The Lingering

by SJI Holliday

  She smiles. ‘Jack saves the day.’

  ‘I’m joking … of course he’s got other help. Lots of people are doing things for the new garden. It’s just at the moment, there is not much for the others to do. We need to make the decking boards first. Then he’ll probably get some help to lay them, and we’ll need to level the land. Richard will bring various tools round from the shed, I imagine.’

  ‘I’m proud of you,’ Ali says. ‘I didn’t know how things were going to pan out here, but it seems like they’re going well. For you, anyway.’ She pauses, but Jack doesn’t reply. ‘Look, I know we haven’t spoken much lately,’ she continues. ‘Ships in the night, and all that – you always seem to be off out doing things and I’m still feeling a bit lost. So, I just want to say I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit tetchy, I’m still finding it a bit difficult. I haven’t found my people yet. And I’ve had a bit of bother with Angela, but nothing to worry about…’

  ‘Bother? What do you mean?’ Jack says, a note of worry in his voice.

  Ali shakes her head. ‘Sorry. Bother isn’t the right word. I just found her a bit clingy, maybe. She’s a bit of an odd one, but I’m sure she’s harmless – that’s what everyone keeps telling me. I don’t know though. I felt like she was pushing me for information. Not sure if it’s just natural curiosity or if—’

  ‘If what? She can’t know anything, can she? About us?’

  Ali shrugs. ‘I’m not so sure. She goes into the village. She knows people – she used to live there. She might have looked us up.’

  ‘So what if she has? All she’s going to find is what we used to do, our jobs. That’s all there is. You’re worrying about nothing. There’s nothing else online that can harm us, is there?’

  Ali hopes that Jack is right, but she’s not sure. She’s been careful, tried to keep it all under control. But has she been careful enough?

  She thinks back to that first thing they did – the first time they played ‘the game’ … she’d dared him to steal as much as he could from the newsagents at the corner of their street. He’d come back with two bars of chocolate, hidden inside a rolled newspaper. She’d laughed at how pathetic it was, but he’d been so pleased with himself – that he’d done what she asked. That had been the start of it, and they’d got away with it – and much more. She kept waiting for a knock at the door. The police saying they’d been caught on CCTV. But they never were.

  Who could’ve known how far Jack would let them take it?

  She gives Jack a little wave and walks back towards the house, pausing for a moment at the pond.

  She crouches down and dips a hand into the water, swirling it gently. A thin string of pondweed slithers to the surface, wrapping itself around her finger – slimy, cold and wet. She tries to flick it off with her other hand, but it won’t budge – the tendril pulls tighter. She grabs hold of it, yanking and tugging, feeling her heart start to beat faster … faster. She pulls back sharply, her body landing on the grass with a bump.

  The weed slips back under the surface, as if pulled from beneath.

  After a moment, the water stops moving, and everything is calm once more. She stares down at her hand, and sees a sliver of a cut, a single droplet of blood.

  She swallows back a hard lump of breath, and slowly gets to her feet. Blood trickles down her finger and she wipes it on her jeans. Her heart is still beating faster than it should, as her mind tries its hardest to tell her that nothing strange has just occurred.

  Nothing strange at all.

  20

  Angela

  Ali is halfway into the kitchen when, instinctively, I grab her by the arm and pull her back. ‘I know you’ve been avoiding me,’ I say.

  She whirls around. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Don’t grab at me like that.’ She shrugs herself away from me and I notice a smear of something on her jeans. Is that blood?

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Ali. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you. Are you OK? Did you cut yourself?’

  She shakes her head. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve been looking for you, the last few days. Wherever I go, someone tells me you’ve just been there. Starting to get a complex here. Have I done something wrong?’ I smile, and I’m trying to make my voice sound light, like I’m not really bothered, that it really was just a mistake that I kept missing her. But I can tell that there is no mistake. I can tell that she’s been staying out of my way. Ever since I took her to the swing in the woods, told her my theories about ghosts. Asked her what she’d seen.

