The Haunting of Tabitha Grey

by Vanessa Curtis

  The sun beats down on the croquet lawn and glints off the metal hoops, and for a moment I’m so dazzled by brightness that I shade my eyes with my hand. When I can see the lawn again, the hoops are still there but the women have gone.

  ‘They didn’t stay long,’ I say to Dad but he’s not really listening. Instead he’s flicking through an old book with a red cover that he’s just found in the bookcase.

  ‘This is fascinating!’ he says. ‘I don’t think it should really still be in the house. I ought to take it to the council archives. Look!’

  He passes me the red book. It’s got a gold-printed title on the front cover: A History of Weston Manor by Sir Charles Thomas-Fulford, 1905.

  ‘That’s the man who used to own the house,’ says Dad. ‘Lady Eleanor’s husband. I had no idea he wrote a history of this house!’

  I smile. Dad’s face is all lit up with excitement and he can’t keep still, shifting from leg to leg and fiddling with his hands.

  I guess that Dad’s having what he often refers to as ‘the researcher’s high’ which he’s always telling us is far more thrilling than drugs or alcohol or anything like that.

  I glance outside again.

  The three women are back. They have stopped playing croquet and are standing in a line facing the back of the house.

  They are looking up at me.

  Yes – I’m sure of it. But why would they?

  Two of them are smiling. The older one isn’t. The air around me fills up with the strong scent of lavender.

  ‘Dad,’ I begin, but my head is spinning with the sickly sweet smell. The walls of the room start to move in on me. I can hear Dad’s voice coming from a long way away, all concerned and serious, but I can’t work out where I am any longer and all I can smell is lavender and I can see the croquet lawn up close and larger now and the three women are back again with their mallets and long dresses and I’m right in the middle of their game and the older woman looks straight at me and holds out her thin arms and then I’m back in the library except the ceiling is spinning round and round in circles and then my head bangs back on to the parquet floor and I open my eyes and everything goes still.

  ‘Tabs!’ yells Dad. ‘Are you all right? What happened?’

  I sit up, clutching my head. ‘Not sure,’ I say. ‘There was this really strong smell.’

  Dad has gone white. ‘You gave me a fright,’ he says. ‘You just fell straight down. Stay there. I’m going to run to reception and get Sid.’

  I open my mouth to protest but he’s thundered off down the staircase and I don’t much feel like standing up on my wobbly legs, so instead I sit up on the floor.

  The room swims up to swallow me in a coat of blackness and this time I know I’m not going to beat it. I lie down and feel my heart beating in my mouth and the blood rushing around my ears and pouring down the back of my throat.

  Oh great, I think. Another nosebleed.

  Then – nothing.

  Chapter Five

  When I wake up Dad is looming over me and next to him is the round and slightly sweaty face of Sid.

  ‘How are you feeling, lass?’ he says. I reckon that it’s a pretty stupid question, given that I’m lying on a hard floor in a smelly library with a pounding headache and Dad shining his torch into my eyes to check for concussion, but I guess Sid’s just trying to be kind so I lurch to my feet, steady myself on the edge of the small rosewood table and stuff a tissue up my nose.

  ‘Where did those women go?’ I say.

  Dad frowns. ‘Women?’ he says. ‘Do you mean the people outside practising croquet? They’ve probably gone home.’

  ‘I’m sure they were looking at me,’ I say.

  Sid looks like he’s about to speak but then he changes his mind and pulls the blind down on the window instead.

  ‘Gets hot in here,’ is all he says.

  Dad is running his hands through his hair. ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure what’s happened here but I think you may have had a bit too much heat and excitement today, Tabs. Maybe you’re not as well as we thought. Time to get you back to the flat.’

  I roll my eyes behind his back. Heat and excitement. Yeah, sure. Like this house is ever HOT, for starters. And I’m not exactly excited.

  More like anxious.

  And confused.

  Sid goes back downstairs and joins Dawn at reception and Dad escorts me down the stairs and along the ground-floor corridor, like I’m an invalid or something, pointing out all the steps and uneven floor.

