The Haunting of Tabitha Grey (2 page)

‘Poor things must have been sweltering in summer,’ Mum says.

She’s always worrying about people, even people who’ve been dead for decades. Mum’s soft hearted. Not like Dad. He’s a bit more fiery and opinionated. That’s why he
makes a good Keeper. He’s strict and brilliant at sticking to routines. If Mum was Keeper she’d drift through houses forgetting to lock doors and windows and probably not even notice if
an army of burglars marched up the stairs and started helping themselves to the silver.

‘Let me help you pack that,’ she’d say, offering them boxes and cups of tea.

Ben’s airy-fairy, like Mum. He cries all the time and mopes about, not saying much and looking pale.

I’m more like Dad – quick-tempered and impatient.

And different.

I’m not much like the girls in my class at school. Gemma and I have a laugh but even she thinks I’m a bit weird sometimes. There are reasons for that, I guess. But Gem’s all
right about it. She’s a true friend.

I flick the switch on my laptop and sink into retail heaven.

There’s a gentle knock on our door just as Mum’s toasting up a big plateful of cheese muffins, drenching them in butter because she’s decided to have a day
off her diet.

‘Oh,’ I hear Dad say. ‘It’s good of you to come round so soon.’

He comes into the lounge, stepping over boxes and crates and followed by a huge hulk of a man who has to stoop to avoid bashing his head on the light.

‘This is Sid,’ says Dad. ‘He’s head of security here. If you ever see anybody acting suspiciously around the manor, you contact Sid. OK?’

As though I’m planning on spending loads of time snooping around the manor looking for weirdos or something . . .

‘Yes,’ I say to keep Dad quiet because he’s got his manic expression on.

Mum sighs and holds out her hand to Sid. ‘Excuse my husband,’ she says. ‘We’re all a bit tired from the move today. What he really should be doing is offering you a
drink. Tea? Coffee? And could you manage a muffin?’

Sid’s face lights up at the sight of Mum’s tea tray and he settles down on the end of the sofa. Ben gives him a look of alarm but then decides he’s a friendly sort and stays
huddled up on the other end of it with his eyes fixed upon a piece of Lego.

‘Don’t mind if I do, pet,’ Sid says. ‘I reckon the old house can look after itself for ten minutes.’

He’s smiling at me, so I half-smile back even though what he’s saying seems a bit stupid. I mean – how can a house look after itself?

I like Sid’s face though. It’s round and open and he doesn’t have much hair left, only a dark shadow of what was once probably hair even darker than Mum’s. He’s got
one pierced ear with a gold stud in.

Mum passes him a cup of tea and two muffins and he sinks his teeth into the soft bread with a sigh of pleasure.

‘I can see I’m going to like you lot living here,’ he says. ‘It can get a bit – monotonous, this security-guard lark. Nice to have a new family to breathe life into
this old house.’

Sid accepts a third muffin from Mum, wolfs it down in about three seconds and drains the bottom of his teacup with a big slurp.

‘Right – no rest for the wicked!’ he says. ‘Which probably explains a lot about this house!’

He laughs a bit at this and then realises we’re all staring at him, trying to work out what he means.

‘I’m just having a little joke,’ he says. ‘You’ll get used to me. And the house. It’s a bit of an acquired taste but it’s a beautiful place to
live.’

He gets up, blocking all the light from the window with his huge frame and ducks out of the door with a wink and a wave.

After we’ve washed up and started to put some of our plates and cups away, Ben goes into his new room to play and Mum says that she needs a lie-down. She’s got
‘depression’ and although it isn’t so bad any more, she still has to have loads of rests and be careful not to get over-tired, so Dad locks the door of the flat behind us and we
walk back down the long corridor that takes us into the heart of the house and we begin a tour of Weston Manor.

It’s very dark in the entrance hall.

‘It won’t be like this during the week,’ says Dad. ‘Lights, heating and masses of visitors. You must keep out of the way, Tabs. Sid and his staff are very
busy.’

‘Erm, I won’t be here during term time, Dad,’ I say, but Dad is flicking switches and throwing all the shadowy chairs, tables and paintings into a sudden pool of golden
light.

