THEY GOT BACK in plenty of time for tea, which was eggs, chips and sausages, with swiss-roll and ice-cream for pudding. Afterwards everybody went upstairs to put on tracksuits and trainers. Mrs Marriott was taking them for a game of rounders on the sands. Lisa would be missing out, because of the apologies she had to write.
Gary Bazzard’s room was one floor below Fliss’s. Number seven. When she came down the stairs he was standing in the doorway showing something to a group of his friends, who were making admiring noises. As Fliss passed he called out, ‘How about this, Fliss?’
She glanced in his direction. He was holding up the biggest stick of rock she’d ever seen. She didn’t like him much, and would have loved to walk on with her nose in the air, but the pink stick really was enormous: nearly a metre long and about four centimetres thick. She stopped. ‘Where the heck did you get that from?’ she asked, in what she hoped was a scornful voice.
‘Shop on the quay. One pound fifty. No one saw me ’cause I stuck it down my jeans’ leg.’ His friends gasped and chuckled at his daring.
Fliss pulled a face. ‘You’re nuts. One pound fifty? I wouldn’t give you fifty pence for it.’
‘You wouldn’t get chance.’
‘It’ll rot your teeth, so there.’
‘You’re only jealous.’
‘I’m not. I hope Mr Hepworth catches you and hits you on the head with it.’
It was a good game of rounders. It was more fun than it might have been, because the tide was coming in and the strip of sand they were playing on grew narrower and narrower. People kept hitting the ball into the sea, and some of the fielders had to play barefoot so that they could retrieve it. Finally the pitch became so restricted that play was impossible. They wrapped up the game, retreated to the top of one of the concrete buttresses which protected the foot of the cliff and sat, watching the tide come in.
Cocoa and biscuits were served in the lounge at half-past eight. The children sat sipping and munching while twilight fell outside and Mrs Evans read them a story. Lisa came down with her written apologies. Mr Hepworth read them, nodded, and gave her back her torch. It was nine o’clock. Bedtime.
Fliss was tired, but she couldn’t sleep. It was fun at first, lying in the dark, talking with Marie and the twins, but one by one they drifted off to sleep and she was left listening to the muffled noises that rose from the boys’ room below. After a while these too stopped, and then there was only the occasional creak, and the rhythmic shush of the sea.
She lay staring at the ceiling, waiting for her eyes to get tired. If the lids grew heavy enough they’d close, and then she’d drift off. She wouldn’t even know she was lying in the dark, and when she woke up it would be morning and the first night – the worst night – would be over.
Phantom lights swam across her field of vision, lazily, like shoals of tiny fish. She watched them, but they failed to lull her, and presently it came to her that she would have to go to the bathroom.
She listened. If somebody else was awake somewhere it would be easier. A boy on the floor below perhaps, or one of the teachers. She looked at her watch. 23.56. Four minutes to midnight. Surely somebody was still about – the Wilkinsons, locking up for the night, or Mr Hepworth making a final patrol.
Silence. In all the world, only Fliss was awake. She listened to the steady breathing of the other three girls. Why couldn’t one of them have been a snorer? If somebody had been snoring she could have given them a shake. A policeman going by outside would be better than nothing – his footsteps might make her feel safe. But there was no policeman. There wasn’t even a car.
The bed creaked as she sat up and swung her legs out. She listened. Nothing. The steady breathing continued. She hadn’t disturbed anybody. Perhaps she’d have to put the light on to find the door – that would wake them. But no. There was moonlight and the curtains were thin and she could see quite clearly. It would be most unfair to wake them with the light.
She stood up and crept towards the door. There was sand in the carpet. A floorboard creaked and she paused, hopefully. One of the twins stirred, mumbling, and Fliss whispered, ‘Maureen? Joanne?’ but there was no response.
She opened the door a crack and looked out. The only illumination came from a small window on the half-landing below. It was minimal. She could make out the dark shapes of the doors but not the pattern on the carpet. The air had a musty smell and felt cold.