  ‘That’s it,’ he keeps saying. ‘Take it easy.’

  ‘Dad,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. It’s no big deal.’

  As we pass the reception desk Dawn looks up and catches my eye.

  She doesn’t say a word.

  I think Dawn knows stuff about this house.

  Dad walks past the entrance to the grand drawing room, which is now heaving with groups of art students all sketching the ornaments and furniture and it’s kind of reassuring to see normal people walking about, so I feel a bit better.

  Then we pass the dining-room door but there’s only one person in there, a woman in a dark blue dress sitting at the far end of the room by the servants’ door.

  She’s got her head in her hands so I’m about to tell Dad that there’s a visitor not feeling very well in the dining room but as I pass by she looks up and stares straight at me.

  Bolts of electricity run up and down my spine and a strange buzzing noise fills the air.

  Her face is a pale white oval. She has two dark slits for eyes.

  I taste blood at the back of my throat. I scream out. ‘Dad!’

  Dad scoops me under his arm and hustles me into the flat. The sound of our flat door closing behind us is the best sound I have ever heard in my life.

  Chapter Six

  I’m not allowed out for the rest of that day, or the one after.

  My head’s pounding and I can’t sleep. I keep seeing the faces of old women and younger women and they’ve all got dark eyes, which bore straight through my head and into my soul, like they know everything I’m thinking.

  Jake’s sent about fifty million texts asking if I’m OK. I reckon Gemma must have told him I’m ill, cos I didn’t actually tell him myself.

  Mum insists that a doctor comes to check me out as soon as I get back in the flat after my weird morning with Dad.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Honest.’

  ‘Tabitha,’ she snaps. ‘You’re having a nosebleed. You’re not fine at all. Lean forwards and hold your nose.’

  Actually she’s right. I’m not fine.

  I’m a bit freaked out. But something tells me not to go on about it all to Mum.

  She already thinks I’m a bit crazy and unhinged, and the last thing I need is for her to send me off to some mad-person’s hospital or something.

  So I keep quiet when Mum’s around, and Dad’s too busy and too much in the real world to try and discuss these things with, so I just sit tucked up on the sofa next to Ben. I wouldn’t tell him things, of course, as he’s only five and I don’t want to scare him, but I think he kind of gets that I’m terrified because his little hand creeps into mine and we watch some rubbish on CBBC together without him saying a word.

  The doctor comes and shines yet another torch in my eyes and asks me stupid questions about what year it is and what day it is and I get them all right so he tells Mum to keep me on the sofa for a couple of days and not to have any more ‘excitement’.

  I wish people wouldn’t keep going on about ‘excitement’.

  Excitement is not banging your head on a hard wooden floor and seeing strange women who aren’t really there.

  No.

  Excitement is Christmas or birthdays or new clothes or going to a gig.

  So I spend two days in my pyjamas in our flat while Mum fusses about making me milk jellies (yuk!) and chicken soup (vile) and making me drink fizzy aspirin (grosser than gross).

  Gemma comes round to see me. I don’t think s
he’s ever been in the manor before because her eyes are even bigger than usual and she’s all flushed with excitement when she’s let into our flat.

  ‘You’re so lucky, Tabs!’ she says as I make her a coffee and flop back on to the sofa. Ben shuffles up to the very end to make room for Gemma. I think he likes her cos he always goes quiet and kind of gooey-eyed when she’s around. She is very pretty. But the good thing is that she doesn’t make a big thing of it. She’s really into her sport and spends most of her spare time playing in hockey and netball matches right across the county.

  ‘You look rough,’ she offers now. I pass her a tube of digestive biscuits and we dunk them into our coffee. ‘What’ve you got? Is it that virus going round?’

  I give a small snort at that. I quite fancy having something as uncomplicated as a virus.

  I look at my best friend’s smooth healthy face and for a moment I want to tell her everything, offload my worries. She IS my best mate, after all.

