Secrets in the Shadows

by Hannah Emery

  ‘Don’t say things like that. You sound just like Mum. You look like her too.’

  ‘We’re identical twins! If I look like her, then so do you.’ Grace laughed, and her frenzied laughter beat into Louisa’s consciousness, waking her. Her heart was crashing against her ribs, her mouth dry. She wanted to stay awake, to never return to the dream, but her eyes flickered closed again, and she was pulled back, deep into the sleep she had just left. She saw the twins again, saw fragments of glass glinting in their hair, the floor an iridescent glass carpet. The candles burned on and on, their flames rising higher, threatening to spill out and lash the room with heat and terror.

  Grace looked up at her sister, her crimson face streaked with make-up, her hair tangled. She pulled at her necklace, clawed at the round, bright aqua stones. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘You’ve done everything wrong. You’re too much like our mother. I will never forgive you for this, Grace. Never.’

  The way Elsie said those last, cool words woke Louisa suddenly. She stumbled to her feet and squinted across the room. The milky light of dawn cast shadows over her sleeping daughters.

  ‘I had the dream again.’

  Mags looked up from dishing out Noel’s plate of Smash and Bisto. ‘The nightmare?’

  Louisa nodded.

  Mags moved over to Louisa and put her arm around her. It was a strange gesture for Mags to make, and her arm dangled uncertainly from Louisa’s shoulder. Louisa leaned into Mags, smelling her friend’s familiar scent of mints, cigarettes and hairspray.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  Louisa shrugged. Mags took her arm away and turned again, busily clattering cutlery.

  ‘I could take whatever it is, you know. Ghosts, goblins, blood, guts. Nothing gives me nightmares.’

  ‘It’s not scary like that. It’s scary in another way. I suppose because I know it’ll happen, and it’s not very pleasant.’

  The words ring in Louisa’s ears as she speaks.

  You’re too much like our mother.

  ‘Can’t you do something to change it? Make sure that it doesn’t happen?’ Mags asked before hollering for Noel to come downstairs.

  Louisa stared across the kitchen, until her gaze met Noel. He smiled at Louisa, and sat at the table in front of his mountain of mashed potatoes.

  ‘Well?’ Mags was demanding. ‘Can you? Change it?’

  ‘I could try. I just don’t see how. I don’t really know what will cause it. So I’ll struggle to avoid it,’ Louisa said. Why would Elsie come to hate her so much? She knew she’d had a few problems controlling the twins lately, but she had presumed that this was an issue that would be ironed out as the twins grew up.

  ‘Perhaps one day you’ll stop having the dream.’ Mags banged down a cup of orange squash for Noel. ‘And then you’ll know you’ve stopped it. You’ll know it’s not going to happen anymore.’

  Louisa shook her head, and thought of Elsie’s words and Grace’s tear-stained face. Why was Grace, usually the calm one, going to be the one crying and shouting? Where had Elsie’s spirit gone? Why was she about to become so still and pale? ‘I just wish I knew how to stop it all from happening,’ she said as she sank down next to Noel.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Louisa, 1991

  ‘Mum, where’s my red dress?’ Elsie shouted. ‘I can’t find it anywhere!’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Louisa called back, on autopilot. She was engrossed in an unpleasant book about a man who was possessed by a poltergeist. It wasn’t her usual type: Louisa had never read a horror story before. It was making her nerves stand on end, but she wanted to know what was going to happen to the hero, and if he would ever manage to shake off the damned spirit that was ruining his life.

  ‘But I’ll look ridiculous if I don’t wear a dress! Everybody else will. In fact, everybody else has a new outfit.’ Elsie was still yelling from upstairs, and Louisa closed her book with a sigh. She had no idea where the red dress was. The thought of it made her feel kind of irritable and upset for some reason, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. She stood up, frowning at the mood that had descended on her from nowhere. It was probably the book: Louisa wasn’t cut out for horror. This would have to be her first and last.

  ‘I don’t have a new outfit,’ Louisa heard Grace point out sensibly as she climbed the stairs to the twins’ bedroom. Louisa smiled to herself. Good old Grace. She always tried her best to calm her more fiery sister down.