As she hesitated for a moment in the doorway, peering into the gloom and listening, she became aware of a faint sound – the snuffling, grunting noise of somebody snoring beyond the door of room eleven. She found it oddly reassuring, and crossed the landing quickly in case it should stop.
Re-crossing a minute later with the hiss of the toilet cistern in her ears, she could still hear it. It seemed louder, and was accompanied now by a thin, whimpering noise, like crying. Fliss pulled a face. Somebody feeling homesick. Not Lisa, surely?
The idea that her friend might be in distress made her forget her fear for a moment. She took a couple of steps towards room eleven, unsure of what she intended to do. As she did so, she became aware that the noise was not coming from that room at all, but from the one next to it – the cupboard. Her eyes flicked to its door. On it, visible in the midnight gloom, was the number thirteen.
She recoiled, covering her mouth with her hand. When she had asked Mrs Marriott what lay beyond that door, there had been no number on it. She knew there hadn’t, yet there it was. Thirteen. And somebody was in there. Somebody, or some thing.
She backed away. The hissing of the cistern dwindled and ceased. The other sounds continued, and now the whimpering was more persistent, and the snuffling had a viscous quality to it, like a pig rooting in mud.
She retreated slowly, holding her breath. When she reached the doorway of her own room she backed through it, feeling for the doorknob and keeping her eyes fixed on the door of room thirteen. Once inside, she closed the door quickly, crossed to her bed and lay staring at the ceiling while spasms shook her body.
Much later, when the shivering had stopped and she was drifting to sleep, she thought she heard stealthy footsteps on the landing, but when she woke at seven with the sun in her face and her friends’ excited chatter in her ears, she wondered whether she might have dreamed it all.
THEY GATHERED IN the lounge after breakfast. Mr Hepworth had fixed a large map of the coast to the wall. He pointed. ‘Here’s Whitby, where we are. And here,’ he slid his finger northward along the coastline, ‘is Staithes, where the coach will drop us this morning. Staithes used to be an important fishing port like Whitby, and there are still a few fishermen there, but it is a quiet village now. Captain Cook worked in a shop at Staithes when he was very young – before he decided to be a sailor.’
‘Will we be going in the shop, Sir?’
‘No, Neil Atkinson, we will not. Unfortunately, it was washed away by the sea a long time ago. However, if we are very lucky we might see a ghost.’
There were gasps and exclamations at this. ‘Captain Cook’s ghost, Sir?’ asked James Garside. The teacher shook his head, smiling. ‘No, James. Not Captain Cook’s. A young girl’s. There’s a dangerous cliff at Staithes, a crumbling cliff, and the story goes that when this girl was walking under it one day, a chunk of rock fell and decapitated her. Who knows what decapitated means? Yes, Steven Jackson?’
‘Sir, knocked her cap off, Sir.’
‘No. Michelle Webster?’
‘Squashed her, Sir?’
‘Closer, but not right. ‘Ellie-May Sunderland?’
‘Sir, knocked her head off, Sir.’
‘Correct.’ He leaned forward, peering at the girl through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you all right, Ellie-May – you look a bit pasty?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Right. Well, there’s a bridge over a creek at Staithes, and that’s where the headless ghost has been seen. We’ll be having a look round the village, then
walking along the clifftop path to Runswick Bay. That’s here.’ He jabbed at the map again. A boy raised his hand.
‘What is it, Robert Field?’
‘How far is it, Sir?’
The teacher shrugged, smiling. ‘A few miles. We’ll find somewhere to eat our packed lunches on the way, and the coach will be waiting at Runswick to bring us back here. Right – it’s a lovely sunny morning, so let’s get started.’
Lisa saved Fliss a seat on the coach. As they roared along the coast road she said, ‘We stayed awake ever so late in our room last night, talking. Telling jokes and that. It was brilliant.’
‘You were all asleep before midnight, though,’ said Fliss.
‘How d’you know?’
‘I passed your door at midnight. There wasn’t a sound.’
‘What were you doing, passing our door at midnight?’
‘I went to the toilet. Or at least I think I did.’
‘How d’you mean, you think you did – don’t you know?’
