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Tears began trickling down Caro’s cheeks. He stood up and held her tightly in his arms. ‘Look, let’s think about this rationally.’
‘That’s what I’m doing, Ollie, I’m thinking about this rationally.’ She was breathing in deep, sobbing gulps. ‘I’m thinking fucking rationally. I’m thinking this whole fucking house is cursed.’
‘I don’t believe in curses.’
‘No? Well maybe you’d better start.’
He held her tightly again. ‘Come on, let’s get showered and have breakfast and we’ll try to think this through.’
‘It’s that bloody woman!’ she blurted.
‘What woman?’
She calmed down a little, and was silent for some moments. Then she said, ‘I think we have a ghost.’
‘A ghost?’
‘I didn’t want to say anything, in case you thought I was going nuts. But I’ve seen something.’
‘What have you seen?’
‘The morning after we moved in, you’d gone downstairs and I was sitting at my dressing table putting on my make-up. I saw a woman – a sort of old woman with a pinched face – standing right behind me. I turned round and there was nothing there. I thought it was my imagination. Then I saw her again a few days later. Then on Sunday I saw her in the atrium, sort of gliding across it.’
‘Can you describe her?’
Caro described the woman. Ollie realized it was exactly the same description her mother had given him.
‘I’ve seen her too, darling,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to say anything to you, because I didn’t want to spook you out.’
‘How fucking great is this? We’ve moved into our dream home and it has a sodding ghost.’
‘There was an article I read in the paper about ghosts, which said that sometimes, when people move into an old house, it activates something there. Some memory of a past resident. But it all settles down after a while.’
‘I don’t call turning our bed round in the middle of the night settling down, do you?’
‘There has to be a rational explanation for what happened last night,’ he said. ‘There has to be.’
‘Sure, so tell me. I’m all ears.’
Twenty minutes later, showered and shaved, Ollie went downstairs and collected the papers from the letter box in the front door, then he went into the kitchen. He turned on the radio, out of habit, and began to lay out breakfast on the table, trying to think clearly and rationally. There bloody well had to be an explanation for what had happened last night. Could they have imagined it all? Could the bed always have been that way round?
But he remembered the conversation they’d had in bed last night, how they were looking forward to waking in the morning and staring out through the window at the lake.
Was he going insane? Were they both?
He thought about the strange voices he’d heard in the night. Had he imagined them?
Bombay walked into the room and meowed at him. Moments later, Sapphire appeared, too.
‘Hungry? Want your breakfast?’
Bombay meowed again.
He poured dried food out for them, filled their water bowl, then went over to a cupboard, took out Jade’s Cheerios pack and put it on the table, along with a bowl and milk. He was craving a coffee, and as Jade hadn’t yet appeared, he switched on the Nespresso machine, popped a Ristretto capsule in it, placed a cup underneath it, waited for the green lights to stop winking and pressed the one for a long espresso. While it was hissing, he began preparing some fruit for himself and Caro.
‘Dad!’
He turned, hearing Jade’s reproachful voice.
‘Morning, lovely!’
She stood at the entrance to the kitchen in her school uniform, her face looking pale. ‘I wanted to make it, that’s my job – why didn’t you wait?’
‘I’m going to need at least two coffees this morning – you can make the second one.’
‘Whatever.’ She sat down sulkily at the refectory table and reached for the cereal pack.
Peeling a tangerine, Ollie asked, ‘How did you sleep?’
‘Actually, not very well.’
‘Oh?’
‘Look, don’t tell Mum, right?’ She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Special secret?’
Ollie raised his own index finger to his lips. ‘Special secret! OK! Don’t tell your mum what?’
‘Well, I think I saw a ghost.’
29
Thursday, 17 September
Jade sat in the Range Rover beside Ollie in silence for much of the way to school. She had been silent at breakfast after dropping her little bombshell, and she seemed determined to remain silent now.
He was silent too, deep in his own troubled thoughts. But then, finally, he said, ‘OK, enough screen time for one car journey!’
She looked at him with a miffed expression.
‘So come on, darling, tell me more. You said you saw a ghost. What did you see?’
‘It was a little girl standing at the end of my bed.’
‘OK. Did she frighten you?’
‘Well, sort of.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘The same as last time.’
Surprised, Ollie said, ‘You’ve seen her before?’
She nodded.
‘How many times?’
‘I don’t know. Several times.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before, or your mum?’
She shrugged. ‘I thought Mum would be spooked. You know how nervy she is.’
He smiled. ‘OK, so why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I tried to the other day. You were like – sort of a bit dismissive.’
‘OK, I’m not being dismissive now. Tell me more about her.’
‘There’s another thing, Dad. Remember I told you, when I FaceTime with Phoebe, she keeps seeing this old woman behind me.’
He halted the car at traffic lights, frowning. ‘Do you remember on our first Sunday in the house – you asked if Gran had come up to your room?’
She nodded.
‘But your gran had gone home quite a bit earlier. Did Phoebe see something then, in your room?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how does all this make you feel?’
‘I think it’s pretty cool!’
Ollie smiled. ‘You do?’
She nodded again, vigorously, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘I think it’s so cool that we’ve got a ghost!’ Then her demeanour darkened. ‘Well, except I’m not sure I like this girl who comes into my room. I don’t think she’s very nice.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, she doesn’t say very nice things.’
‘What does she say?’ Suddenly the woman in the car in front of him, a small Toyota hatchback, threw a cardboard cup out of the window. He felt a flash of rage. Why? Why did people do shit like that? He looked at his daughter with deep affection. She was a decent human being. She’d never throw litter out of a car window. Or harm an animal. She didn’t have a malicious bone in her body. Although sometimes he worried she was too trusting.
After some moments, Jade said, ‘Each time I see her she tells me not to worry and that I’ll be joining her soon. That we all will be – you, Mum and I.’
‘Joining her where?’
‘On the other side.’
‘That’s what she says to you?’
Jade nodded. ‘She says we’re already dead.’
‘What do you say to her?’
‘I just tell her she’s silly! She is.’
Her attitude cheered him up a fraction and he smiled. ‘Yes, she’s very silly.’
‘Dead people can’t hurt you, can they, Dad? You said that to me, didn’t you?’
‘No, darling, they can’t,’ he said, trying to sound convincing.
A few minutes later he watched her head off towards the school, with her little multi-coloured rucksack on her back, and her guitar in its maroon case in her hand, hurrying to catch up with a group of girls – her new friends, he wondered?
He sat there for several minutes, long after she had safely disappeared, chatting away happily to a couple of girls in the group. No doubt full of street cred because she had talked to a ghost last night and none of the others had.