The Stranger Diaries

by Elly Griffiths

  We didn’t know that Miss Hughes was a white witch at first. I just knew that she was a brilliant teacher. She knows immediately when words are right and when they’re wrong. But, when she suggests changes, she doesn’t make you feel like a fool. She encourages you, inspires you to do your best work. She’s not glamorous like Miss Elphick, or even like Mum, I suppose. She’s quite dumpy and has long grey hair in a bun. She does have a wonderful voice, however, very deep with just a hint of Welsh. The first hint that Miss Hughes wasn’t your usual atheist slash C of E was when she mentioned going to Glastonbury for a holiday. ‘Is that where your family is from?’ Tash asked. We were mildly obsessed with her by then. ‘My sisters are there,’ she said, with a smile. Another time, Venetia was scared because she was going into hospital for an operation (she was born with a hole in her heart, not that serious but she makes a lot of it) and Miss Hughes gave her some oil to sprinkle on her pillow and a picture of a hare staring at the moon with ‘May the Goddess Keep You’ on the back. Vee said that the oil gave her wonderful dreams.

  It was only at the end of Year 9, when we were talking about Macbeth, that she told us. Patrick had said that the play would only have really worked in the seventeenth century when people were afraid of witches. Miss Hughes did her inward smile again and said, ‘People are still afraid of witches. We always fear what we don’t understand. I only tell very special people that I’m a white witch. Ordinary souls just could not comprehend it.’ Of course, we were thrilled that we were special and not ordinary. She hasn’t told us much and she certainly hasn’t tried to convert us, like those people Mum is always arguing with on the doorstep, the ones with the magazine that says we’re all going to hell because we use smartphones. But Miss Hughes has taught us some meditation techniques and some simple chants. She has taught us how to create a circle of protection and how to rid ourselves of pestilential spirits. She’s also given each of us a black obsidian stone that guards against evil spirits. That’s why I’m not scared to be sitting alone on Halloween reading a ghost story. On the contrary, I want to be open to the souls that are walking abroad tonight, to help them if I can.

  ‘Unquiet souls, be not afraid. Loose the bonds of earth and turn your faces to the light . . .’

  Herbert starts to bark loudly. I can hear someone walking up the steps. I’m slightly irritated but I remember the Haribos and go to the door with a welcoming smile on my face.

  ‘Hallo, beautiful.’

  It’s not trick-or-treaters. It’s Ty.

  He’s on his way to do his shift at the pub but he says that he doesn’t want me to be alone on Halloween. ‘I’ll just stay here till your mum gets in.’

  I bite back my annoyance because he means well. Ty always means well. He’s like an overgrown puppy. God knows why Mum and Dad think he’s the Prince of Darkness. Ever since we met in that club last summer, when I’d used my fake ID and got super drunk, he has tried to look after me. ‘You don’t know about the world,’ he would say, from the height of his twenty-one years of experience, ‘it’s a scary place.’ But, thanks to Miss Hughes and the creative writing group, I have travelled the length and breadth of this world and the next. I’m not scared of anything.

  Ty comes and sits on the sofa, laughs at the candles and eats a handful of Haribos. Herbert growls at him from the other side of the room. I swear that animal is Mum’s familiar. He makes Ty sneeze, even though poodle fur is usually non-allergic.

  Ty picks up my ghost story anthology and starts to read it but I know the moment for R.M. Holland has passed. I turn on the TV and Ty slides his arm round me. Now we are into our regular snog/wrestle-athon. Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to have sex with Ty. He’s good-looking and he knows what he’s doing, unlike the boys in our year. It’s important to embrace sexuality, Miss Hughes says, it’s a powerful force. But Ty is determined not to sleep with me until I’m sixteen in February. So we have these exhausting sessions where we do almost everything but. He keeps breaking off to groan and stare into space and even I feel like a spring that has been coiled so far that it would explode. Now he’s kissing me and one hand is in my waistband and the other is undoing my bra. I stop thinking about anything much. My mind is red and black, full of buzzing insects. Then Herbert starts to bark.

  Ty sits up straight. ‘Is it your mum?’ He’s terrified of Mum. It’s hilarious.

