Max closed the door and sat, the mattress sagging a little. ‘What’s wrong?’
Katie raised her voice, just in case Henry was putting his fingers in his ears. ‘I want to talk about my women’s periods. My monthlies. My flow.’
Max winced. ‘I said all right — you don’t need to shout.’
‘I’ve got problems with my uterus. My ovaries are aching.’
‘What?’ Max looked confused. She didn’t blame him.
‘My Fallopian tubes are twisted,’ Katie said, ‘and my vagina—’
Henry disappeared.
‘—is weird,’ Katie continued, looking around to check Henry wasn’t hiding in a corner or behind them.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Max said. He was leaning away from her, probably unconsciously, but Katie couldn’t help laughing.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘My tubes are fine.’
‘Is this some kind of test?’
‘I just wanted to get rid of Henry and I figured he’d be squeamish. He’s got that old-school reserve thing going on. My clothes disgust him, let alone talking about my secret lady parts.’
Max swallowed. ‘Right. He was here, then.’
‘Yep,’ Katie said, cheerfully. She stood up and pulled at one of the sheets, raising a massive cloud of dust. Once she’d finished coughing she said, ‘That’s why it was cold. Can’t you feel the difference now he’s gone?’
‘Yes,’ Max said thoughtfully. ‘He really exists. Ghosts really exist.’
‘Welcome to my world,’ Katie said.
‘But your vagina isn’t weird,’ Max said. ‘Just to clarify.’
Katie gave him what she hoped was a withering look and didn’t reply. She began investigating the boxes.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘That collection of odd stuff that Michelle mentioned. I thought it might still be in the hotel. It’s not in the library or any of the public rooms, so I thought I’d try here. Next stop is the attic.’
‘Why did you want rid of Henry?’
‘Because I don’t know how he’ll react to our looking through his stuff and…’ Katie hesitated ‘…partly because you’re right. I know I shouldn’t trust him.’
Max looked pleased. ‘While you’re listening to me, I’ve got news.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and began scrolling through photographs. He held up the screen and there was a fuzzy picture of a paper. ‘Love letters. To Violet Beaufort.’
‘Are you serious?’ Katie leaned in to look. The handwriting was slanted and dark, cramped together as if written by a very energetic but controlled hand. She didn’t think she’d be able to read it even if she were looking at the real thing rather than a grainy photo on a screen. ‘How—?’
‘I went to the folk museum in town.’
‘I didn’t know Pendleford had a museum.’
‘It’s tiny. A few black and white pictures of the high street and the names of the town mayors, that kind of thing. It’s practically run out of the owner’s front room.’
Katie felt mortified that she hadn’t known about it. She was really going to have to work on the wise-woman act.
‘Anyway, the woman there was about three hundred years old and she was happy to talk about The Grange. She had a problem with some of the renovation work that Patrick has done, but, once I got her off the conservatory, she told me that there was a big scandal here. When Violet Beaufort went missing.’
Katie went still. ‘Did she know anything else?’
‘Apparently our Violet was very popular. She was being pursued by two men.’
‘I know,’ Katie said. ‘That’s what I was going to tell you. Lord Somerset and Henry.’
Max shook his head. ‘Alexander James and Henry Keele. They were excavating Windmill Hill, apparently, and they got to know the Beauforts. These letters are from Alexander. He was in love with her.’
‘Maybe he’s just being polite. It was a different time, different ways of speaking—’
‘He talks of her beauty, of what a good mother she will make for his children and he signs them “for eternity”.’
‘Thank you,’ Katie said. He had taken time to go and research ghosts. Ghosts he probably didn’t really believe in. For her. She went on tiptoe and kissed Max on the cheek.
Max caught her around the waist, his hands on the bare skin between her skirt and vest top. ‘You’re welcome.’ And he bent to kiss her full on the mouth.
Katie reached up to meet him, giving herself up to the kiss. Everyone deserved a second chance. Even a con man.
After a moment, she broke away. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate this, but I really think we should look for that collection. While we have the chance.’