‘Wow,’ I say, despite meaning not to. I can’t think how I didn’t say that when I first came in. The entrance hall is enormous and kind of beautiful. There’s a
fireplace made of marble and four huge white marble pillars holding up the middle of the room. Masses of silver gleams out from dark oak cupboards and there are paintings hung right round the
room.

‘That’s the lady who owned the house,’ says Dad. He’s pointing at a large painting of a woman dressed in a long, black Victorian dress and standing sideways so that I can
see her severe profile and aristocratic nose. ‘Lady Eleanor Thomas-Fulford.’

‘Oh,’ I say. I’m disappointed. I thought that the beautiful lady in a white ball gown who is smiling out at me from an enormous oil painting by the fireplace might be the
owner.

‘That was one of her half-sisters, Lucinda,’ says Dad, following my gaze. ‘She was a twin. The other one was just as beautiful. Rose. You’ll probably see some photographs
of her as we go around the house.’

He ushers me into a doorway to the left of the entrance hall and clicks another switch.

‘This was the original dining room,’ says Dad. ‘Before it moved into the new wing where we live.’

The room is very dim, even with the lights on. There are heavy oak panels on the walls and gothic chairs and tables to match.

I shiver. ‘Bit dark,’ I say.

Dad leads me through an adjoining door into a smaller room that is crammed to the hilt with plush chairs and small shining tables. There’s a desk in the corner, covered with faded
black-and-white photographs of dogs and children. A clock ticks away to itself on the mantelpiece over the fireplace.

It’s a cosy room but kind of stuffy.

Like it needs the windows opened wide and a rush of fresh air from the park to come in.

I wander over and stare at some of the photographs.

‘This was Lady Eleanor’s morning room,’ says Dad. He’s running his hand over the top of an elaborately embroidered chair seat when he says this.

‘She must have been dog mad,’ I say, because most of the photos feature the blurry features of long-dead pets.

I love dogs. I’m hoping to persuade Mum and Dad to let me have a puppy once we get settled in.

‘Oh yes,’ says Dad. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet!’

He’s enjoying this.

Dad loves old houses the way that other people love chocolate or clothes or train sets or whatever other things they might be obsessed by.

With Dad, it’s ‘The Past’. He’s always going on about it. Sometimes, if I screw up my face and narrow my eyes, I can see Dad in an old-fashioned suit with a handlebar
moustache instead of his goatee and with a pair of spectacles held to his piercing blue eyes.

‘Come on, Tabs,’ says Dad. We pass out of the morning room and back into the entrance hall but not before a tiny mirror in the doorway catches my eye.

‘Why would there be a mirror there?’ I say. ‘Why isn’t it inside the room?’

Dad comes back to take a look.

‘Not sure,’ he says. ‘But I’m guessing that the servants would check their appearance before going in to see to Lady Eleanor. She was very fussy about how they looked,
from what I’ve heard.’

I nod. Kind of makes sense.

We pass in front of the grand staircase and I glance up as we go by. It’s very brown. Brown banisters, brown patterned carpet and brown panelled walls that are covered in dark paintings of
brown horses and dogs.

‘Do you want to go up?’ says Dad. ‘There are loads of bedrooms up there and another floor in the attic.’

The weird thing is that I love grand staircases and always pretend that I’m some elegant lady coming down them in a ball gown.

But I don’t want to go up this one.

I look up it a bit more and then my appetite kicks in like I haven’t eaten for a year and it’s all I can think of.

‘Could we just do downstairs?’ I say to Dad. ‘I’m hungry.’

Just as I say this, the waft of eggs and bacon comes through from somewhere and my stomach growls with happy anticipation of Mum’s dinner.

I move away back through the entrance hall and Dad shows me the grand dining room near the entrance to our flat with its odd bookcases full of white, Chinese porcelain lions and then the elegant
drawing room – the largest room downstairs – with two grand fireplaces, a crystal chandelier hanging down in the middle and floor-to-ceiling green shutters. Dad flings these open to
reveal the back grounds of the manor and a view of the tiny medieval parish church that sits just to the left of the house.

By the time we’ve gone down into the basement of the main house and looked at the old kitchens and the scullery and the butler’s pantry and the housemaid’s parlour and the line
of old bells, which still hang in the corridor waiting in vain for the lady of the manor to ring them and get the servants rushing upstairs, I’m tired out and starving.

It’s been a long day of moving and packing and getting used to new things.