  ‘It’s far too early. She’s got to take a rehearsal. Listening to Peppa Pig singing about man-eating plants.’

  Ty looks blank. As well he might.

  But Herbert is wagging his tail and squealing in the way that he only does for Mum. He jumps on the back of the sofa and starts yapping in my ear. Headlights shine into the sitting room. I blow out the candles and switch on the main light. Ty is tucking himself in. I do up my bra and switch the channel onto Friends. The sort of thing a normal teenager might watch.

  The door opens but Mum doesn’t come into the sitting room. She must have seen Ty’s car and realised that he is here. It annoys me that she will think this is what I had planned. A clandestine evening with my boyfriend. When, in fact, my motives were much higher and purer.

  Mum goes into the kitchen and I follow her. She is standing there in her swingy red coat, pouring wine into a glass.

  ‘What happened?’ I say. ‘Was the rehearsal cancelled?’

  She turns and I’m shocked. She looks terrible. Her face is usually pale but now it looks as if someone has thrown white paint at it. Her mascara is smudged as if she’s been crying.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I say.

  She takes a gulp of wine. ‘I’ve just had a shock,’ she says and tries to smile. ‘Is Ty here?’

  ‘He’s just going,’ I say.

  ‘He doesn’t have to go immediately,’ she says, ‘but someone might be popping round later. It’s probably better if he isn’t here then.’

  ‘He has to leave by six,’ I say. ‘He’s working in the pub tonight.’

  Mum looks relieved. She clearly wants me out of the way, too, so I take pity on her.

  ‘I’ve got lots of homework to do when he’s gone,’ I say.

  Chapter 17

  Mum’s visitor arrives at about ten. I look out of my window and see a grey car, quite cool, and a woman getting out. I can’t see her face but I’m pretty sure that it’s the policewoman who was in school yesterday. Patrick had to see her because he was in Miss Elphick’s class and he said that she was really scary, the sort who looks like she knows exactly what you’re thinking and isn’t impressed by it. The dead souls in the old factory are doing their thing tonight, lights flickering, strange sounds, electrical energy so strong that I’m surprised not to see forked lightning cutting through the sky. The policewoman senses something; she stops and looks up. But she obviously decides not to listen to her inner voice because she shakes her head and continues on her way towards our front door.

  Mum thanks her for coming and the policewoman says, ‘I was in the area’ as if brushing off any suggestion that she was being kind. Then they go into the sitting room and I can’t hear any more. After a bit, Herbert comes upstairs and sits on my bed. He must be bored with all the murder talk. I’m not. I long to know what they’re saying. No one has talked to me about Ella, in spite of the fact that I knew her quite well. She was always coming here. But I’m just a child. Worse, a moody teenager. No one wants to hear my opinion, which is their loss, really.

  Stroking Herbert with one hand, I open my laptop. I do have homework to do, history and Spanish, but right now I have to do something more important — complete today’s diary entry. It can be quite a chore, keeping a diary, but that’s the point, you have to do it whether you feel like it or not. It’s great training for becoming a writer, Miss Hughes says. Tash, Venetia, Patrick and I are all on MySecretDiary.com. It’s actually only as secret as you want it to be; a lot of people make their entries public (well, within the website, that is; only members can view
posts, not the entire internet). I share mine sometimes, but only when I think my writing is especially good, which does defeat the object of a diary — it’s meant to be a workaday document, not a finished piece of prose. But I do polish and hone my entries. I think this is because I’m doing it on the laptop where it’s easy to edit yourself. I can’t imagine how it must feel to write your diary by hand, knowing that you only have one chance to express yourself, that the ink is on the paper for ever. I bet no one keeps that kind of diary nowadays.

  I log in. Herbert17 is my password, which is dangerous because I use it for everything. Herbert himself is pretending to be asleep but I know he’s watching me. I scroll down the entries from this evening. Venetia has posted, so has Patrick. There are also entries from LittleBear, whom I find annoying, and CyberWolf, whom I sort of fancy.

