The Stranger Diaries

by Elly Griffiths

  Miss Hughes looks at her steadily, her eyes very blue. ‘That’s not the question we should be asking,’ she says.

  ‘What is the question?’ says Tash.

  ‘Whether Ella’s spirit is still with us,’ says Miss Hughes. ‘Or whether we need to help her towards the light.’

  ‘Were you talking to that odd woman from the sixth-form college?’ says Mum, as we drive home. ‘What’s her name, Bryony something? Bryony Hughes, that’s it. How do you know her?’

  ‘She used to teach Venetia,’ I say.

  ‘She’s a bit of an oddball,’ says Mum. ‘Ella used to say that she was a witch.’

  We are both silent for a few minutes. Mum is obviously thinking about Ella and I’m wondering how much Miss Elphick knew about Miss Hughes’ powers. Probably it was just a joke to her, as it clearly is for Mum. She’s been in an odd mood ever since we left the school, almost manic. Laughing about the terrible singing one minute, wiping away tears the next, the car wandering over to the other side of the road. I can’t wait until I’m seventeen and can do the driving.

  ‘I saw you talking to Patrick O’Leary,’ she says.

  I decide that silence is best. I watch the grey winter fields slide past; they look soft, like fur.

  ‘Is he a friend of yours?’ asks Mum, after a long pause.

  I shrug (as teens are meant to do).

  ‘I can see that he’s quite dishy,’ she says, in a truly gruesome attempt to seem relatable.

  I say nothing.

  ‘Bad boys are always attractive.’

  Dear God. Make it stop. To put us both out of our misery, I say, ‘I don’t know him very well. He seems a bit boring. You know, rugby player and all that.’

  Mum relaxes visibly. Her shoulders lowering, her hands unclenching on the steering wheel.

  ‘Do you prefer Ty to Patrick?’ I can’t help teasing her a little.

  ‘I don’t dislike Ty,’ she says. ‘He’s a nice boy. A nice man. I just think he’s a little old for you.’

  ‘Would you rather I went out with Patrick?’

  She gives me a quick look. ‘Has he asked you out?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Chill out, Mum.’ That piece of teen speak obviously reassures her. We drive home in what passes for a companionable silence.

  Listen to the wind howling. It seems to rock the train, does it not? We’re quite safe here, though,. After all, there’s no connecting door between the carriages. No one can come in or out. More brandy?

  What happened next? Well, the prosaic truth is: nothing much to speak of. Gudgeon’s parents took his body away and he was buried at his home in Gloucestershire. I didn’t attend. I don’t know what happened to Wilberforce. And as I said before, the police never found their killer. A year later, the ruined house was demolished. I continued my studies. I think I became quite solitary and strange. Other students would look at me oddly as I crossed the quad or sat in the dining hall. ‘That’s him,’ I heard someone whisper once. ‘The other one.’ I suppose I became ‘the other one’ to most men in Peterhouse, possibly even to myself.

  I didn’t see much of Bastian or Collins. I was now officially a member of the Hell Club but I didn’t attend their meetings or the infamous Blood Ball, which was held every year. I spent most of my time in my rooms or in the library. My only contact with my fellow students was with members of the shooting club. With them, at least, I managed some uncomplicated, comradely hours.

  I graduated with a first, which was gratifying. I had heard that Lord Bastian had been sent down and that Collins did not complete his degree. But they were at different colleges and our paths had long since diverged. I began to read for a doctorate, continuing with the solitary, bachelor existence that I had established in my undergraduate days.

  Then, in my first term as a postgraduate student, I received some rather strange correspondence. It was November, a bitterly cold day, and I remember the frost crunching under my feet as I walked to the porters’ lodge to collect my post. Not that I ever received many letters. My mother wrote occasionally and I subscribed to a couple of scholarly theological journals. That was it. But on this day there was something else. A letter with a foreign postmark, inscribed in a strange, slanting hand. I opened it with some curiosity. Inside was a cutting from a Persian newspaper. I did not, of course, understand the Perso-Arabic script but there was a translation, written with the same italic pen. It said that a man called Amir Ebrahimi had been killed in a freak accident involving a hot air balloon. The ascent had gone perfectly but, at some point during the flight, Ebrahimi had fallen from the basket underneath the balloon and had plummeted to his death. I turned the letter over in my hands, wondering why someone would have thought that I would be interested in this gruesome event. It was then that I saw the words written on the reverse of the paper. Hell is empty. And I remembered that Ebrahimi had been the name of the third man, the companion of Bastian and Collins.