  ‘Okay, Elsie. I’m here,’ Louisa said when she reached the girls. ‘I’m not sure where the dress is, though. When did you last wear it?’

  Elsie wrinkled her nose, and Louisa felt a twinge of maternal adoration. Although Elsie was beginning to emulate a teenager, she was still really a little girl. Grace didn’t try half as hard to act or talk like an adult, and the ironic result of this was that she came across as more mature than her sister.

  ‘I can’t recall the last time.’ Elsie frowned, and chewed on her lip. A theatrical tear hobbled down her cheek.

  ‘Just wear your jeans,’ Grace suggested. She already had her white jeans on.

  Elsie looked at her sister in horror. ‘Jeans are fine for you. But I want to appear as though I have made an effort for this party.’

  ‘Well, if we’re any later then it won’t look like you’ve made an effort. The party started ten minutes ago,’ Grace said as she tapped her watch.

  The party was to celebrate Rachel Gregory’s twelfth birthday. Rachel was a mutual friend of the twins, and lived in a very grand house in Lytham. Louisa was driving the girls there; Rachel’s dad was going to drop them off home afterwards. They had planned to set off to the party twenty-five minutes ago.

  ‘Come on, Elsie. Decide what you’re wearing and let’s hurry up and go. You don’t want to be any later than you already are.’

  Elsie sighed and turned to the bedroom she shared with Grace: currently a mass of upturned clothes and shoes.

  ‘The consequences of this are going to be catastrophic,’ she said, shutting the door behind her.

  Ten minutes later, Louisa and the girls were strapped in the car and moving out of the parking space at the front of the boarding house.

  ‘Stop!’ yelled Elsie suddenly. ‘I know where the dress is!’

  Louisa sighed impatiently and gestured to her watch. ‘Elsie, you do not have time to go back in again.’

  But an excited Elsie was already unbuckled and climbing out of the car. She held up a finger to indicate that she would only be one minute. Grace sat quietly, rolling her eyes at Elsie’s dramatics. Louisa thought about her book. She had borrowed it from Suzie, who had the whole series. Louisa gazed out onto the street and wondered if she should just ask Suzie what was going to happen to the possessed man, and if the story had a happy ending. That would be much less unsettling. The thought of the book made Louisa’s blood fizz a little inside her. She supposed that people like Suzie loved that feeling: loved the extra adrenaline rushing through their bodies. But Louisa didn’t. Yes, she decided, putting the car into neutral whilst they waited for Elsie. She would ask Suzie what was going to happen, and move onto one of her romance books instead.

  Settled by this decision, Louisa glanced in her rearview mirror and smiled at Grace. Grace smiled back, then looked to her left. ‘Yay. Elsie’s back.’

  ‘Oh, good. Let’s get going then.’ Louisa glanced out of the window to see Elsie in the red dress. A shiver ran down her spine at the sight of it and she wondered why. Elsie looked much happier, and the dress did look nice, although it was a little creased from being crumpled into God knows what space.

  ‘It was in the guest lounge,’ Elsie said breathlessly as she got back into the car. ‘I don’t know why. I remember seeing it in there and thinking that I should move it back up to my room, but I forgot.’

  Louisa turned around in her seat and looked at her daughters. The red satin of Elsie’s dress shimmered in the weak winter sunlight and Louisa’s stomach
turned. She frowned.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ Grace asked.

  Louisa shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose.’

  She put the car into first gear and swung out of the parking space onto the road.

  It was as Louisa was swinging out of a junction, and checked her rearview mirror, that she suddenly remembered it all.

  She’d had one of her nightmares a few weeks ago. The red dress, crumpled with tears, and days of loss and fright and confused sleep. Elsie sitting on a hospital chair, waiting for news that Louisa could not give her. A gold Renault Five, as crumpled as the red dress. Grace dead.

  As soon as Louisa had woken from the dream, she had crept into the twins’ bedroom and taken the dress from the wardrobe. The twins hadn’t woken, and Louisa had stood still for a moment, her eyes closed, listening to the steady breathing and the faint buzz of a draught at the window.

