The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  ‘Does it need sorting? Actually, I was amazed. I’d always assumed she was very possessive about you. But she seemed totally unfazed about meeting us.’ I paused, trying to work it out. ‘Perhaps she was trying to hide her true feelings, though. Maybe the inane chattering was just a reaction to extreme stress.’

  He gave a short grunt of a laugh. ‘If that’s the case then it’s a worry.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, putting a serious look on my face.

  ‘Because she must exist in a permanent state of extreme stress.’

  He shot me a sideways glance, like a naughty boy checking whether he’d got away with something, before returning his eyes to the road.

  6

  Hattie’s Diary

  Monday, October 23rd

  Today was the first day of ‘Plan Shapiro’. The name was Janey’s idea. She’s read this book by a ghost hunter called Dominic Shapiro, who goes to people’s houses and sorts out their supernatural things for them, a bit like Scooby Doo. It has checklists and stuff. She found it in her granny’s attic.

  We went to the old fire escape during break, the one that leads down from behind the chemistry lab. She asked me again about the music case. Apparently Dominic Shapiro had a case about a haunted pair of ballet shoes once, which is a bit like a music case. She can’t remember what he did to solve it, but she’s going to bring the book to school tomorrow.

  She did say that he always looks for scientific explanations first. So, for example, he might call a piano tuner to check the piano outside my room, in case the wires of those bottom three notes are faulty. Janey says I should definitely suggest that to Mum, especially since the notes have woken me up twice now, and could be the reason I failed that history test so badly (tiredness). She’s also going to lend me her A-ha tape for my Walkman. She says it’s really banal and really good.

  The Shapiro book also has some good suggestions for covert investigations, like a drop-box for messages between operatives. I’ve got an old red metal cash box, which we’re going to bury up in the bank of trees behind the hockey pitch.

  I’ve asked her to come round for tea tomorrow. And to stay the night, though the adults don’t know that yet. I knew she’d want to, since James is home for his half-term.

  Tuesday, October 24th

  When we got home from school, James was in the drawing room practising the violin. We could hear the music floating down the stairs.

  ‘Shall we go up?’ Janey asked, her eyes all bright.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s have some fun with him. You haven’t seen him for ages, have you? Not since you’ve grown your hair long. He might not recognise you. You could pretend to be Dominica Shapiro, a ghost hunter come to investigate the house.’

  ‘What . . . in my school uniform?’

  We went to Mum’s dressing room. She was there, in fact, sorting through her shoes, and she laughed when we said what we were doing, and pulled out some of her older outfits for Janey to try on. We chose a black Chanel suit and high heels. It was all a bit on the roomy side, especially the skirt, which we had to belt in quite severely. But luckily Mum is quite small. It wouldn’t have worked, for example, with Janey’s granny’s clothes.

  I suggested make-up next, and Mum nodded towards her dressing table, all cluttered with powders, and creams, and lipsticks. Janey pretended to hesitate, saying it was ‘over the top’, but was secretly very keen and didn’t take much persuading. So she sat there like a queen on Mum’s red cushioned seat, and I put lipstick and mascara on her, and a subtle hint of blusher. She wasn’t pleased, though, when I sprinkled talcum powder through her hair, to achieve a greying effect (a tip from the Shapiro book).

  I suddenly thought that a clipboard would be a great finishing touch, and remembered that I had one in my room from the Neanderthals trip. When I came back, Mum was putting eyeshadow (‘emerald crush’) on Janey, stroking it across her eyelids with a little brush. Janey was sitting bolt upright, with her eyes tight shut and her hands clenched, looking as though she was barely breathing from the joy of it. Then Mum patted Janey’s shoulder, said she looked ‘adorable’, and went back to her shoe counting. And I took Janey out of the dressing room and propelled her across the landing towards the drawing room. James was in the middle of a passionate cadenza, which I think she found off-putting, because she insisted on hanging back until he’d finished and was about to start the slow movement.

  She went in, and hovered just inside the door, biting her lip.

  ‘Oh God,’ I heard him groan.

  ‘I’m Dominica Shapiro,’ she said, fearfully.

