by Nell Dixon
The room was as gloomy as my mood thanks to the rain beating against the windows and the rapid approach of dusk. Only the sticky lack of air reminded you it was the height of summer. I couldn’t remember the last time Steve and I had taken a holiday somewhere warm and sunny. Actually I couldn’t remember when we’d last had a holiday at all. I jumped up from my seat and switched on the light in an effort to dispel the gloom. Before I’d even sat back down there was a familiar fizzing noise before the overhead light bulb blew with a pop, tripping one of the switches in the newly refitted fuse box.
“I thought Steve had finished all the electrics?” Lou looked up from her plate, blinking in the half-light.
“Yeah, but the lights still keep flickering and sometimes the electrical gadgets play up. I’m sick of resetting the clock on the microwave.” I grabbed a torch from the kitchen drawer in no man's land.
It was darker in the hallway thanks to the solid wood front door and the rose bush that had sprawled it’s leaves over the tiny leaded window at the foot of the stairs.
I switched on the torch and cautiously opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs. The last time I’d gone in there the world’s biggest spider had been inside.
You’d think I’d be used to creepy crawlies by now after renovating so many houses, but spiders still freak me out.
This time the fuse box was empty of eight-legged freaks. I pushed the switch back in and collected a new light bulb from the shelf. Overhead the floorboards creaked and then creaked again. I listened carefully. Someone must be walking along the landing.
* * *
Luckily mother is a heavy sleeper and father is gone from home on business. I gather my skirts about me to prevent the cloth from brushing against the walls and make my way toward the stairs as quietly as I can without disturbing the rest of the house. Father took his closest man servant with him but Richard and his wife Dorcas still lie abed and will stir if I disturb the dogs.
Joshua will be waiting for me in our usual trysting place in the far field by the orchard. With the fighting between the rebel army and that of the King growing ever nearer our time together is precious even if it means I am defying my beloved father’s wishes.
* * *
I closed the cupboard door and headed back to the kitchen. The footsteps overhead were quite distinct now, slow and measured. A shiver ran up my spine. I pushed open the kitchen door.
Lou was still seated at the table finishing her curry in the half darkness.
Chapter Two
“What’s up? More spiders in the fuse box?” Lou stuffed the last bit of her Naan bread into her mouth.
“There’s someone walking around upstairs! I thought it was you. Didn’t you hear the footsteps?” I looked frantically around the kitchen for a suitable weapon.
How on earth had someone managed to get inside the house without Lou or me noticing?
“I didn’t hear anything,” Lou mumbled around a mouthful of bread.
“Slow, heavy footsteps on the landing,” I hissed at her and grabbed the mop which was propped against the back door.
“Oh, great, heavy footsteps, so that would be me.” Lou complained, “It’s piddling down outside and your house is a wreck, so who would be crazy enough to break in?”
“I’m telling you I heard footsteps. Come with me.”
Lou rolled her eyes and then followed behind me as we crept along the hallway to the foot of the stairs. My palms were already sweaty around the handle of the mop. I tried to think what we might have in the cottage apart from Steve’s music industry souvenirs that would be of any possible value to a burglar. After ten years, and in such awful weather, I doubted if there were any old Danger Line fans out there who would be cracked enough to try a spot of breaking and entering.
“I can’t hear anything,” she whispered.
“Ssh.” We froze in position by the front door and listened. The only audible sounds now were the steady drumming of the rain against the roof and the metallic plink of water dripping into a bucket under the leak in the bathroom ceiling.
“It’s all gone quiet,” I whispered to Lou.
She snorted and pushed past me to make her way up the stairs. I followed close behind her, mop at the ready.
“Be careful.”
She turned her head, “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
The landing was empty. We peered into the bathroom and the box room. Lou checked out my room while I braced myself to look inside Steve’s domain
“Well?” Lou called.
“I know what I heard,” I peered into the darkness of Steve's room, only to find the usual mess. Clothes lay strewn on the floor next to the bed while miniature pots of paint samples and manuals on electrical wiring stood open on the dresser. His framed gold discs were propped against the wall next to his guitar. Nothing appeared to be missing or out of place and no mad-eyed women wearing tour date tee shirts were lurking in the corners. The air smelt of his deodorant, familiar and comforting. I closed the door quickly and met Lou back on the landing.
“Look, the windows are all shut downstairs and I was in the kitchen, so no one left through the back door. Your front door needs at least two people to tug it open.”
My sister held her hands up.
“I tell you, I heard footsteps.” There had been no mistaking the heavy measured tread. A chill ran down my spine at the memory.
“Well, I am not going up the loft to check and unless you have the invisible man staying in your house, there is no one here.” Lou gave me a hard stare.
“But suppose that’s where he went! Look; Steve’s left the stepladder up here.
You could hold it while I climb up, lift the hatch and take a quick look.” I knew it wasn’t a very likely scenario that my phantom prowler had managed to escape into the tiny space under the eaves above our heads, especially if he’d got up there without using the steps or disturbing the dust around the hatch opening. On the other hand, where else could he go?