Fliss pulled a face. ‘No. It’s all mixed up with this horrible dream I had.’
‘What was it about, your dream?’
Fliss told her friend about the strange noises that had seemed to come from the linen cupboard, the number thirteen on the door, the footsteps she thought she’d heard later. ‘It all seemed so real, Lisa. But then this morning I looked, and of course there was no number on the door and the sun was shining and everybody was shouting and messing about on the landing, and it didn’t seem real any more. D’you know what I mean?’
Lisa nodded. ‘Sure. It was all a dream – you didn’t go to the toilet and you weren’t outside our door at midnight so you don’t know what time we went to sleep, right?’
‘Right. Except –’
‘Except what, Fliss? What is it?’
‘After the toilet, I dreamed I washed my hands, right? And it was one of those spurty taps where the water comes all at once and goes everywhere. Some went on the floor. Quite a lot, in fact. There didn’t seem to be anything to mop it up with, and anyway I was too scared to hang about so I left it.’
Lisa shrugged. ‘Dream water in a dream bathroom. So what?’
Fliss looked at her friend. ‘It was still there this morning,’ she said.
THEY SPENT AN hour in Staithes, but nobody saw the ghost. They saw crab pots piled by cottage doors and boats tied up in the creek. They stared at the dangerous cliff and tried to imagine what it would be like to be walking along quite normally one second, and to have no head the next. They bought sweets and ice-lollies and stood among their knapsacks and shoulder-bags, chatting and watching the waves while the teachers had a cup of tea. At eleven o’clock they picked up their bags and moved out, leaving the village by way of a steep, winding footpath which led to the clifftop and on out of sight. Mr Hepworth said, ‘This is part of the Cleveland Way, and it will take us to Runswick Bay. It’s a three–mile walk, more or less. About halfway, we’ll stop and eat our lunches. There’s no tearing hurry, but do try to keep up – the path runs very close to the cliff edge in places, and if there are stragglers it becomes difficult to keep an eye on everybody. Are you listening, John Phelan?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Good. Off we go, then.’
The sun was a fuzzy ball above the sea. Little white clouds sailed inland on the breeze, their shadows racing across a rolling landscape of wheat field and meadow. Strung out in twos and threes along the track, the children walked and chattered. Gulls wheeled and soared, or floated like scraps of paper on the water far below. A jet, miles high, drew a thin white line across the sky.
Lisa flung out her arms and laughed. ‘Lovely!’ she cried. ‘Don’t you think it’s lovely, Fliss – the smells? All this space?’
Fliss nodded. ‘I was just thinking about the others, stuck in school having boring lessons, and us here enjoying ourselves.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We’d be in French now.’
‘Did you have to mention that?’ scowled Lisa. ‘Trying to spoil my day, I know.’
‘No, I’m not. I think it makes it better, thinking about where you’d be if you weren’t here. It makes you appreciate it more.’
‘Yeah, well, I can appreciate it without having to think about French, thank you very much. Are you still bothered about that dream, by the way?’
Fliss looked at her friend. ‘Now who’s trying to spoil whose day?’ She thought for a while. ‘No, I’m not worried. Not at the moment. Not here. It’s like I told you – in broad daylight all that sort of stuff seems daft. You say to yourself, it was just a dream, and you believe it. It’s when you’re in bed at night and everything’s quiet that you start wondering. Anyway, I don’t want to think about it now. What kind of bird’s that?’ She pointed. ‘The black one with a grey head. I’ve seen a few of them today.’
Lisa shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m no good at birds. Ask Mrs Evans.’
Fliss looked behind. ‘Where is Mrs Evans – I thought she was walking at the back?’
‘She was. We must be going too fast for her or something. Either that or she’s fallen off the cliff. Anyway, you could ask Mrs Marriott instead – she’s just up there.’
Fliss giggled. ‘You mean it doesn’t matter if Mrs Evans has fallen into the sea, because she’s not the only one who can identify birds?’
‘No, you div – I never said that. Anyway, she won’t have fallen, will she? We’ve left her behind, that’s all. She hasn’t kept up like old Hepworth said – I wonder if he’ll make her write an apology?’