  ‘Have you two got some kind of vendetta against me? Don’t you know I’ve got a recital tomorrow at the Queen’s Hall?’ His voice wasn’t really annoyed, but he was pretending to be sort of indignant, his voice squeaking up on the word ‘recital’.

  ‘Oooooh, the Queen’s Hall!’ I came into the room behind her. ‘Ooooohh! James! Can we get your autograph?’

  He marched over and grabbed me by the waist, turning me upside down. He carried me into Mum’s room and dropped me on the bed.

  Janey looked on longingly, no doubt wishing he’d do it to her.

  ‘Ugh!!’ I shrieked. ‘What terrible B-O! You’d better have a proper wash before your recital. Otherwise the audience will all go unconscious in their seats.’

  Janey put her hand over her mouth in shock; she doesn’t have any brothers. As James stalked past her, on the way back to the drawing room, she shook out her curls, in a timid but obvious way.

  After tea – awful ravioli – and homework (rivers in Greek mythology) we went to my room and set up everything we needed for our vigil. We each had a notebook to record anything. We put the music case in the middle of the floor, and Janey said we should sit cross-legged on either side of it, with our hands resting, palms uppermost, on our knees.

  Then she said something she’d learned from the Dominic Shapiro book.

  ‘Spirits in this house, please make yourself known.’

  We stayed silent for a while until Janey said ‘quelle dommage’ very sadly, and that set us off.

  We’re going to stay up until midnight and then call it a night.

  Wednesday, October 25th

  I’m in biology right now. If I start writing about tadpoles, it will be because Mrs White has come over.

  So Janey and I fell asleep quite quickly in the end. And when I woke up again it was 3.08 a.m. according to my digital clock.

  It felt like something had woken me, so I stayed still and listened. And yes there was an odd sound coming from the hall. And it wasn’t the usual piano notes either.

  Janey was dead to the world on her zed-bed. She just grunted and rolled over when I prodded her.

  The walk over to the door seemed to take a hundred years. I opened it bravely, and looked out.

  This is what I saw: a black shape crouched down beside the banister, the one that runs the width of the galleried landing. I thought I could make out the paler shapes of hands, clinging to the bars.

  And there was a noise coming from it. It could have been singing. A thin, high, drawn-out note, wavering at the end, dropping down a semitone. And again. Over and over again.

  I put my hands over my ears.

  The noise stopped, and the shape froze for a moment. I held my breath as it unfolded itself to its full height. A grey blur of a face turned towards me.

  ‘Mum?’ My voice was strange and weak. I could hear my actual heart thumping inside my voice. ‘What are you doing?’

  She was wearing her navy-blue silk dressing gown, the one Dad gave her for Christmas last year. That’s why she looked like a dark shape.

  She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, and then swept them quickly across her cheeks.

  ‘Back to bed, darling,’ she muttered as she walked past, trailing a hand so that it almost touched my arm.

  She must have been sleepwalking. It was only Mum. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing to be scared of at all.

 
7

  Janey

  I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d come back.

  Partly, it was because I wanted to attempt left-handed drawing, or writing, again. I’d tried it at home, sitting at the kitchen table when Pip was in bed, and nothing had happened. My left hand lay limp across the paper, a useless, dead thing. But maybe it would work again in the classroom, with Steve there. He’d emailed me after the first session, saying he was concerned about me rushing off, and asking me to feel free to come along another time.

  The sight of the email from him, unopened in my inbox, had sent a kick straight through me. There was something there, dancing in the pixels that made up his name . . . some sort of energy. That half-hour spent in the art room shone in my memory, a bright spot in the string of dreary autumn days.

  And partly it was because I’d seen Jody and Molly at the last Jungle Jive class and they’d asked me to go for coffee afterwards. Oh, how nice it was not to be the one walking out of that church hall alone. And it was a relief, in a way, to share my worries about Pip’s fussy eating, and haphazard bedtime routine, even if they did rather pounce on my parental inadequacies, proffering advice with almost indecent eagerness. Then they’d gone on to discuss the workshop, so easily, so comfortably – as though it was a class in yoga, or upholstery, or breadmaking – that it seemed entirely natural that I should go back.