  But Gem’s so much in the real world. Her life is based round sport and horses and dance classes and her family are quite religious and spend every Sunday at church and helping out in the Sunday school.

  Still . . .

  I decide to try it. She’s nice, Gem. She won’t make me feel too bad.

  ‘Gem,’ I say. ‘You know yesterday?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Gem, all smart. ‘It’s the day before today.’

  I whack her on the leg and Ben gives a faint smile.

  ‘Well, I kind of saw these three women,’ I say. ‘Out of the upstairs window. They were playing croquet but they had these weird dresses on.’

  ‘So?’ says Gem. She’s gazing around our flat, not listening all that much. ‘They have croquet days here all the time. My mum’s been to one. They probably dress up sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose,’ I say. It sounds a bit lame now, what I saw, even to me. ‘And then later on I saw this other woman sitting in the dining room in a blue dress and she looked up at me and she had this dead sad expression on . . .’

  There’s a crash in the corridor just outside our front door.

  Gem and I jump about fifteen miles in the air.

  ‘What’s that?’ she says.

  ‘Er, how should I know?’ I say.

  Only Ben doesn’t seem bothered by the noise. He’s doing Lego with about a thousand little people dressed up as farmers or policemen.

  There’s more banging and a weird rustling noise on the wood of the door and we stare at one another for a moment before Mum bursts into the flat with her arms full of broken carrier bags.

  ‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘They charge you 5p for these bags and then they split about five minutes later! Oh – hello Gemma. Forgot you were coming!’

  She struggles through into the kitchen and starts unloading packets of flour and punnets of fruit, so Gemma turns back to me and says:

  ‘Sorry, Tabs – you were telling me something? About a woman in a blue dress in the dining room?’

  Mum stops rustling her bags and stares over at me when Gem says that.

  ‘You girls can help me prepare lunch,’ she says. Her voice is low but firm.

  There’s not really any way I can carry on with my conversation and anyway I can tell that Gem’s not that interested, so we chop lettuce, spring onions and tomatoes for the salad Mum’s making for lunch.

  After Gemma has gone, there’s a gentle tap on the door of our flat. Dad goes to open it and Dawn’s standing there with a big bag full of grapes.

  ‘Oh,’ says Mum, all flustered. ‘I must look a state. If I’d known we were expecting a visitor I’d have made myself look a bit more presentable.’

  I see Dawn look for the briefest moment at Mum’s ripped jeans, baggy sweatshirt and unwashed hair shoved into a messy ponytail, and like loads of people she’s wondering how such a famous and beautiful ballerina can have become such a mess. I see Dad looking at Dawn’s long skinny legs and I see Mum watching Dad do this. For a moment, I see my Mum as other people see her and I see my Dad being not Dad – not a husband, but a man who still notices other women – and it’s like I’ve started KNOWING all this stuff since I moved into the manor and I never really knew any of it before and I wonder where all this brain power is coming from and why I never had it last year and I’m so busy wondering all this that I fail to thank Dawn, who has put the bunch of grapes next to me on the table.

  ‘Tabitha!’ Mum is hissing. ‘Manners!’

  Dad has already beckoned Dawn to sit next to him on the sofa. He leans back, runs his hand through his hair and gives her his twinkling smile, crossing one leg over the other.

  Mum opens a packet of peanuts and tips them with a tinkle into a glass bowl. She pours Dawn a glass of red wine and goes upstairs, coming back two minutes later with a dazzling red lipstick on, her hair combed into a sleek brown bun and wearing a pair of tight black leggings with a floaty pink tunic and a pink wrap tied over the top.

  For a moment, Dad loses the thread of his conversation with Dawn and gawps at Mum.

  ‘You look great!’ he says and Mum gives him a faint smile, which is the only sort of smile she does these days, and Dawn looks unsettled and glances at her watch.

  I can’t stop looking at Mum. She’s wearing her old rehearsal clothes, but they always look amazing on her.