  The other one.

  Part the fourth

  Clare

  Chapter 20

  I feel a little uneasy about leaving Georgie at home on the evening of Ella’s funeral. But Debra begs me. ‘I’ll go mad if I’m home with Leo and the kids tonight. I need to be with someone who loved Ella. We can go to the pub in the village. Have a curry, share a bottle of wine. It doesn’t have to be a late one.’ So I ask Georgie and she seems fine with it. She says she’ll have Tash and Venetia round to watch Strictly. I don’t ask if Ty is coming but I presume it’ll just be the girls. I wasn’t too pleased to see Georgie chatting to Patrick O’Leary after the funeral. I taught him in Year 9 and he’s the sort of boy who is acquiring a power over women and the ruthlessness to use it. I know his parents slightly. They’re hard-drinking, hard-partying Irish people. Nice enough but not the sort to talk to their son about his misogynistic attitudes. But, when I brought the subject up, Georgie said airily that Patrick was rather boring. I found this reassuring and probably true. I don’t suppose that there’s much in Patrick O’Leary’s head besides rugby.

  I was also rather disturbed to see Georgie in a group that included Miss Hughes, an English teacher at the sixth-form college. Bryony Hughes is a bit of an old hippy, hair in Brunhilda plaits, dripping with crystals and silver jewellery. Apparently she gets great exam results but she’s one of those teachers who relies on charisma — a sort of Welsh Miss Jean Brodie — and I always find that rather suspect. Ella was a bit that way inclined, which is maybe why she was friends with her. Mind you, I think they had a falling out not too long ago. Ella used to say that Bryony was a white witch who got her kicks from dancing around graveyards at midnight. I don’t suppose that’s true but maybe Ella started to find the whole Weird Sister act a little creepy. Anyway, I didn’t want Georgie falling under her spell. She’ll probably go to the sixth-form college after Talgarth and I’d like to make sure that she isn’t in Miss Hughes’ class. Mind you, I don’t expect that Georgie will take English. She’s never been that interested in books.

  Natasha and Venetia arrive just as I’m leaving, dropped off by Venetia’s older brother in a rather flashy sports car. They’re nice girls. Tash is full of enthusiasm, like a setter puppy. I find her a bit flaky sometimes but I can see that she would be good fun to have as a friend. She’s bright, too, and doesn’t seem too boy-obsessed. Her mother is a music teacher and her father is a doctor so my middle-class anxieties are soothed. Venetia is a redhead, very thin and slightly nervous-looking. Her parents are rather upper-class, which I find as off-putting as the O’Learys and their Derby Day drinking sessions. Really, it’s very difficult to get the class thing right for me. Simon would say I’m only happy with Guardian readers who own their own homes and he’s probably right. I suppose Georgie met Venetia during her time at St Faith’s so it’s nice — if slightly surprising — that they’ve stayed friends.

  I’d told Georgie she could order pizza on my account and Tash thanks m
e profusely.

  ‘You’re the best, Clare.’ All Georgie’s friends call me Clare at home and Miss Cassidy at school. They seem to manage the switch quite easily. I’m the one who can’t forget that I once gave Tash a detention for forgetting her homework or that, in Year 8, Georgie’s friend Paige wrote an essay about her mum’s boyfriend and his drug habit.

  Debra and I meet at The Royal Oak, one of the many inns where Charles II is meant to have sheltered whilst on the run from the Roundheads. These days it’s a gastro pub, rather prone to balancing food in little towers but they do a good curry and it’s not too noisy, even on a Saturday night. I usually try not to drink at all if I’m driving but I have a small glass of red wine. Debra has a large gin and tonic.