  ‘And oooh, that Steve’s quite dishy,’ added Jody with a little wriggle. ‘In a geeky, Jarvis Cocker sort of way. You should ask for his number, Janey. Haha!’

  I resented the ‘haha!’ and gave Jody a hard stare that she didn’t even notice.

  But now we were back in the art classroom, sitting round, taking turns to write words on a flip chart, brainstorming ideas that resonated with us as individuals, as couples, and as human beings in the world. We were each to choose one of the words and create a piece of art about it. Over the next few weeks, each couple would produce a pair of canvases that would complement each other when hung together. Hopefully.

  Jody and Tom were both doing ‘womanly’, agreeing, with coy smiles, not to look at each other’s until they’d finished.

  Molly was doing ‘sustainable’, and immediately went off to the materials cupboard to look for anything that might pass for fish hooks. Dave, in a bold move away from eco themes, was doing ‘marketing’.

  It was quarter of an hour or so before Steve came over to my bench, and all I’d done was set out my paints and paper on the workbench.

  He didn’t comment on my dawdling. ‘So. Your word is “safe”?’

  I nodded, suddenly embarrassed.

  He frowned, and rubbed his jaw with the V of his hand. ‘Any thoughts on how you’re going to do that?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Hattie. The girl who . . . spoke, through the left-handed writing . . . you know. Well, she was my best friend when I was at school. I’ve been trying to find her.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I just want to know she’s okay. That she’s safe.’

  ‘Okay.’ He pulled out a stool and sat down, knees apart, hands holding the front of the wooden seat like it was a horse. There were heavy, whitish creases in the denim of his jeans near the crotch. ‘So what might that look like? How can you tell if someone is safe?’

  I thought of the tall, stone house in Regent’s Crescent, the ornate railings and rows of blank windows.

  ‘You can’t, always. But I hope she’s found a safe place.’

  ‘Okay . . . a safe place. So, think about what it feels like inside’ – he stretched out his hands and planted them on either side of his torso, below his ribs – ‘when you’re in a safe place.’

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Yeah, but your body language changed when you thought about it. Your shoulders relaxed.’ The room seemed to have gone quiet. I could hear the in and out of his breath. ‘Were you thinking of somewhere specific?’

  How did he know?

  ‘When I was nine. The last summer holiday we had at Glen Eddle. Hattie’s parents had a house there.’

  He shrugged, and jumped down from the stool. ‘There you go, then.’

  I lifted my paintbrush.

  Slowly, awkwardly, I painted a forest, dark on a craggy grey mountainside, and a rushing stream, appearing now and then between the trees. In my mind I was seeing Scots pine, larch, birch, shifting in the wind and sunlight, but they appeared on the page as green and brown splodges.

  I found the finest paintbrush I could, and painted in a bridge over the river. Then I added a little orange-raincoated figure with navy wellies, standing in the middle of the trees.

  Me. But I wouldn’t have been alone in the forest. An odd little rush of panic came over me. I closed my eyes.

  Where are you?

  ‘I’m here, you idiot. Get down.’

  It’s James, and he’s crawling along at my feet. He grabs my arm and pulls me down onto the forest floor. We lie on our fronts, elbows dug into the pine-needle mulch.

  I hold my breath as we listen for signs; a twig cracking, the wheeshing sound of low branches sweeping over a cagouled shoulder. The forest is silent, though, except for the stream trickling in a ditch nearby. The smell of wet moss rises up from the earth.

  ‘D’you need more ammo?’

  I nod. He reaches into the pocket of his cagoule and hands me three pine cones and a couple of twigs, lacy with grey lichen.

  A scrabbling noise from the ditch; someone is creeping through the tunnel that diverts the stream underneath the forest path. James nods and we move forward, commando style. I move to the right to avoid a crop of ripe toadstools, and brush against him.

  There’s a flash of orange by the tunnel.

  We jump up. ‘CHAAAAARGE!’ shouts James as he starts chucking pine cones at the small figure of Hattie, emerging from the ditch. And Graham, following close behind in his CCF camouflage gear.