  I look at Dawn. Now I come to think of it, her outfit looks a bit cheap and tight and nasty. Mum looks so classy in her pale pink wrap top and with a few wisps of hair around her face.

  She sips from her wine and makes polite conversation with Dawn but I can kind of feel this silent battle going on in the air and I reckon that Mum is winning hands down because she’s got this amused glint in her eye. Her voice is low and sophisticated when she asks questions and I’m not surprised when Dawn stands up, tugs at her short skirt as if to try and make it longer and thanks my parents for the wine.

  ‘I’d better be off,’ she says. ‘I’m on duty first thing in the morning!’

  She backs towards our front door under Mum’s stare.

  Mum makes no effort whatsoever to get up, so Dad goes to see Dawn out and I hear him murmur something under his breath but I can’t catch what he’s saying and all I see is Dawn colour a little and then make a hasty exit.

  We hear the sound of the main door to the manor being locked, the sound of her heels clacking down the steps outside and an engine starting.

  Then Mum stands up and claps her hands. Her face is a bit too flushed from the wine and something else – anger? Victory? I can’t tell.

  ‘I reckon we’ll have a takeaway tonight,’ she says. ‘I fancy a night off cooking. Might go and do a bit of dancing downstairs.’

  Then she floats out of the room leaving a cloud of Chanel perfume on the air behind her.

  Dad and I gaze in the direction she’s just gone in for a moment without speaking.

  Then Dad breaks the trance by leaping up to grab his keys.

  ‘Chinese?’ he says. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Then he slams out of the flat, leaving Ben and me alone.

  We look at one another without speaking.

  Ben slinks off to follow Mum down to the basement.

  I go upstairs to my bedroom and curl up under the duvet for a bit.

  Dad takes nearly an hour getting the food. He comes back in rubbing his hands and carrying two large bags with steaming hot Chinese food in them.

  ‘Go get your mother,’ he says to me.

  I roll my eyes and swing my legs off the sofa where I’m now watching a re-run of Gossip Girl.

  Dad starts opening boxes and packets and a gorgeous smell fills the air so I head off towards the basement to get Mum so that I can stuff my face as soon as possible.

  On the way down to Mum’s dance room I meet Ben sitting on the basement steps watching her through the window in the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I say. Stupid question, really. He’s doing what he always does – hanging around and getting in the way.

  I step
over him and continue downstairs.

  Mum is dancing with one spotlight trained down on to her so that she stands in a pool of light. She’s standing on pointe, on one leg with the other stretched up high behind her.

  I’m about to tell her that supper’s ready but something stops me.

  It’s the look on her face.

  It’s like she’s suddenly got five years younger or something. All the fine lines on her face have vanished and her skin is glowing. She’s looking downwards at the floor and smiling like she’s remembering something lovely that has happened.

  I try to think when I last saw Mum’s face looking like this but I can’t. Suppose it’s probably how she looked on stage most nights at the Royal Ballet when she curtseyed and took her bow whilst the audience threw red roses at her.

  It’s a beautiful look. Kind of pure and shining and glowing with love.

  Maybe the fact that she got dressed up when Dawn came has made her feel better.

  Anyway, it’s kind of nice that she’s looking so serene and not grey in the face with her usual migraine.

  ‘Mum,’ I say, then again, louder, ‘MUM. Dinner is ready.’

  My mother jumps and clutches her heart.

  ‘Tabs, don’t creep up on me like that,’ she says, but she’s still smiling.

  By the time we get back upstairs to the kitchen her face has taken on its usual mask again and looks dull and cold.

  I crunch my way through a bag of prawn crackers and text Gemma who now wants to come and spend a night in the manor because her parents reckon it’s haunted.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I say. ‘Nothing much ever happens here.’

  Then I wonder why I wrote that.

  We go to bed early because Mum has faded back into tiredness again and Dad’s going out to patrol once around the manor with Sid to check everything is OK.

  I make sure that Ben is tucked up in the little room next to my own and then I lie in bed and try again to remember when it was that I last saw Mum’s face looking so amazing.