‘Will he heck! D’you think we should tell somebody?’
‘Can if you want. Mrs Marriott’s just up there.’
Fliss put on a spurt, swerved past Helen Smith and Robert Field, and touched the teacher’s shoulder.
‘Miss.’
Mrs Marriott turned her head. ‘What is it, Felicity?’
‘We can’t see Mrs Evans, Miss. She was at the back, and now she’s disappeared. We thought we should mention it, Miss.’
‘Hmm.’ Mrs Marriott looked back over the quarter mile or so of track which was visible from where they were standing. Children passed them, leaving the path to do so. ‘Thank you, Felicity. D’you think you could catch up with Mr Hepworth – tell him I sent you and ask him to stop the walk? She’s probably just fallen behind, but I think perhaps we ought to wait for her.’
‘Yes, Miss.’
She set off along the track, weaving in and out among her classmates. One or two called after her, demanding to know where she thought she was going or what the rush was about but she ignored them, going at a steady jog and keeping her eyes on Mr Hepworth.
She was still a couple of hundred metres behind him when he stopped and looked back. She waved and shouted, ‘Sir – Sir!’ and to her relief he raised his hand, halting the column, and stood watching her approach.
‘What is it, Felicity?’ he asked, as she came panting up to him. She told him and he shaded his eyes with his hand, peering back the way they’d come.
‘Hmm. Well. She’s nowhere in sight – probably twisted an ankle or something and fallen behind. We’ll wait here a minute or two, and if she doesn’t show up I’ll go back and have a look.’
The line shortened, as those further back caught up and stopped. The children milled about, wondering what was happening, and a girl called out, ‘Is this where we eat our lunch, Sir?’
Mr Hepworth shook his head. ‘No, Samantha Varley, it is not. We’re waiting for Mrs Evans, who has fallen behind a bit.’ He said something quietly to Mrs Marriott, who came along the line counting heads.
‘One missing,’ she called. ‘Is it Ellie-May? I don’t think I’ve seen her.’
‘It is, Miss,’ said Haley Denton. ‘I saw her dropping back, ages ago.’
‘That’s probably it, then,’ said Mr Hepworth. ‘Ellie-May fell behind and Mrs Evans is walking with her. I thought she wasn’t looking too bright, back at the hotel.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll give them five minutes, then I’ll se
t off back. Take your packs off and sit down – we might as well take a breather while we can.’
Fliss went back to sit with Lisa, but she hadn’t been sitting for more than a minute when one of the boys yelled, ‘They’re coming, Sir!’
Everybody watched as the two figures approached. When they reached the place where Fliss and Lisa were sitting, Mrs Evans said, ‘Now then, Ellie-May. You sit with Felicity and Lisa. They’ll look after you.’ She smiled, putting Ellie-May’s knapsack, which she’d been carrying, on the grass. ‘Ellie-May’s not feeling very well, girls. You’ll look after her, won’t you?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘I knew you would.’ She smiled again and moved on, murmuring, ‘Sensible girls. Nice, sensible girls.’
Ellie-May looked awful. Her cheeks were white and there were dark smudges, like bruises, under her eyes. She sat down. ‘I couldn’t keep up,’ she growled. ‘I tried, but I went all dizzy. Silly Mrs Evans made me sit with my head between my knees for a bit and I had to drink tea from her flask. It tasted awful. As soon as I felt a bit better we set off after you at about fifty miles an hour, and now I feel rotten again.’
‘Mrs Evans is nice,’ said Lisa. ‘She carried your pack, didn’t she? What’s the matter with you anyway – tummy bug or something?’
Ellie-May scowled. ‘I don’t know, do I, fathead? Why do you ask such stupid questions?’
‘Hey, Sunderland!’ A group of boys was sitting nearby. One of them, David Trotter, grinned across at Ellie-May. ‘If you didn’t go creeping about in the middle of the night, we wouldn’t have to hang around waiting for you when we’re supposed to be out walking.’
Ellie-May shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t creep around. I was asleep all night.’
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