  Hattie laughs and runs towards us, feet flapping in her Mickey Mouse trainers. She pelts a pine cone at James. I retaliate with a couple of twigs, but they don’t fly well.

  Graham retreats into the ditch, randomly flinging out pine cones.

  ‘You wuss, Grey!’ bellows James. ‘Come out and fight like a MAN!’

  A huge red toadstool arcs towards us and lands by my feet, splitting into white mush on contact with the ground.

  ‘Aaargh!’ shouts Hattie, who is standing beside us and now seems to be on our side. ‘Biological weapons! James – do something!’

  James eyes the toadstool crop doubtfully.

  ‘You shouldn’t touch them,’ I say. ‘You could die an agonising death.’

  James pulls his raincoat sleeve over his hand and, mouth set into a straight line, grabs the biggest toadstool by the stalk, wrenches it from the ground and runs towards the ditch so he can get a closer aim.

  ‘He’s so brave . . .’

  ‘Do it again, James,’ Hattie demands. ‘With just your bare hand this time.’

  He looks unsure.

  ‘No, Hats,’ I say. ‘We’d better get back for tea. Mrs Patel said it was sausages tonight.’

  ‘Janey, you look like a real soldier! You’re covered in mud.’ She brushes at my cords with a pine frond.

  We walk back through the dimming woods. I’m trotting, trying to keep up with James. Hattie and Graham amble along behind us.

  ‘Shall we just keep the same teams for tomorrow?’ I suggest. James grunts, scuffing his boots into the gravel of the path.

  ‘But I think we’ll need to change our tactics,’ I add. ‘Those twigs are not very aerodynamic.’

  Hattie snorts. ‘Not very aerodynamic!’ But then she runs ahead to catch me up.

  ‘And shall we play Pictionary again tonight?’ I say. Hattie nods and all of a sudden I stop, and stare round at the forest, cradled by the mountains on all sides, the grey corries stretching high and forbidding. And it is a perfect moment. Wet with mud, with pine needles stuck in my wellies and twigs in my hair; sausages for tea and a game of Piction
ary. Maybe we’ll even open the bottle of Irn Bru that Hattie’s mum bought at the petrol station on the way up.

  But when I look along the path again, they’ve gone. They’ve all gone. And it’s dark.

  My eyes snap open.

  It hurts. Oh, it hurts.

  ‘Janey? What’s up?’

  It was Steve, standing beside me. I looked around the classroom, trying to reorientate myself. Molly and Dave had gone, and Jody and Tom were clearing their workbench. How long had I been lost in the world of Glen Eddle?

  ‘It was such a lovely scene, and then it went dark. It was like a big black cloud just moved across.’ My words were spilling out, sliding into each other.

  ‘Tell me about the cloud,’ said Steve.

  ‘It’s everything that’s going to happen next. Grandpa getting ill . . . The whole bloody mess with Miss Fortune . . .’

  He bent close to the painting, holding his chin in his hand, then straightened up and adjusted his glasses. ‘I’m wondering. What would happen if you just let that cloud drift on past?’

  ‘No. Everyone’s gone. I’m cold. I want to go home.’ A tear darted down my cheek.

  I looked down at my painting again, my eye drawn to the group of figures gleaming wetly in the wood. I was the one in the red coat, straggling along at the end, holding . . . oh God no . . . please.

  I was holding a hammer.

  Suddenly it was happening. I’d gone into that strange, underwater place, seizing breath after breath that couldn’t reach my lungs. Pinpricks of light burst into my vision.

  ‘Janey,’ said Steve. ‘Tell me what’s happening to you.’

  ‘D-drowning.’

  He took my arm, sat me down on one of the stools. ‘Stop fighting,’ he said. ‘Your body knows how to float. Let yourself float to the top.’

  He stood there in front of me, watching quietly, just waiting, a hand hovering near my arm. This was so ridiculous, a teenage thing. I hadn’t had panic attacks for years. And he was right, it would pass. It would pass if I stopped fighting.