Lou’s expression indicated she thought I’d lost my marbles. “On your head be it! And it probably will be. Lord knows how many years of crud are inside that roof.
If a bat swoops out when you lift that door then I’m gone.” She dragged the steps across the landing and positioned them under the hatch.
I propped the mop against the wall, placed my foot on the first rung of the stepladder and tested it for stability. Suddenly going into the loft didn’t seem such a great idea.
“Oh for heaven's sake! Get up the steps, our supper’s going cold in the kitchen.”
“Knock the landing light on then, Steve hasn’t fixed one up in the loft yet and it’ll be dark up there.” Hopefully it wouldn’t be too dark and there wouldn’t be any spiders.
Lou heaved a long-suffering sigh and flicked the switch flooding the landing with soft yellow light. I crept up three steps of the ladder, my knees shaking.
Cautiously I pushed open the hatch door. Warm, fetid air swooshed past me carrying with it the scent of old wood and damp. I peered inside. We hadn’t been in the loft for a few months, but it was one of the many jobs on Steve’s list; fix the leak in the bathroom ceiling and lag the loft.
“Well?” Lou asked.
I shifted my weight on the steps and peered around as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. Nothing appeared to be out of place, the dust lay undisturbed except for old imprints from where we’d been inside the roof space before. A strange buzzing noise seemed to be coming from behind me and, with my heart thumping, I turned my head to investigate. The buzzing sound grew louder and I realised I had to get back down the ladder as quickly as possible.
“Bloody hell.” I released the hatch door with a thump and shot back down the steps on to the landing.
“What’s the matter? What did you see?” Lou demanded.
“Wasps' nest, as big as your head, hundreds of them up there. We’ll have to get the exterminators in.” I leaned against the stepladder,
my pulse still racing. I’m about as fond of wasps as I am of spiders. All I needed to find next was a load of earwigs and my misery would be complete.
“Ugh, wasps.” Lou shuddered.
“I wonder how long they’ve been up there? Steve was in the loft a few weeks ago when he started the wiring.” I couldn’t believe how many of them had been in there. It was all I could do to stop my legs from trembling.
“They must be getting in through a gap in the tiles.”
“I suppose I’d better text Steve and tell him.” I trailed back down stairs behind Lou, my heart gradually settling back into its normal rhythm.
“He’s not going to be able to do anything about them tonight. They must have been up there for ages,” Lou pointed out as we reached the kitchen.
“I know, but I didn’t know about them before. Now I’ll be in bed tonight knowing that above my head there are all of those horrible, annoying, stingy things flying about.” I grabbed my mobile and sent off a text. Irrationally, finding wasps in the attic appeared to be one more grievance to lay at Steve’s feet.
‘Wasps nest in loft.’ I didn’t know if he would ignore it or call me back. If he was too enamoured with his new girlfriend I doubted that he’d be in any hurry to rush back.
I changed the light bulb while Lou microwaved my curry to warm it up. It wasn’t only the thought of the wasps that had unnerved me. There was still the matter of the mysterious footsteps, because they had been footsteps, not random creaks.
* * *
Maybe it is because of the burden of guilt I carry from deceiving my parents but there seem to be many strange occurrences within the cottage lately. Sometimes I think I hear sounds which I cannot explain and strange shadows appear fleetingly on the walls. No doubt it is a punishment from God for disobeying my father by spurning the advances of Thomas Crabbe and continuing in secret to see Joshua.
* * *
I’m not an imaginative person given to hearing things or suffering from flights of fancy. I’ve always been a bit boring and prosaic, but there was something about this cottage that made me feel uncomfortable. At first I’d thought it was because of everything that had gone on between me and Steve but it was more than that. The strange footsteps weren’t the first time I’d heard something unusual. Not that Steve believed me, he thought it was just one more complaint I had against the cottage.
Odd noises from time to time were to be expected. It was an old house so creaks and groans were par for the course.
Strange footsteps, on the other hand, were not.
“You know you can always stay with me. You don’t have to stay here.” Lou slid my curry back onto the table.
She’d made the offer before, when Steve and I had first split. I’d left for a week but sleeping in Lou’s tiny box room on a futon wasn’t much fun. Plus with me gone Steve seemed to lack any incentive to do anything towards getting the cottage ready for the market.
“Thanks, I appreciate it, but you know what happened last time. If I’m ever going to be able to make a clean break from Steve and see any of my money back, then I really need to tough it out here.” Although staying with Lou would definitely be an option if the wasps remained and the creepy noises got too much.
Lou sat down opposite me and topped up my wine glass. I noticed she hadn’t poured herself any. This wasn’t at all like my sister, she was partial to a drink.
“Any idea how long the renovations are going to take?” she asked.
I speared a piece of chicken with my fork and watched the steam rise as I lifted it from the plate. “How long’s a piece of string?”
I’d made the schedule, listed all the jobs and done the spreadsheets but there had been two things I hadn’t counted on. Number one was the council surveyor being pernickety because of the listed status of the house, and number two was the sheer number of extra jobs which kept appearing. We’d renovated problem properties before; there was one fire damaged terraced house in Oldham that still made me shudder, but this house was a real money pit.