  ‘I need it,’ she says, clinking glasses. ‘God, I hate funerals.’

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone enjoys them,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, knocking back half the drink although she, too, has a car outside. ‘Some of my older relatives seem to love them. But it’s different when it’s someone old, who’s lived a good life, all their children and grandchildren there. Remembering them. But with Ella. Jesus. She had so much living left to do.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Her poor parents. Did you talk to them?’

  Ella’s parents returned from the crematorium just before I left the wake. I’d only managed a few quick words, an awkward embrace, a nebulous promise to keep in touch.

  ‘Just briefly,’ says Debra. ‘They’re being so brave but her mum looked devastated. “I’ve lost my best friend”, she said to me.’

  Would Georgie describe me as her best friend? Almost certainly not, which is probably as it should be, but, just for a moment, I feel a pang of something that is close to envy. I’m not exactly friends with my mum, though I love her, I suppose. I feel closer to my grandmother in Scotland, although I don’t get to see her often enough.She writes me letters but I never seem to have time to answer them. I’d like to set her up with Skype but she says the Wi-Fi connection is too weak in Ullapool. I must go see her soon.

  I take a sip of wine, trying to drink slowly. I’m thinking about mothers and daughters and almost miss Debra saying, ‘How’s Rick bearing up?’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘He sat in front of me at the funeral.’

  ‘With his wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His wife never knew about Ella, did she?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure she didn’t.’

  Debra leans forward, in spite of the fact we’re in one of the booths and there’s nobody within earshot.

  ‘The police asked me about Rick.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘Yes, they asked me what happened in Hythe. I said I didn’t know because I wasn’t there.’ Debra does know about Ella’s one-night stand with Rick, however. Ella told her, dwelling on Rick’s pathetic lovelorn behaviour. It’s only now that I’m wondering if his behaviour was more sinister than pathetic.

  ‘They asked me about Rick too,’ I say.

  ‘Did you tell them that he had a thing for you too?’

  ‘She seemed to know already. DS Kaur, I mean.’

  ‘She’s a toughie, isn’t she? Did you know that she used to go to Talgarth?’

  ‘Yes, she told me.’

  ‘Dorothy Lodden in textiles remembers teaching her.’

  ‘Really?’ I’m interested in this. ‘What was she like as a schoolgirl?’

  ‘Bright, apparently. But she didn’t like textiles — or needlework as it was called then — much. Used to sit at the back and read James Herbert books.’

  I can just imagine the young Harbinder being a fan of the horror genre.

  ‘Do you really think they suspect someone at the school?’ I say.

  ‘Well, it’s usually someone close to the victim, isn’t it?’ says Debra. ‘That’s what they say in the books.’ Then suddenly her face crumples and tears start to pour down her cheeks. She dabs at them with her red napkin. ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘Listen to me! The victim. I sound like someone in a TV drama, the sort Leo likes to watch on a Saturday night. But Ella was our friend.’

  I remember how interested Debra was in the police and their investigation. Maybe that’s what we all do: construct a story to avoid facing the reality.

  ‘The whole thing is like being in a play,’ I say. ‘Or a nightmare. I keep thinking that she’ll come back.’

  ‘As a ghost, you mean?’ says Debra.

  That wasn’t what I meant but, now she says it, I imagine Ella gliding towards me, her long blonde hair streaming out behind her. Like Lady Macbeth. Like Alice Holland. The ghost Ella doesn’t speak but I know that she is angry with me.

  Debra puts her hand on mine. ‘She won’t come back,’ she says gently. ‘She’s dead, Clare.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. At that moment I feel utterly despairing.

  I drive home very slowly. A mist has blown in from the sea — a sea fret they call it round here — and visibility is down to a few metres. Putting on the beam doesn’t help; it just lights up the fog, making it look theatrically spooky, like dry ice. When I get back, Georgie is in bed. Three burnt-out candles are on the coffee table, reminding me suddenly of The Stranger. There are some dried leaves on the table too and I sniff them suspiciously. I don’t think Georgie smokes weed but you never know. This smells like potpourri. I always get masses of the stuff as end-of-year presents, along with chocolates, candles, the occasional bottle of wine or fridge magnets that say, ‘My best teacher’. Herbert is frisking around, trying to get in the way. He also sniffs at the leaves curiously, one ear up, one ear down.