  Patrick’s off on one of his fantasy trips again, where you don’t know if it’s him or his alter-ego Puma who’s writing. That doesn’t interest me very much. I think real life is always darker and more complicated than fantasy. Venetia has too much real life in hers. It’s all ‘my mum doesn’t understand me’, ‘this boy didn’t notice me’, ‘nobody liked my Instagram picture’. The point is, none of our mothers understand us, they are congenitally and sociologically incapable of understanding us. Venetia is like all St Faith’s girls, obsessed with boys but also rather afraid of them. She’s always lusting after someone she’s seen on the bus or who she only knows on Facebook. She would say (I can hear her voice so clearly that I wonder if she’s done an audible projection spell), ‘It’s OK for you, Georgie, you’ve got a boyfriend’. And I suppose there’s some truth in that. But all that Instagram/Snapchat stuff is so boring. Mum and Dad love to pretend that I’m addicted to social media. I hear them talking to their friends, that light-hearted voice that conceals real emotion, ‘Georgie’s always on her phone, texting, WhatsApping, whatever it’s called. It can’t be healthy. At her age I was out playing hockey/doing a paper round/meeting my friends. Teenagers today . . .’ And so on ad infinitum. I let them think this because it’s easier (also interesting how they think: reading a book — good, reading on screen — bad) but actually I never post on social media. I use chat groups, of course — even some of our teachers have study groups on Facebook — but the only site I ever visit is MySecretDiary.

  I start typing: ‘Halloween was cancelled this year because of Miss Elphick’s death. It’s as if the Grim Reaper can’t intrude into the kitsch glitterfest that All Hallows’ Eve has become. Some people at school wore witch hats or vampire teeth but the teachers, many of them still red-eyed over Miss E, told them off. In Geography, Mr Carter almost cried when someone asked him about the funeral. It’s to be in the school chapel, apparently. That’s the last place I’d want for my last rites. But then I don’t want a church funeral. I want to be scattered to the four elements. Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath, fire my spirit.’

  I pause. Thinking. If I’m going to publish this, I should stop here. It’s quite good, especially the line about the Grim Reaper. But if I go on, to mention Ty and my mum and the fact that a police officer is here now, in this house, then it should stay private. I’ve written about Miss Elphick’s death on here but I don’t want people to think that Mum could be involved in any way. I want to publish, to show Patrick and Venetia that I’m writing, but you never know who else has an account on here. Parents think that we don’t understand this but we do. I switch the setting to ‘Private’.

  ‘Something happened at school today. Mum came home looking as if she’d seen a ghost. Maybe she had? The spirit of R.M. Holland’s wife is meant to haunt the school. I’ve never seen her but I’ve certainly felt a chill atmosphere on the first floor of the Old Building. Everyone hates going there for lessons. It’s not so much that it’s spooky, it’s more that it’s sad. You can feel the sadness of Alice Holland, her despair as she took that fateful plunge from the top floor landing. I know that Mariana is there too; sometimes I’ve felt her very close to me. I wish Mum had let me stay in her meeting with Henry Hamilton. But no, I had to be parcelled off with spotty Edmund. “Young people together”. Mum, of course, hoping that I’d fall for the Cambridge vibe and vow to dedicate myself to getting all A*s in my exams. I’m so much more interested in R.M. Holland than I am in university. Or boys, for that matter.

  ‘Ty came over tonight. He thought he was being kind, or protective, or something. He didn’t want me to be alone on Halloween when, of course, that was all I wanted. And, of course, he kissed me and the whole thing started again. I wish we could just have sex and be done with it. But he has his scruples. ‘You’re under age,’ he keeps saying. But age is just a number. Besides, Miss Hughes thinks that I might have had a former life as an old wise woman (another word for witch, of course). Anyway, Mum came in before things could get too heated. Ty is ridiculously in awe of Mum so he disappeared after exchanging a few stuttered words with her. Then I cooked supper because Mum was still too distracted. She said she was expecting ‘a visitor’ so I went upstairs to ‘do homework’. The visitor turned out to be the policewoman investigating Miss Elphick’s murder. Why did Mum ask her to come over? Does Mum have some evidence about Ella’s death? They were good friends, I know. E often used to come here and they’d drink wine and watch Strictly (the opium of the middle-aged). Did something happen this evening? Just like in the books, when Poirot suddenly ‘knows’ who the murderer is, but won’t tell anyone because there are a hundred pages still to go. Well, Mum won’t tell me and I can’t even discuss this in the group because Patrick is still obviously hung up on Miss E. Age might be just a number but sixteen-year-olds aren’t allowed to send valentines to their teachers. I told him so at the time. But people often don’t listen to me.

