‘Is there any point in being angry with you?’ he asks.
‘Not much,’ she says. ‘Come on, give me your professional opinion.’
He gives in then, sitting at the foot of the bed and taking the photos from her. ‘They’re a bit overexposed,’ he says, tilting the paper towards the light. There are two figures, young girls, behind them a large door opens on to – it’s hard to tell, a bright sky, perhaps. As he glances through the images he can see another, third figure appear in the scene, blurred as if it’s moving too quickly for the exposure. ‘What am I looking for?’ he says.
‘I’m not sure,’ says Nina. ‘It’s something my dad left behind, a classic case of too much information.’
‘Is that her, then? Lucy?’
‘She was the younger one, but yeah, that’s her.’ She leans forward, gently taking the paper from his grasp.
‘So what’s the deal there? No. Hang on. Complicated, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She looked like she’d seen a ghost earlier.’
‘Not funny, Hal.’
‘I need to know what’s going on,’ he says. ‘If we’re going to carry on with this,’ and it hangs between them for a moment, the possibility of confiding in him.
‘Come here,’ she says, putting the contact sheet back in its folder and placing it carefully on the bedside table. ‘Come here and I’ll tell you in the morning.’
They hadn’t turned the lamp off and as Nina lies snoring softly, one arm flung over his chest and her face obscured by a tangle of hair, Hal stares up at the ceiling, looking for patterns in the shadows. His head aches. He’s spent the past two nights monitoring cameras and scanning through hours of unchanging footage until he can barely focus. Over the weekend his sleep, what little he’s managed, has been fractured by the routine of exchanging and formatting SD cards and punctuated by uneasy, half-forgotten dreams. But still he can’t quite let go, he can’t bring himself to close his eyes.
Instead he finds himself replaying the scene in the bar. Lucy Frankland, whoever she was, hadn’t been expecting Nina to be, well, Nina. And of course, neither Lewis nor Nina would have bothered to tell him what was going on, because he had agreed to be their test subject as well as their tech guy. They’d needed his cameras – but his ignorance about the farm, about what had gone on there, that had been a bonus. So they had worked at keeping him in the dark. They hadn’t even bothered to tell him it was Nina’s dad who’d written the book they kept going on about.
He’s still more than a bit pissed off about that. But there’s something else bothering him.
A couple of nights in a haunted house. A bit of a laugh, really.
Only now he can’t sleep and the vague, queasy feeling that he’d had when he’d first arrived in the house hasn’t let up. He has the sense of being … infected with something.
Stupid.
The bed, a single, is too small for them really, that’s all it is; he’s never going to sleep if he stays and he should probably go back to his own room anyway. He edges out of the bed and dresses quickly, as Nina sighs and sleeps on. Next to the lamp she’s left a pile of books and folders, some half open, spilling out photocopied notes and photographs. Her dad’s research.
He looks at the bed. Nina doesn’t move. He picks up the top folder and finds the contact sheets again, black and white shots of children, two girls standing in a field, side by side, then the same girls playing in a large sunlit room. The image is highly contrasted: the girls are little more than silhouettes and he can’t make out their features. He’s about to take a closer look when he notices the book, lying half hidden under a pile of notes.
A Haunting at Iron Sike Farm by Simon Leigh.
It’s the same two girls, staring out from the front cover, and what is indistinct on the contact sheet is clearer now; they are barefoot and wearing flowing white dresses. Both have long dark hair, loose and curling wildly, and both are looking solemnly at the camera, almost, but not quite holding hands. Hal looks at Nina one last time and then quietly slips the book out from under the pile. He’ll tell her in the morning.
9
Then
The girls were in the back garden when they arrived. Anto was dozing in the pushchair and Loo and Bee were sitting on the eiderdown, drawing. They liked their art lessons: their mother always allowed them lots of time and as long as they didn’t argue too much over pencils and pastels, or complain about the tasks she set them, she would pretty much leave them to get on with things.
They heard a car pull up, that was the thing with it being so quiet. And they knew the men were coming, that Isobel was bringing them in her car; Cathy had t
old them so this morning after Issy had called in.
‘They just want to talk to us,’ she’d said, although really, she meant they wanted to talk to them, to Bee and Loo.
‘Will we be in the papers again?’ Bee had asked. ‘Does Joe know?’
But Cathy hadn’t answered, she’d only told them to go upstairs and tidy their room before lunch. She hadn’t mentioned the visit since and now they were here, outside the house.
‘That’s them,’ said Loo and she would have jumped up to go and see, only Bee grabbed her by the wrist and held her back.
‘Hang on,’ she said. There was a pause between the car doors slamming and someone knocking on the front door. Flor burst into tears in the kitchen.
‘Wait – wait for me—’ The girls could hear him as he followed their mother out of the kitchen, down the hall and to the front door, his furious sobbing drowning out the distant adult voices.
‘We should go in,’ said Loo.
‘No, we shouldn’t,’ said Bee. ‘They have to come to us.’
There was a lot of fussing about in the kitchen, or so it seemed to Loo. She could hear them all in there. Grown-ups introducing themselves and Flor getting in the way and the baby whimpering every so often. She could hear the door on their rickety little fridge being opened, the taps being turned on and off, and another woman’s voice, Issy’s, and they all went on and on in that way that adults did.
Beside her on the ground, Bee was staring fixedly at her sketchpad, but like Loo, her entire attention was fixed on the kitchen and the people in it. Her knuckles were white where she was gripping her pencil.
‘Bee,’ Loo said softly.
But Bee just shook her head. ‘They have to come to us.’
Loo looked down at her own paper. She’d been drawing the garden wall with its broken stones and wallflowers. She’d added a butterfly, which she was quite pleased with, and before the car had pulled up, she’d been considering adding more.