  ‘Come on, sniffer dog,’ I say. ‘Time for your night-time wee.’

  I take him across the road. There’s a full moon but it’s hazy in the mist, shining a faint diffused light over the factory ramparts. I think of the lights that I saw there the other night. Is it possible that someone is sleeping rough in the building? Should I tell someone? The police? A homeless charity? Maybe Harbinder Kaur could help? I saw her at the funeral but she didn’t speak to me. I suppose she and Neil were just there out of respect. I didn’t see them at the wake.

  Herbert lifts his leg at last so I hurry back inside. I put the security chain on and check the back door. Then I go upstairs. Georgie’s light is on so I knock.

  ‘Come in.’

  She’s sitting up in bed reading Harry Potter. Her cuddly Meerkat (a present from Simon) is propped up next to her. She looks about seven.

  I sit on the bed. ‘Did you have a nice evening?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Strictly was boring so we played Cards Against Humanity.’

  ‘Did Venetia’s brother pick her up?’

  ‘Tash’s mum. She said she’d ring you.’

  I smooth down Georgie’s Hogwarts duvet. Her room is a mixture of child and teenager. She still has her Sylvanian dolls’ house but there is a plethora of electronic gadgets too, the charging leads snaking acro ss the room. The polaroids pinned up above her bed show Georgie and her girlfriends smiling into the camera selfie-style, lips pouting, hair cascading.

  ‘Did you have a good time with Debra?’ she asks politely.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘A bit sad. We kept talking about Ella.’

  ‘It’s not wrong to be sad. She was one of your best friends.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say, kissing her on the head. ‘Goodnight, darling. Don’t read too late.’

  I have a quick shower, put on my warmest pyjamas and get into bed. Herbert is already snoring. I open my diary, prepared to relive the day. I haven’t written for the last few days — too strung up probably — but I feel that the funeral deserves a record.

  My last entry was on Monday 30th October. It ends, ‘Halloween tomorrow. God help us.’ My writing ends there but on the page opposite there is a new note. Handwriting that is at once alien and horribly
familiar. It begins: ‘Greetings from a sincere friend.’

  Chapter 21

  ‘It’s from The Woman in White,’ I say.

  ‘What is?’ says Neil.

  I rang Harbinder first thing this morning but I didn’t expect her to be at work on a Sunday. However, she asked me to meet her at the police station and, when I get there, the place is full of people staring at their screens. I guess crime never sleeps, even in West Sussex. I’ve never been inside a police station before and I’m surprised at how office-like it is. There are computers and coffee machines and notices about yoga in the lunch break. There are also more women than men.

  Harbinder ushers us into a tiny meeting room. There are armchairs and even a vase with artificial flowers in it, but the space still feels faintly sinister. There’s a darkened window opposite and I wonder if people are watching from the other side.

  Last night Harbinder told me to put my diary in a plastic bag without touching it any more. Now she turns the pages, wearing thin plastic gloves.

  ‘In The Woman in White,’ I say, ‘Count Fosco, the villain, starts writing in Marian Halcombe’s diary. He takes over the narrative for a few pages. His section is called “Postscript by a sincere friend”.’

  Harbinder says, ‘You were reading The Woman in White when I came round the other evening.’

  I’m surprised she has remembered. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s one of my favourite books.’

  Harbinder flicks back the pages and begins to read, in her flat, emotionless voice.

  Greetings from a sincere friend. I refer to the perusal (which I have just completed) of this interesting Diary. There are many hundred pages here. I can lay my hand on my heart, and declare that every page has charmed, refreshed, delighted me.

  Admirable woman!

  But, Clare, not everyone appreciates you as I do. It breaks my heart to say so but there are people who are working against you. I have already disposed of one of these creatures. I will fall on the others like a ravening beast.