  ‘Their mistake.’

  Chapter 18

  Miss Elphick’s funeral is on Saturday but Mum makes me wear my school uniform. ‘Mr Sweetman wants students to wear uniform. That way you’ll stand out; he thinks Ella’s parents will like it.’ Mr Sweetman — Tony to Mum, of course — is always thinking about how things will look. Still, he’s not a bad head teacher. Some of the girls think he’s hot, which is ridiculous. He looks like a Radio 2 DJ.

  Mum looks really nice in her black dress and coat. I look like an idiot in my sweatshirt and kilt. It’s a really cold morning so I also wear my parka and a black beanie. We must look like a supermodel and a tramp walking to the car. I don’t complain because one, I’m training myself not to think about outward appearance and two, Mum seems really, really stressed. She was on the verge of tears when we were having breakfast but then, when Herbert jumped onto the table and started nosing at the Marmite, she started to laugh hysterically.

  ‘Take a chill pill, Mum,’ I said, lifting Herbert down. It’s one of my stock ‘normal teenager’ phrases. Something to make the parents roll their eyes and talk about the influence of America on today’s youth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m so strung up. I’m just dreading today.’

  ‘The only way to get through it is to get through it,’ I said, paraphrasing one of Miss Hughes’ sayings.

  ‘You’re a wise old thing sometimes,’ said Mum, giving me a quick hug. ‘You know that?’

  In the car Mum brakes twice for imaginary foxes and once because a bird of prey flies right in front of us, very low, its wings almost scraping our windscreen. That’s an omen, all right. I’m just not sure what it signifies.

  There are lots of cars already in the car park when we arrive. It looks weird to see the caretakers in suits with black ties standing by the main steps. Mum stops to have a word with Dodgy Dave, the older of the two. He gives me a wink when we move on. I ignore him.

  We only go into the chapel for special assemblies or music concerts. It’s usually kept locked. I don’t play an instrument and I left the choir in Year 9 so I haven’t been inside for ages. Today I’m surprised how big is it, how many people it can
hold. The main part of the church and the choir stalls are almost full. There are white flowers on the altar. Lilies, fleshy and somehow obscene, their scent filling the air. The front two rows are empty, presumably for Miss Elphick’s family. Mum sits about two rows back. Mr Lewis is in front of us with a fat woman whom I assume is his wife. There are lots of other teachers here. Mrs Francis, the deputy head. Miss Palmer, my English teacher. Mr Carter, who teaches Geography. No sign of Mr Sweetman but maybe he’s waiting for the family. Eventually, after craning my head round, I see her, near the back, her hair in grey plaits wound round her head. Miss Hughes smiles at me and I smile back. Patrick and Venetia are sitting with her but I can’t really leave Mum. After a bit, Tash and her mother come to sit with us so that’s all right.

  Then there’s a movement at the back of the church and we know that the coffin has arrived. I’ve never been to a funeral before. I’ve only been to one wedding, when Dad married Fleur, but that was in a registry office. They didn’t even have bridesmaids. Still, Fleur wanted me to have a role — which was quite sweet of her really — so I wore this Laura Ashley dress and carried a bunch of flowers. I was twelve and felt a real idiot. Mum wasn’t there, for obvious reasons, so I sat with Granny — Dad’s mum — who kept stroking my hair and sighing. She didn’t approve of Fleur then, but she slightly changed her mind when Fleur pumped out two babies in quick succession, one of them a boy.

  This is a bit like a wedding, in an awful way. The coffin comes up the aisle, carried by men in black, and people follow behind, like bridesmaids and pageboys. These must be Miss Elphick’s family, a grey-haired man and woman, holding hands tightly, and an older couple. Are they Miss Elphick’s grandparents? It seems so awful somehow to outlive your grandchildren. Another middle-aged couple follow and then Mr Sweetman brings up the rear, looking like he has practised his caring face in the mirror.