  I get it. I’m not stupid. Maybe I went in too soon, but it was just a conversation. She doesn’t have to believe me. She doesn’t have to be interested. But she can still talk to me, can’t she? Not treat me like a leper. She looks uncomfortable now, biting her lip. She looks like she wants to be as far away from me as possible. To be honest I haven’t really experienced this level of dislike from someone before; people tend to take me or leave me. Some think I’m a joke and some don’t. I know who my friends are most of the time. But Ali … I just can’t read her at all. Apart from the fact that I know she’s hiding something. I know she’s felt something here.

  I’ve done this all wrong. It was Jack I should have targeted. From what Smeaton says, he seems much more open. Much more keen to embrace this new life. I wonder if he’d be interested in what I’m doing here. Maybe I should be offering him a tour of the real parts of the building. Not just the official ones. Not just the bits of the story that Smeaton tells, to keep everyone appeased. I know the truth about this place. I know more than most people know. But not because Smeaton told me, but because I knew before I came. I’m not even sure that Smeaton knows the full extent of what happened here. But the villagers do. Because the villagers have been here for a very long time.

  ‘Look, Ali, we seem to have got off to a bad start here. Can we try again? How about I take you and Jack out for a walk, show you some more of the hidden sights. I know you’ve been around most of the place with Smeaton, and with some of the others too. But I can tell you lots of stories. All about the history of the place. Nothing to do with ghosts, I promise.’ I grin.

  She frowns. ‘I don’t know, Angela. To be honest, I’m more about looking to the future, not the past. Jack and I came here to start new lives, to learn new things. To become different people. I know you’re keen on all this stuff. But it’s not for me. I don’t really want to know about the creepy history of this place.’

  I am thrown by this. Who doesn’t want to know the history of the place where they are living? She’s lying. She doesn’t want me to tell her about the ghosts, which is fair enough. But why wouldn’t she want to know about the rest of it? She’s a nurse. This is a hospital, and there are so many stories to be told. I truly thought she’d be interested in hearing them. What happened to the Samuels, tried for witchcraft in 1593; what happened to their descendants just fifty years ago – the taunting … the drowning…

  I don’t like that she is pushing me away like this. It makes me feel nervous. I try to push the doubts out of my mind, stop thinking about what Mary said in the shop. That we don’t know them; we don’t know what they’ve done. Maybe they’ve done nothing. Maybe we are being harsh – not giving them some space just to settle in at their own pace.

  ‘OK, Ali. I just need to ask you about one thing, and then I’ll leave you to get on with whatever it is you want to do.’

  Ali shrugs. The fight seems to have left her; I can almost read her mind. Anything for a quiet life. That’s what she’s thinking.

  ‘Right then, let’s go and get a tea or something, shall we; I know I don’t need to be in here right now. I’m sure it’s all under control.’ I glance into the kitchen and see that they are all busy preparing lunch. If any of them have noticed us they haven’t said anything. People here are good at that, when they want to be. Of course they will have heard the full exchange. But whether they mention it or not is a different thing.

  We walk through to the small sittin
g room and pour ourselves hot water. I drop a raspberry and nettle bag into my mug. Ali frowns before choosing something else. Lemon, I think. I curl onto the sofa, crossing my legs. I hold the mug in both hands, finding it warming and comforting. Ali sits on an armchair, completely upright. She holds her mug by the handle, the other hand underneath gently supporting it. She is not relaxed. I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t do this now. I am slightly worried about how she will react, but it will be my last attempt at trying to rattle something out of her, before I leave her alone and go back to observing her from afar.

  ‘Smeaton told me that Jack worked on a horrible child-protection case. That he had to retire due to stress.’

  Ali looks down into her mug; her shoulders slump. ‘Actually, he had a complete breakdown. He was forced to take medical retirement. Anyone would’ve, with all the stress he was under. It nearly killed him. I looked after him myself, nursed him through it. But it was difficult, even with my training. When you turn from wife to carer things are never the same.’ She looks up at me, ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ she says, ‘but it kind of feels good just to say it.’