Max released her. ‘You should be more irresponsible, you know. Live a little.’ But he turned and began moving the broken chairs to get at a pile of boxes behind.
‘I tried irresponsible once,’ Katie said. ‘It did not end well. I’m now all about education.’
‘Didn’t you drop out of uni?’
‘I didn’t go in the first place,’ Katie said. ‘University wasn’t going to teach me what I need to know. Knowledge is power, but it’s got to be the right kind.’
‘You sound like my dad. I wanted to study maths but he thought I was crazy. He said I already knew its practical applications so what was the point.’
Katie tried to imagine a younger Max, thinking about studying rather than grifting. It was hard. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Card counting, mainly.’ Max took a penknife out of his pocket and ripped open the tape on the first box. ‘Old flyers,’ he said, putting the box on the floor.
‘However, autodidactism is all well and good but what about having fun? That doesn’t have to be dangerous. That can just be fun. I mean, we’re young, we’re healthy, why shouldn’t we have fun together?’
‘You make it sound like playing tennis.’ Katie tried not to get turned on by him saying ‘didactism’. Honestly, the man looked like a wise guy, spoke like a professor. It was confusing. And very hot.
‘It’s not far off. Gets your heart rate up, very good cardio—’ Max broke off as he reached into the box. ‘Hello. I think we have a winner.’ He held up a bit of twisted brown metal. It had a faded cardboard luggage tag tied to it. Max tilted it to the light. ‘Bronze brooch, c.1000 BC. Avebury, 1935.’
‘Well, that should definitely be in a museum.’
‘I wonder what it’s worth,’ Max said. Then, ‘What? I’m just curious.’
Katie plucked the brooch from Max and put it on the seat of the upmost stacked chair. ‘What else?’
Max began unwrapping newspaper from something the size of a tennis ball. Katie reached in and pulled out a box with a faded picture of a toothy smile on the lid. There were random bits of sticking plaster with some sketchy blue marks that might have, once upon a time, been writing. She opened the box and found the tiny, perfect skull of a bird. The image of a magpie flashed through her mind. She closed the box and put it with the brooch.
After three bits of pointy rock that might have been flint arrow heads, a box full of geodes and agates packed in cotton wool, and many free-floating paper labels that had become unattached from their objects, Katie found a burgundy leather photo album with half the pages empty. Some had yellowed squares and empty photo corners where pictures had once been, and some had clearly never been filled. Katie flipped through until she found a picture of a man in funny tweed trousers standing by a mound of earth and holding a pipe in one hand and an object in the other. Maybe a rock? Katie held the album closer but it didn’t help.
She turned a page and there was a photo of two men standing in a formal garden. The man from the previous page and a familiar face. Henry. There was nothing written underneath so Katie slipped the picture from its crumbling corners and checked the back. Alexander James and Henry Keele June, 1936. She held it out to Max who whistled between his teeth. ‘There’s lover boy.’
‘Lover boys. Hen
ry and Violet were an item. But her father didn’t approve.’
‘How do you know?’ Max said. ‘Research?’
Katie nodded. She’d explain some other time. Maybe.
‘Look at this.’ Max was unwinding cloth from a spherical object that Katie assumed was a glass fishing float. Once the cloth was removed it looked more like an oversized Christmas bauble. Max read the label. ‘Witch’s ball, circa 1890. You could give this to your aunt.’
Katie held out her hands and took the ball. It was a burnished coppery gold and felt warm in her hands. She didn’t want to give it away. She wanted it. It was hers in a way that seemed completely natural and inevitable. She held with her arms outstretched, turning it slowly to admire it.. A reflection of the room was held in the curved side of the ball, a perfect tiny reproduction of their world, complete with a tiny Katie and tiny Max. ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever had,’ Katie said. ‘Seriously. It’s beautiful.’
Max gave her a funny look. ‘Don’t you consider it stealing?’
‘I don’t think Patrick Allen is going to miss it,’ Katie said, hugging it to her body.
Max held his hands up. ‘You don’t need to convince me. I don’t care.’
