The Haunting of Tabitha Grey

by Vanessa Curtis

  Nothing.

  Dad’s not listening. He’s jingling his keys and looking around the entrance hall. ‘Quite a place to live, Tabs,’ he says as he locks the big front door behind me.

  ‘Yeah’, I say. He’s right. The house does look beautiful as we walk down the long corridor to our flat. But I can’t concentrate on looking at the things Dad points out to me.

  The moon shines through the windows of the glass verandah and lights up bits and pieces of furniture in the drawing room and dining room as we pass by their doorways.

  I don’t want to look but something in me can’t seem to stop.

  That’s why, as Dad is pulling out the key to our flat and inserting it in the lock, I’m still standing by the dining-room door peering into the gloom. It’s very still inside. I can see the outline of the great polished table. The white faces of the Chinese lions glint in the moonlight from their dark mahogany cases.

  There’s something else too. At the far end of the dining-room table, on one of the high-backed gothic chairs. I strain my eyes, trying to see.

  ‘Come in, Tabs,’ says Dad, already inside our flat.

  ‘OK,’ I reply.

  I turn to leave and follow Dad but I have to look back. I don’t want to. I just have to.

  There’s nothing there.

  A wave of tiredness hits me. I can hardly drag my feet over to our flat.

  ‘Come inside, Tabitha,’ orders Dad.

  He shuts our door and bolts us safe inside.

  Chapter Three

  Mum’s dancing again.

  Well, she’s not dancing for an audience at Covent Garden any more, but Dad’s rigged her up a barre in our flat in the huge basement room which was once the servants’ kitchen and is now a storage area for council files, folders and furniture. He clears a big space by the wall and drills holes into it to fit the shiny barre. Then he puts up a long mirror and installs some little spotlights in the ceiling so that they can shine down on Mum and she can see what she’s doing.

  At first Mum’s not keen about going down to the basement and dancing there while we’re all upstairs doing other things, but after a few sessions she starts to look forward to it.

  Sometimes I creep halfway down the stairs and sit there hugging my knees so that I can watch.

  Mum dances like she’s trying to reach something.

  Or someone.

  Her arms stretch out towards things that I can’t see and her face is filled with this strange yearning look that she doesn’t use in our normal everyday life. When she pirouettes round in circles her limbs end up folded around her and she hugs her own elbows to finish, like she’s trying to hibernate away from the world.

  Sometimes she just puts her leg up on the barre and examines her legs and her feet in their narrow pointe shoes and I can tell she’s missing the discipline of her Royal Ballet training and maybe wondering whether she gave it all up too early.

  Dad never interrupts Mum when she’s dancing.

  He’s got about a million and one jobs to do around the manor and his latest project is to update the guidebook for visitors, which means taking a thorough inventory of every single piece of furniture and every ornament on display in the house.

  ‘It’s going to take me about a year just to do that,’ he complains, but I can tell he’s really enjoying himself. He gets up early with a determined glint in his eye and bounds off into the main house every day with a laptop and a big wad of paper, and sometimes he even forgets to come back for lunch and doesn’t reappear until the manor has been shut and it’s dark outside.

  It’s half term so I get a whole week off school to hang around and annoy Mum.

  ‘Why don’t you go and help your father?’ she says. She’s chosen today as the day she’s going to paint our kitchen and hang new curtains in my bedroom.

  I pull a face. ‘It’s cosier in the flat,’ I say. I’m lying about on the sofa in our lounge with my legs in thick stripy socks and my hair all un-brushed and un-washed.

  I love half term but after being freaked out a couple of weeks ago I don’t have any urge to go into the main part of Weston Manor. Plus I’ve got other things on my mind. I think about Jake a lot. Can’t stop thinking about him.

  When I lie in my square white room at night, the outside light is illuminating the fireplace and the wooden boards and I’m wondering a bit about the servant who once slept in this room, Jake’s face somehow cuts through my wonderings and banishes them all away so that I’m left with this really cool image of his smooth cheeks and deep blue eyes giving me that intense stare.