  She had gone downstairs, still in a haze of sleep, and stashed the dress between the cushions of the chair in the guest lounge. Elsie never went in there. Louisa had planned to dispose of the dress the next day, but had returned to bed and slept a calm sleep that had made her forget those strange hours and her nightmare. She hadn’t thought about the dream again, until it swooped into her mind now, its colours and screams vivid and frightening.

  Louisa stopped the car and turned to her daughters.

  ‘Grace. Come and sit in the front, please.’

  Grace stared at her mother, her violet eyes wide and questioning. Elsie let out a sigh of exasperation.

  ‘Mum, we’ve already established that we’re late. We haven’t got time to start playing silly games.’

  Louisa ignored Elsie. ‘Grace. Now. Otherwise we’re turning around and going home.’

  ‘Okay, Okay.’ Grace clambered out of the back and flopped down into the front seat. Louisa smelled her daughter’s subtle fragrance of banana shampoo. She glanced into the empty back seat next to Elsie, took a deep breath and started the engine again. She drove carefully, slowly, creeping along the promenade. The twins were groaning with impatience by the time they reached Rachel Gregory’s road. Louisa’s stomach flipped with relief as she saw the road sign that told her they had almost completed their journey, that the girls were going to be safely dropped off at the party.

  And that’s when the gold blur hurtled past them, and then swerved into them. Louisa heard metal crush metal, thudding, screaming, then silence. She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, she saw Grace next to her, her small body engulfed with shaking breaths. Louisa looked round to the back and saw Elsie sobbing, her arm glittering with glass and blood.

  Rachel’s father ran out then, followed by a number of well-dressed, overexcited children and alarmed adults. Somebody ran over to the car; somebody else ran back into the house to phone emergency services. The driver of the gold Renault was a mess of blood and soft moaning and glass.

  ‘You were going rather slowly, looking for our house most probably,’ Rachel’s father said in his clipped voice, and Louisa wondered at his accusatory tone. ‘I saw from the window because my wife had asked me to look out for you—’

  ‘We were waiting to blow out the candles,’ explained his wife, as though that mattered, as though it explained everything.

  ‘I could see the Renault getting impatient, wanting to whizz past you. So he did, but then I think he thought he saw something coming towards him and swerved back into you.’

  Louisa got out shakily. ‘I need to see Elsie.’

  ‘She’s conscious. Don’t move her. Let the paramedics see to her,’ Mr Gregory said. ‘What a bad bit of luck for you all. Ah well, these things can’t be stopped can they?’

  ‘Lou!’ Mags threw her arms around Louisa that evening and held her friend tightly. They stood for a while, in the doorway of Rose House. The night was black around them.

  ‘I’m okay. I’m okay,’ Louisa said quietly, her warm breath floating outside in a puff of smoke.

  Mags held on for a little longer before letting go. ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘They’re watching television. They’re both fine. Elsie’s arm and side are sore, but she’s cleaned up better than I thought. She’s not said much about it. And Grace is shaken, I think. But they’re doing well. The driver of the other car is going to be okay too.’

  Mags nodded and handed Louisa a bottle of white wine as they stepped from the hall into the kitchen. ‘Get that open. I’m staying over tonight. You’ve had a shock and you need me. Charles is home from work, so Noel will be fine. It’s about time his dad took care of him.’

  Louisa took two glasses from the draining board and filled them to the top with the wine, too tired to argue.

  ‘Noel said that Grace phoned him before. He said you’d made her move into the front of the car.’

  Louisa stared into her glass, noticing a shard of cork clinging to the curve of the lip. She tried to get it out with her finger, but failed, pushing it into her drink instead.

  ‘I was trying to stop it all from happening. I’d had one of my visions about the car crash. I saw it in a nightmare. I knew it was going to happen. I was trying to save Grace.’

  ‘But the side Grace had been sitting on wasn’t even touched, was it?’ Mags was frowning.

  ‘No. And worse, if I hadn’t stopped to move her, then the Renault wouldn’t have even been there when I was; things would have happened differently. I stopped to move Grace, and I drove slowly. I caused it, in a way. By trying to stop it, I caused it, and I harmed Elsie.’