‘Good,’ Katie said. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt that it was hers. Finders keepers. Hers. She felt an alarming violence rising up inside her at the thought of anybody trying to take it away from her.
Chapter 24
Gwen looked at the doctor, willing her to say something more useful.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else we can do. Unless you want to discuss treatments for infertility such as IVF or—’
‘No, thank you,’ Cam said. They’d discussed all of the options at great length. For months. Gwen thought she had resigned herself to this diagnosis; they’d been warned often enough that sometimes that was the outcome. The medical profession’s clinical way of saying ‘life can be cruel’.. It didn’t tell you why your body was betraying you in this awful, unforgivable way and it didn’t tell you why it was happening to you. Why she couldn’t get pregnant when they’d passed three teenage girls on the way through town, pushing babies, dragging toddlers, practically tapping fag ash onto their unwanted, accidental newborns.
Gwen felt the bile in the back of her throat. This wasn’t her. She wasn’t this mean, this judgemental. But she was just so fucking angry. Why couldn’t they have a baby when so many people seemed to manage it with such painful ease? Why?
‘Ms Harper? Would you like a glass of water?’ The doctor was looking at her with professional concern. Suddenly, Gwen had to get out of that office. That building. She needed fresh air and somewhere private to scream.
She leaned on Cam as they walked out of the building, feeling as if her legs might give way at any moment.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’
Gwen couldn’t answer him. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She wanted to be with Cam, but alone. She wanted to be outside but also underneath her duvet, curled into a foetal position. She wanted to put loud music on and scream until her throat was sore and to sit quietly with no sound whatsoever. Most of all, she didn’t want this. She didn’t want these feelings; she didn’t want this need; she didn’t want this emptiness and desolation that seemed both inside her and bigger than her.
‘There’s still a chance,’ Cam said. ‘There’s nothing actually wrong with either of us—’
‘Don’t,’ Gwen said. ‘Please.’
‘Sorry.’
They got into the car in silence. Gwen waited for Cam to start the engine but he sat, his hands resting on the steering wheel, and stared out of the windscreen. He wasn’t crying, but the expression on his face was so bleak it was worse. Gwen felt it like a stab of reproach. She was depriving him of children. She was defective. No matter what the specialist said, she knew, with the awful Harper certainty, that it was her fault. Cam would’ve fertilised any other woman within seconds.
‘It’s my fault,’ Cam said, surprising her out of her shame spiral.
‘What?’
‘I work too hard. Long hours. Stress.’
Gwen was too shocked to speak for a moment. Then she said, ‘That’s nonsense. Everything is fine, physically. You know that. You’ve got the slip of paper to prove it.’
Cam turned to her, looking wretched. ‘Not on paper. It’s like I’m not making room for a baby in our lives so one isn’t going to come along. I know that sounds crazy, but what if I haven’t wanted it as much as you have and that has somehow stopped it?’
Gwen went cold. ‘You don’t want a baby?’
‘I want to be a dad. I want to have children. Definitely. But what if the universe can sense that I work too hard or something? Or…’ Cam glanced away, embarrassed ‘…what if I’ve pissed off Mother Earth or something? I mean. If you tell me I have to paint myself green and dance around a tree, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.’
‘It doesn’t work like that. This isn’t either of our fault. And it isn’t destiny or fate or the universe. It just happens.’ In comforting Cam, Gwen felt the load lighten a little. She was right, she knew. This wasn’t because of blood magic or hexing or any of it. This was just life. She reached for Cam and pulled him to her; his head fitted onto her chest. She wrapped her arms around him and stroked his hair rhythmically while he cried.
*
Across town, Katie was taking a tea break and staring at her new most favourite thing in the world when Zofia walked into the staff room. ‘What is that?’
Katie quickly put the cloth back over the sphere. ‘Nothing. Just an ornament.’
Zofia reached out and flipped the material back. ‘Oh.’ She sat back on her heels. ‘That is good news.’
‘What is?’
‘You have a trap. That is very lucky. You should put that in your home. Although—’ Zofia glanced around the room ‘—maybe keeping it here might be best. Here is very bad.’