  But it’s weird. I like him more when I’m imagining him. When I actually stand next to him at school I feel kind of half-pleased and half-irritated. And it’s always a relief when it’s just me and Gem and I can be myself.

  ‘Go on, Tabitha,’ Mum is saying. ‘Please. I need to get things done before I’m struck with another of my heads.’

  She does look a bit flushed and tired so I swing my legs off the back of the sofa and slouch off to get showered and dressed.

  From my little tiled bathroom I can see the old walled garden of the manor. Dad says that there are these tiny gravestones belonging to all the old manor pets out there so I decide that I might as well go and take a look at them later.

  It’s still early.

  I take a deep breath and open the door to our flat, then go down the long corridor into the main part of the house.

  I don’t much want to look at the dining room but something compels me to anyway. In the daylight everything looks normal. Sunlight glints off the silver candlesticks on the table. The high-backed chairs sit to attention around the long polished table. The room smells of flowers and wax polish and the security guard, Sid, has already been round and thrown open the green shutters so that light pours into the room from all directions.

  ‘Tabsy, you’re an idiot,’ I say to myself.

  I walk around the room once, just to prove to myself that there’s nothing to be scared of.

  Then I head into the entrance hall.

  Sid is behind the reception desk setting up the computer to connect to the security cameras. There are cameras in every room of the manor, just in case any visitors fancy helping themselves to the valuables.

  ‘Morning pet!’ he booms at me.

  Dawn looks up. She’s stacking postcards again and tearing tickets off a long roll in preparation for the visitors. Two of them have been allowed in early and are standing chatting by the fireplace.

  ‘Hiya, Tabitha!’ Dawn says, her dark eyes sparkling. ‘Don’t suppose you want to give me a hand, do you?’

  I smile.

  ‘Maybe later,’ I say. ‘Going to find Dad.’

  ‘He’s upstairs,’ says Dawn. ‘In Lady Eleanor’s bedroom, I think.’

  I thank her and head off towards the staircase, saying ‘good morning’ to the two old lady visitors as I pass the fireplace.

  They both nod at me and return to their conversation.

  They’re dressed in short, smart dark suits and have patent-leather heels and perfectly groomed white hair in buns.

  I smile. They look kind. Then I head up the stairs to find Dad.

  The staircase at Weston Manor is kind of creepy.

  It’s the only time I’ve been up it on my own.

  At the foot of the stairs is an arched glass cupboard built into the wall. It’s full of little porcelain shepherdesses.

  Dad told me that there was a doorway here in the old days and that the cupboard has only been put in quite recently.

  I stand looking in at the little china figures for a moment but then I start to shiver. It’s not the sort of cold feeling I get on a biting winter’s day – the sort that gives you flushed cheeks and numb fingers. And it’s not the sort of shivering I get just before coming down with flu, when my cheeks burn up red and I can’t stop shaking.

  No – it’s more a sort of bone cold.

  It starts from my feet and moves up my legs and into my chest before ca
using my face to chill.

  I run my hand along my arm.

  It’s cold and clammy, and the hairs are standing on end.

  I can still hear Dawn talking on the telephone in the entrance hall, even though I can’t see her and it’s kind of comforting, so I tell myself to stop being silly and I move away from the arch and run upstairs to find Dad.

  He’s in Lady Eleanor’s bedroom, the second room on the right at the top of the stairs. All the bedrooms are on this floor, separated by a small square landing on which a grandfather clock ticks away the seconds. I poke my head inside the room.

  Dad’s got his tape measure out and is measuring the four-poster bed that sits right in the centre of the room. ‘I don’t think that this is the original bed,’ he says, more to himself than to me. ‘The Victorians preferred brass beds. Stopped insects eating the wood. I reckon that this one was put in later on.’

  I step into the middle of the room and look around. It’s light and airy, with floral curtains tied back by long red velvet sashes and an oval dressing table with a mirror just underneath the windows. The bed takes up most of the room. It has a floral bedspread, which matches the curtains, and there’s a long plush sofa along the foot of the bed and a mahogany chest of drawers near to the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I say, peering at a large photograph of a man that perches on the chest. He looks kind of familiar. Dark eyes, moustache, portly stomach bulging out over his waistband.