  I ponder this. Then make a rash decision. ‘Don’t be mad Ali—’ I say. I let the sentence hang in the air unfinished.

  Ali sits up straight again and puts her mug down on the side table. She’s staring at me now, her eyes wide and bright. ‘Don’t be mad about what Angela. What have you done?’

  Her tone is fierce, but there is something else in there. She smells sharp, something bitter coming off her, like grapes that have shrivelled and soured. Why would she immediately assume that I had done anything? Her reaction puzzles me, as most of her reactions do. She’s calm one minute, then flies off the handle the next. She doesn’t seem to know who to talk to, or how much of herself to give away. She’s confused, that’s for sure; but she’s right. I have done something. Something I shouldn’t have done, that has sent my imagination into overdrive. I’m just going to have to tell her, and deal with it.

  I swallow a lump of air. ‘I know it was wrong, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I was just trying to get to know who you are. Most people when they come here, they don’t bring much. We’ve nothing to go on, we need to learn about them. All we have is what people say, but you barely say anything. I’ve no idea who you are. You seem to be a closed book on every level.’

  She leans forwards in the chair. ‘What did you do Angela? Please … just spit it out.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’ I pause, take a sip of my tea, grip the mug tighter. ‘I was telling you about my equipment, about the rooms I have to put things in, I was trying to tell you before – your room, there was always lots of activity. But Smeaton told me I couldn’t put anything in there. But I already had, so I just had to go into pick something up so I could set it up elsewhere. I promise you, I didn’t mean to snoop—’

  ‘What do you mean snoop? Did you go through my things?’

  ‘Not really, no, that’s not what I mean. OK yes, I did go into your room. Looked at your dressing table, in your wardrobe. Looked in your bookcase.’

  ‘You had no right. That’s our private stuff. I should speak to Smeaton about this. You had no right to be in my room. No bloody right!’

  ‘I know that. I’m sorry.’ I look away. ‘It’s just, I don’t know … I guess I was curious. I opened the box—’

  ‘Box? What box?’

  ‘The box on the bookcase, the one full of papers. Clippings. Articles cut out from newspapers … You know what I mean.’ I start to cry then. I don’t mean to. I didn’t think I would. I thought I was strong enough for this conversation, but now I know I’m not. I don’t like being in trouble. I’m scared. Her expression scares me. As for Jack – I don’t even know what he might do when he finds out. He hasn’t said much to me before, but he does stare at me quite intently. I haven’t really thought about it too much before, but now I realise that something about him really unnerves me.

  ‘You had no right to go in that box, Angela. Those are private papers. Not even my private papers. Jack’s. Jack’s work things. You shouldn’t have been in there, Angela.’

  Hang on … she is lying. Those clippings aren’t related to Jack’s work. I know they aren’t. They don’t fit. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know what else to say to her now. I don’t know if she will go to Smeaton, but I think she will. But I expect that she’ll go to Jack first, and I won’t have heard the end of this. I’m such an idiot. Yes, it was wrong of me to look at her things. But that’s not my biggest mistake. I should have kept my mouth shut, just continued to monitor her, started to try to get to know Jack, to see what I could learn there. Because there is a secret hidden in that box.

  I think back to their arrival. The strange smell in the air, the silence. The horrible, heavy feeling of dread that draped itself onto me. That’s why I couldn’t stay to meet them. I had to get away, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t know then, that the feeling of dread that I’d felt was all related to them.

  What did he do, I wonder? What did Jack do that Ali is trying her best to keep hidden?

  Ali stands up, and I can see that she is shaking, she’s trying to control it, but it’s definitely there. I sit where I am, frozen. Speechless.

  ‘This was a mistake, Angela. You really shouldn’t have snooped in our stuff,’ she says. ‘Jack…’ She stops herself, shakes her head. She has gone deathly pale, looks like she might throw up. She’s terrified … and now, so am I.