  ‘Louisa, you need to let the guilt go. You protected Grace. You drove carefully and did what you thought was right.’

  Louisa sighed and gulped down her wine before pouring herself a second glass. ‘I just have a feeling that I’m being tricked, somehow. By the nightmares and the visions. I can’t ignore them, but the more I try to change them, it’s as though I am messing things up. I know I did it with Lewis, and I want to do things right this time, but I don’t know how.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Lou. I love you, but you’re driving me mad with your feelings about what’s going to happen and what should happen. Your gift was always a good way to make money, but now you need to accept that your dreams and your so called premonitions are not always accurate and try to ignore them. You’re obviously just losing the knack, no big deal. There’s nobody tricking you into changing what happens but yourself.’

  Louisa looked up abruptly from her drink, startled. Tears suddenly prickled at her eyes and she saw Mags tense with guilt.

  ‘I don’t mean to be horrible,’ Mags said apologetically. ‘I’m just worried about you. You seem more and more preoccupied these days.’ Mags lit a cigarette as she finished speaking, inhaling slowly and plucking a stray hair from her jumper, watching as it floated to the floor.

  She doesn’t understand, Louisa thought. The strength of the premonitions, the terror when they dawned on her and the need to try and change them, it was all too much to ignore.

  But the day suddenly took its toll in one split second, as big days often do. The adrenaline emptied and Louisa leaned back against the worktop, exhausted.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said to Mags. ‘Come on, let’s have another drink.’

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Grace, 2008

  Despite Elsie’s optimistic predictions, the shop fails to become any busier towards Christmas. November ends, the nights turn blacker and icier, Christmas trees and white fairy lights begin to appear in windows all around the town, and still the shop is mostly empty.

  ‘It’s really not a problem. None of the massive book stores are ever heaving. It’s the nature of the business,’ Elsie says, flicking through a glossy bridal magazine. The pages squeak as she turns them, making Grace shudder. ‘And don’t forget we sold that first edition last month. That met our forecast alone. So we really are doing quite well.’

  ‘I know. I suppose I thought we would always be busy doing things. It’s different to how I imagined i
t to be,’ Grace admits.

  ‘There’s plenty to do. You could create more displays, or you could do a stock take. Or you could always go off for an afternoon and look for some more stuff for us to sell.’

  Grace shrugs indifferently, unable to summon much enthusiasm, then feels guilty. She walks out to the back of the shop and checks her mobile phone. There’s a missed call from a number she doesn’t recognise and she presses callback, wondering who it could be.

  ‘Hello?’

  Grace feels as though the voice is familiar, but can’t place it. She pauses.

  ‘It’s Kate. From the drama group.’

  Macbeth is meant to be going ahead the following week, and Grace wonders if there is some kind of problem.

  ‘Hi, Kate. Is everything okay?’

  ‘Well, not really. You see, Marion has had a fall. She was skiing in the Alps, and down she went. She’s broken her leg. Lady Macbeth in a full leg cast isn’t really what we were going for. So that’s poor Marion out of the question. And her understudy, Viv, has pulled out altogether because she’s been offered a last-minute cruise with her sister. The Baltics, apparently.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Grace, trying to still the excitement that is fizzing up inside her.

  ‘So, I know it’s completely last minute, and you must think we’re very disorganised, and you don’t have very long to learn the lines, but I wondered if you would like the part of Lady Macbeth? You really did do so well on your audition. A witch part doesn’t do you justice, and we all know that, but it’s just that we have all sorts of politics to think of, and it was your very first evening with us, and I—’

  Grace holds up her hand in the air even though Kate can’t see her. ‘Kate, stop! It’s fine. I would absolutely love to do it. I know the lines pretty well because I have played Lady Macbeth before. I was just thinking that I needed a new project, so your call came at a perfect time. It’s an honour, honestly.’

  Grace hears Kate heave a suitably theatrical sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Grace! I can’t thank you enough. So I’ll see you at rehearsal tonight then?’