  ‘Captain Jack,’ says Dad with one end of the measuring tape between his teeth and the other end stretched up one of the bed’s wooden posts. ‘Eleanor’s only son. I don’t think she liked him very much.’

  ‘Why?’ I say, but Dad has moved over to the window and is gazing out over the overgrown lawns and messy walled garden at the back of the house. I can see that he’s planning to take on more gardening staff and knock the entire place into shape, so I leave him in Lady Eleanor’s bedroom and go back on to the landing.

  There are lots of other bedrooms to explore up here but somehow I don’t feel like going into them on my own.

  Dawn’s laugh wafts up the stairs and I follow it down.

  Sid is standing by the main door jingling his keys, about to unlock it and let the public in.

  ‘Time to let in the great unwashed!’ he says as I emerge from the foot of the stairs and round the corner into the entrance hall.

  ‘Sid,’ says Dawn. ‘That’s not a very nice way to refer to visitors. Without them the council would shut this house and you’d be out of a job.’

  I look over to the fireplace. ‘Those lady visitors looked very clean,’ I say. ‘Did they already go? They must have rushed round the house at top speed.’

  Dawn looks over to where I’m standing.

  ‘Visitors?’ she says. ‘They’re all outside, love. Look.’

  There’s a long queue of impatient-looking people in spring dresses and flip-flops all shifting about and peering through the windows.

  I laugh.

  ‘Not them!’ I say. ‘The two old ladies who were chatting by the fireplace!’

  Sid turns round sharply when I say this. He glances at Dawn.

  Her smile has faded but she continues to speak in the same low, pleasant voice that she always uses. ‘Oh of course,’ she says, holding her reel of tickets in front of her. ‘I forgot I’d let them in!’

  Sid has turned away from me and is fiddling about with the computer on the reception desk.

  ‘I’d forget my head if it wasn’t bolted on to my shoulders!’ Dawn is saying.

  Something’s not right, but I decide to leave them to it.

  As I head back through the entrance hall, I run my finger along the edge of the white marble fireplace.

  ‘See you later, Tabs!’ calls Dawn as I walk towards the flat.

  I turn round to wave but she’s deep in conversation with Sid. I strain my ears as I walk in slow-motion towards the door of our flat but I can’t really hear what they’re saying.

  Then they realise that I’m still there and they open the grand doors to let the visitors pour through.

  I go back inside to find Mum.

  Chapter Four

  When Dad comes home that evening I tell him about how Dawn forgot she’d let two old ladies in. Dad ruffles my hair like I’m about six and gives his deep laugh.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust that Dawn!’ he says. ‘I hear she’s got a bit of a reputation for mucking about. She was pulling your leg, I bet.’

  Actually I wouldn’t bet. Dawn didn’t look like she was pulling my leg. She looked as if she was covering something up. I don’t tell Dad that, though. Dad is one of the least mysterious people in the world. He’s got a scientific explanation for everything that happens and he refuses to entertain any other theories.

  Mum is cooking sausage and chips while I’m telling Dad about the women but I can tell from her shoulders that she’s listening to every word.

  ‘Don’t be so mistrustful of poor Dawn,’ she says to Dad. ‘People are entitled to make mistakes now and again. Even you!’

  ‘Ow!’ I yell. Ben has just bitten my leg underneath the table.

  Mum gives me a look. ‘Lay the table, Tabitha, and get the ketchup,’ is all she says, but over the meal I catch her giving me the odd worried glance when she thinks I’m not looking.

  Mum’s very protective. She’s always watching me and wondering where I am.

  Of course I do the same with Ben. He’s my little brother so I have to look out for him, even though he’s a pain most of the time. Like now, when he’s trying to pinch chips off my plate.

  ‘Stop it!’ I yell before I can help myself.

  Mum sighs and buries her head in her hands. ‘I just wanted a fresh start here,’ she says in the low voice, which I know is going to rise up into hysteria if Dad doesn’t somehow find a way to stop it. ‘Is that too much to ask? Can’t we all just enjoy living in this house without making up stories about old ladies and yelling and making a fuss?’