  21

  Ali

  She needs space. Feels like the walls are closing in on her. Angela is getting too close and she doesn’t know what to do. Could that strange girl have taken anything from that box? She wouldn’t put it past her.

  Right, she decides, shaking herself and squaring her shoulders. Time to do some snooping of her own.

  She heads upstairs and along to the far end of the building, where she knows some of the bedrooms are located. Fergus told her where his was in the kitchen one day; he said she was welcome to visit him any time, if she wanted to talk – why is everyone so nosey in this place? What he did mention, though, and what’s useful to her now, is that his room is in the same corridor as Angela’s.

  She turns the corner, and is faced with a long passageway. It’s the same as all the others: chipped lino floors and peeling paint; a musty smell of mould with an underlying hint of chemicals. The doors are all closed, but there is a shimmer of light coming from one of the doors at the end. Fergus’s, maybe? She knows that Angela is not in her room right now…

  She stops walking, and tries to decide what to do. Any of these doors could be Angela’s, but maybe they’re locked, like she locks her own. And if someone is in that room at the end, she doesn’t want to disturb them – and more importantly, she doesn’t want them disturbing her.

  This is a stupid idea, she decides. She shakes her head, turns around and walks, quickly and quietly, back around the corner towards the stairs.

  It’s then that she sees the figure.

  She hangs back against the wall, trying to pull herself in tight, make herself invisible. She doesn’t recognise who it is that is standing by the door to the room down the end of the corridor – the room that she knows is above hers. That room is empty, her mind tells her. She knows this. She’s seen it for herself. This is ridiculous, she thinks. She has every right to be here, does she not? Besides, they must’ve seen her now … She opens her mouth to speak; but then something stops her.

  She doesn’t recognise the woman in the corridor. Has never seen anyone dressed like this in the house before. An old-fashioned grey dress, long dark hair pulled up into a bun. Ali takes a step back, trying to disappear around the corner again, but the floor gives her away – just the faintest creak…

  The woman in the grey dress turns around. Her face is twisted in anger. ‘You,’ she says, walking towards Ali, her arm outstretched, pointing, accusing, ‘You,’ she says again, louder this time.

  Ali is frozen. She can
’t move, can’t scream. She closes her eyes tight, willing the woman to go away. This mad woman, pointing at her, shouting at her … who is she?

  A door slams somewhere close by, and Ali opens her eyes.

  There is no one there.

  Was there ever anyone there? Or was this just another of these tricks that her mind has been playing on her?

  She waits until her breathing returns to normal, and then she makes her way down the stairs, trying all the while to convince herself that nothing untoward has happened.

  Ali feels subdued at dinner. She eats but doesn’t want to speak. She’s still trying to process the strange things that have been happening, trying to rationalise them in her brain. What was it that Smeaton said – about the subconscious taking over? That’s it. That must be it. She knows that she has to talk to Jack, and soon. While part of her still thinks that Angela’s ghost stories are complete nonsense, she can’t deny that she’s been spooked. Even more so, knowing that Angela has seen the news clippings and is now highly suspicious. She thought that saying they were related to Jack’s job would be enough to get her to back off. But she saw the look in the younger woman’s face. She was terrified. Ali didn’t react well; she realises that now, letting her own fear rise to the surface like that. But it had been a shock. She’d thought that Angela was going to tell her something else about the room, that it was bugged or something. Not that she’d been poking about in her things. It hadn’t crossed her mind that anyone here would do that, which was stupid of her. Why should people be any less nosey just because they live in a place like this? It’s obvious now, in hindsight, that everyone here is probably gossiping and speculating about them both, and she’s made it all worse by closing herself off so much.

  She glances across at Jack, who is shovelling huge mouthfuls of spicy couscous into his mouth, oblivious to her distress. A bubble of anger pops in her throat, forcing her to cough, clear her throat. This is not how it was meant to be. Except that it is exactly how it was meant to be – she’s the one who can’t seem to let go of the past. Every day that Jack grows stronger, Ali feels weaker inside.