Lou toyed with her glass of water, shuffling it back and forth on the pine surface of the kitchen table. “Is Steve definitely seeing the barmaid from the Coach and Horses?”
I placed my fork down carefully on my plate; I didn’t feel hungry any-more.
“No idea. Nasreen said she saw them together and he spends a lot of time there.”
“Well, I don’t think you should always believe what she says. She’s always had a bit of a thing for Steve herself. She was a huge fan of the band back in the day.”
Lou avoided looking directly at me. “Remember the Christmas party?”
Looking back, perhaps that was where it had all started to go wrong for me and Steve, at the bank’s Christmas party. We’d finally sold the last property we’d renovated, a very pretty Edwardian villa, and I’d hoped that Christmas or New Year might be the time when Steve would finally pop the question.
Instead Christmas had come and gone, and Nas had got steaming drunk on punch and tried to kiss Steve at the party. An incident which had made him very wary of being alone with her ever since.
“I suppose, but why would she lie about something like that?” If Nasreen was so interested in Steve then she was welcome to him.
“She’s always seemed jealous of you,” Lou said.
I didn’t know why Nasreen should be jealous of me. She had to be over her Danger Line fixation by now. It had been a long time since the band had gone their separate ways. If she wanted to take my place and live in houses with no hot water, dodgy electrics and an assortment of wildlife then she could.
When he’d fronted the band, thousands of other women had been convinced they were in love with him too. Steve is quite good-looking if you like tall wiry men with unkempt hair and dark brown eyes like pools of melted chocolate. He still received fan mail occasionally from different parts of the world. At one time I’d thought his looks and being in love had compensated for all the things about him that drove me crazy. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t know.”
Lou sighed.
I watched her continue to fiddle with her glass.
“What’s wrong, Lou? Have some wine.” I suddenly became conscious that I’d burdened my sister down with all my problems without bothering to ask what had been happening in her life.
“The usual things, no money, no man, hate my job. I’ll pass on the wine tonight I think, I’ve had a headache all day.” She pushed her glass to one side.
I studied her more closely. Lou definitely wasn’t her usual bouncy self.
Normally my sister went through life like a lively Labrador puppy. Everyone loved Lou, she was always chirpy and full of fun. Not tonight though. Tonight something was wrong in Lou’s world and I didn’t think it was simply a headache.
“Maybe we should get out more, learn something new. Meet some new people.” I wasn’t really into going to clubs and wine bars. Mum had a better social life than me and Lou and she had met most of her friends through going to different classes.
I’d met Steve on a car park. My car wouldn’t start and it had been teeming down with rain. He’d rescued me with a set of jump leads and asked me to go for a drink. That was the thing about Steve, on the one hand he could drive you crazy, but on the other hand he could surprise you by doing something really kind and thoughtful.
I was normally too tired from the building work to make the effort to glam up and although Lou liked a night out as much as the next girl, I suspected that recently it had lost its appeal. She hadn’t mentioned going to Benny’s Bar, the wine bar cum club in town, for at least three weeks and it was usually one of her favourite spots. I had no idea where to meet guys other than Benny’s and I wasn’t sure I was actually ready for the singles scene yet anyway.
“Night classes don’t start 'til September and I don’t want to learn holiday Spanish with the OAPs or how to embroider a cushion,” Lou said.
“A woman came into the bank this morning with some flyers. The
library are running some taster classes this month. It’d be something different.” I rummaged in my bag for the leaflet. I had a feeling that whatever Lou’s troubles were they probably wouldn’t be fixed by attending a couple of Salsa classes but, knowing my sister, she wouldn’t spill the beans on her problems until she was ready.
“I am not doing macramé or belly dancing,” she warned. I moved the empty foil containers from the takeaway to one side and smoothed out the flyer.
We studied the leaflet together. It would be nice to escape from the dust and work of the cottage for one night a week.
“I don’t think we’re going to find romance at watercolours for beginners,” Lou said.
“Oh, I don’t know, there might be some men there.” The last group I’d seen heading for the community room to take the art class had all looked like they were of pensionable age so I wasn’t being exactly truthful.
“We could do this one.” Lou stabbed at the class listing with her forefinger.
“Research The History of Your House.” I looked at her.
“Look, you know you have a thing about this house. Ever since you got here you’ve said it has a weird atmosphere. Maybe if you knew more about it then you’d feel happier. Plus, it might help when you put it on the market. People like houses with interesting histories and you’ve said before you need every edge you can get in today’s market.”
I thought about her suggestion. “What would you get out of it? I thought this would be for both of us.”
Lou grinned. “You would stop wittering on about strange feelings and creepy footsteps. Besides, there might be some men on this kind of course, hopefully under eighty and with their own teeth and hair.”
That sounded more like Lou. I hesitated for a moment, not sure if she was only suggesting the course to please me.
“If it’s a washout we can always go to the pub afterwards,” she added.
“Okay, you’re on. I’ll sign us up tomorrow.”