  Dad offers me more sausages. ‘Nobody’s pretending anything, Rachel,’ he says. ‘And we ARE enjoying living in the manor. Aren’t we, Tabs?’

  I nod, stuffing in chips as fast as possible so that I can go upstairs and see if Jake has texted me.

  ‘Tabitha is still pretending, aren’t you, Tabitha?’ says Mum. Her voice is going all high and squeaky. Uh-oh. Danger alert.

  Dad pours her a glass of wine and gives her a long look with his eyebrows raised. The look says, ‘Don’t start this again.’

  ‘Tabitha is doing very well,’ he says. ‘She’s going to help me with some more of the inventory tomorrow. So you can practise your dancing or go shopping or clean or whatever you want to do.’

  I know he means this in a nice way but it comes out kind of patronising and Mum’s cheeks flare into angry pink spots.

  ‘Oh, and that’s my life now, is it?’ she says. ‘Shopping, cleaning and a nice little hobby down in the damp old basement while you get obsessed with your new job, just like always?’

  She gets up and shoves the plates into the sink, goes upstairs and slams her bedroom door.

  Ben jumps at the noise and his dark brown eyes look up at me, all serious and scared.

  I sigh. ‘I thought I was supposed to be the moody one,’ I venture but Dad glowers at me, so I shut up and eat a hard banana in silence.

  Great. Some half term this is turning out to be.

  The next day the house is open to the public by the time Dad and I leave our flat and head down the corridor. The dining room is full of light and no visitors have yet made it to that part of the manor. I glance into the huge drawing room as we pass by and admire the heavy crystal chandeliers and the ornate gold mirrors over the two large fireplaces, one on each side of the room. There is a large cabinet full of green and blue Wedgwood vases that I hadn’t noticed before, so I stop for a moment to look at it. Gran collects Wedgwood so I always recognise it.

  ‘Come on,’ says Dad, already pounding through the entrance hall.
‘Morning!’ he booms to Dawn who’s selling brochures to a small group of students. He gives her his dazzling grin.

  ‘Hi,’ she says back. Her short hair is dark and thick against the white shirt of her uniform. She watches Dad’s retreating back for a moment as he starts to bound up the grand staircase, two steps at a time. Then she sees me and clears her throat. She gives me a wink before returning to the students.

  Dad is working upstairs in the library on the first floor today. It’s opposite Lady Eleanor’s bedroom and all the time I’m in the library I keep looking across the landing like I’m expecting somebody to come out of there or something. But of course nobody does and instead a stream of visitors go in there, exclaiming with pleasure at the ornate bed and the beautiful paintings and photographs on the wall.

  The library is kind of strange.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like a library,’ I say to Dad. There are loads of books on dark shelves across the entire length of one wall but it still doesn’t really look like I’d imagine a library in a manor house to look. There’s very little furniture in the room other than a small round rosewood table in the middle and a fireplace with a fender and one or two small ornaments above it.

  ‘That’s because it wasn’t,’ replies Dad. He’s busy noting down the titles of the books in the cabinet. ‘It used to be a guest bedroom, back in the Victorian era. But nobody would sleep in here because they reckoned it was haunted. More likely damp, in my opinion!’

  He gives his great earthy laugh and continues his job.

  I go over to the sash window and stare out at the parkland behind the house.

  ‘Why are they playing that?’ I say, pointing to a group of women who are hitting balls through small hoops on the ground. The balls clack and clunk together.

  ‘Oh, the manor lets people pay to come and play croquet here,’ says Dad. ‘But it’s not the season yet so perhaps they’re just practising. It’s usually children who come and copy the croquet scene out of Alice in Wonderland.

  ‘Right,’ I say, turning back to the window. I look for children, but can’t see any. There are only the three women hitting balls through hoops. Two of them are young and pretty with blonde hair piled up on top of their heads and they’re messing about a bit with each other. The other is much older and moving like her bones are made of china. Her hair is silver-grey against her dark dress.