‘You look like I feel,’ says Dad as we head back down the long corridor on the ground floor that leads to the brown wooden door of our flat with ‘Grey’ on the gold plate
just next to the bell.

I glance at my reflection in the glass of the long conservatory windows as we pass them and it seems Dad is right.

My fair hair’s all lank and limp and my face is pale with dark rings under the eyes.

I look about ninety-three instead of fourteen.

Great.

And I’m supposed to be seeing Jake tomorrow night. I’ve been going out with him for nearly six months and he’s only like the hottest boy on the entire planet. He’d been
pestering me to go out with him for ages before that and he’s still really keen. Gemma says he’s obsessed with me!

Mum doesn’t like me going out on school nights but tough.

I’ll tell Ben to keep Mum company while I’m out and while Dad’s patrolling the manor and making sure everything has been prepared for the next day of visitors.

Not that Ben’s much company. He’s only five. And he doesn’t have much confidence, unlike me. Dad says I’ve got too much.

Ben would burst into tears if he even saw his own shadow.

I burst through the door with my tongue practically hanging out from starvation.

‘We’re back! Let’s have dinner!’ I yell, but there’s silence.

Dad pokes his head into the darkened bedroom he’s going to share with Mum and I hear him murmuring in a low voice before he comes back out into the lounge again looking a bit worried.

‘Mum’s got one of her heads,’ he says. ‘So I’m going to pop to the parade over the road and see if I can get us a takeway, OK?’

I start to speak and then stop again. Maybe Mum started dinner and then her head got worse again and she had to lie down.

I go into the modern kitchen, which has been fitted by the council for our tenancy. The room is cold and the fridge is full of stuff but I can’t see any bacon.

I peer in the bin but there’s nothing in there, not even a bin liner.

Oh well.

Ben creeps out of his bedroom and puts his arms around my leg. He looks frightened, like he doesn’t want to be here. We’ve had a lot of changes in our life over the last few
years.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘It will be OK. This is a nice house. Everything will be fine. And Mum will get happier. You’ll see.’

Ben looks up at me with his dark eyes and gives me the tiniest smile, so I let him explore my new bedroom. He sits on the bed and watches me try out new eyeshadows and we both try not to hear
Mum moaning in pain through the wall. When Dad finally comes back I jump a mile at the sound of his key in the lock and then my heart leaps with relief at the smell of prawn crackers and black-bean
noodles, and Mum comes out of her room and manages to eat with us and, although it’s not quite like I imagined it being on the first night, it’s kind of OK and we’re together.

‘So do you like Weston?’ Dad says as we finish with a tub of vanilla ice cream from a late-night shop that Dad found next to the takeaway. His eyes are all lit up and eager as he
waits for my reply.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah. I think I’m going to enjoy it.’

There’s a sharp laugh. Right in my ear.

I jump and shake my head like I’m trying to get a wasp off it.

It must have been Dad. He’s good at projecting his voice, after all. He used to give talks at the museum and it still shows.

I’m tired, right? It’s been a long day.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I say. ‘Night.’

Ben’s eyes follow me as I leave the room. I wonder if he’ll come and get in my bed in the middle of the night?

He usually does.

O
n Monday morning I wake up and forget where I am.

I’d got so used to my last bedroom in our flat with its thick red curtains and cream walls that for a moment I gaze around this bare white room and can’t think what has just
happened.

Then Mum bangs on my bedroom door and shouts, ‘Tabitha, get up or I’m going to come in and drag you out of that bed!’ and my mind kind of kicks into gear. With a butterfly
thrill in my stomach I remember that I’ve got my date with Jake later and that we’re living in a beautiful manor house now.

Right.

The date calls for extra attention to my appearance.

Can’t get out of wearing school uniform for the day but at least I can make my hair look good.

I go into the little bathroom that adjoins my room and lean over the deep white bath to wash my hair in some special blonde stuff that Mum got me.

It’s cold in here. White tiled walls, green tiled floor and a draught blowing under the little sash window overlooking the back lawn.

Can’t have been much fun for the servant who lived in this part of the house. At least in my room there’s a warm radiator so that I can huddle by it while I’m drying my hair. I
tip my head upside down and blow heat on to my roots. My hair’s really fine, which is annoying, but there’s plenty of it.