‘What do you mean “trap”?’
Zofia put her head on one side. ‘You know that’s a witch’s ball?’
‘Yes, that’s what the label said.’ Katie showed Zofia. ‘It’s an antique.’
‘They trap evil spirits. I’ve seen glass ones before. You hang them in a window or a doorway, somewhere like that.’
‘Like a dream catcher?’
Zofia shrugged. ‘I don’t know why you’d want to catch dreams. But bad spirits, yes, please.’
Katie nodded. ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Do you know how it works? It’s a bit big to carry around with me, but—’
‘I don’t know,’ Zofia said. ‘I think it just does. If you just have it near, it can draw them. Like a magnet.’
‘Thank you,’ Katie said. ‘I know you probably think I’m mad, but—’
‘Not mad,’ Zofia said. ‘I’m glad to see you have this. I’m glad you’re taking this seriously. He doesn’t.’
Katie knew she meant Patrick Allen.
‘There are evil spirits here,’ Zofia said. ‘We all need to be careful.’
‘They’re not all evil,’ Katie said, thinking of Violet.
Zofia blew air over her lips, making a disgusted face. ‘They’re not supposed to be here.’
‘Do you know how we could get rid of them?’
Zofia pulled a face. ‘My grandmother would know. She’s very wise. Knows about Wila. Spirits.’
She gave Katie a shrewd look. ‘She’d be able to help you. I think you have more to fear than most of us — am I right?’
Katie swallowed. ‘Maybe. Or maybe I’m luckier than everyone else. I can talk to them. I can see them. I’m hoping I can help them.’
Zofia shook her head. ‘You can’t help evil spirits. Only banish. That’s what my grandmother would say.’
‘Does she know how to do it?’
‘Oh, yes. She’d have this tidied up—’ Zofia snapped her fingers ‘—like that.’
Katie felt her hope rising, but she kept it in check long enough to ask,
‘Is she in Poland?’
Zofia nodded.
Katie’s heart sank.
‘But I can email her.’
‘Would you?’
Zofia patted her arm. ‘Of course.’
*
Katie looked for Violet in every public room of the hotel. The place had filled up with MOPs and The Plum Suite had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung on the door handle. Katie hoped, for their sake, that Violet wasn’t in residence. She went outside to check by the pond and then wandered around the gardens.
She found Violet in the walled garden. The borders were a little overgrown, but in a very attractive manner with blowsy summer blooms tumbling over one another and butterflies dotting the shrubbery. Katie looked at the different colours of roses, visible through Violet’s body, and breathed in the mix of floral scents.
‘I can’t smell them,’ Violet said, turning slowly. ‘I’ve been standing here for hours and I can’t smell a thing. Not the grass, not the flowers, not even my perfume. Why is that?’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know,’ Katie said. ‘But I have got something to tell you.’
She took a deep breath, hoping her news wasn’t going to be like a rose. She wanted to give Violet soft petals and happiness, no nasty hidden thorns.
‘Are you getting married?’ Violet clapped her hands together.
‘What? No.’
‘Oh, you were staring at the flowers. I thought you were planning your bouquet.’
Katie shook her head. ‘Henry’s here,’ she said, and then mentally kicked herself. Nice gentle way to break the news. Really smooth.
Violet had gone very still but Katie could tell she was upset by the way she had floated upwards and was now suspended at least a foot above the lawn. ‘He’s dead?’
‘Um, yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘But he’s like me? And he’s here?’ Hope and pain were fighting it out across Violet’s face. ‘Why can’t I see him? Is he with us now?’
Katie shook her head. ‘No. He’s usually in the library. I don’t know why you can’t see each other. I think it’s something to do with how and when you died, but I’m not sure.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Violet said. ‘What did I do? What did I do that was so terrible?’ She sank down to the grass and sat cross-legged, looking even younger than usual. She passed a hand across her face and looked up at Katie with an expression of frustration. ‘I should be crying but I can’t—’
The Secrets of Ghosts Page 23
