The Haunting of Tabitha Grey (3 page)

I draw a layer of eyeliner inside my eyelids and stand back to survey the results in the mirror. The black of the eyeliner makes my eyes seem more blue than usual.

I put in a pair of blue stud earrings (we’re not allowed to wear dangly ones) and spray a load of gloss stuff all over my head.

‘It will have to do,’ I say to my reflection.

Ben comes in and gazes up at me, so I ruffle his hair.

‘Mum will kill me if I don’t hurry,’ I say. ‘See you later.’

Ben doesn’t have to go to school. He’s too unwell for proper school. Besides, I don’t think he’d get on too well with all the other crazy noisy kids.

I eat cereal in the kitchen with Mum and Dad, and Sid pops in again, jangling an enormous bunch of keys which he puts on the breakfast table. Dad picks up that huge bunch of keys with a glint in
his eye while Mum is clearing up the breakfast things. I kiss my parents goodbye and come out of our flat. For the first time, I go on my own down the long corridor past the manor’s dining
room and drawing room and into the grand entrance hall.

It looks different today.

All the shutters are drawn back to let the sunlight stream in and the heaters are pumping out hot air so that the oil paintings on the wall sway and bump on their long wires.

I glance at the glamorous portrait of Lucinda MacDonald. In the daylight her white dress glows less. Other portraits I haven’t noticed seem to swim into view as I look around the room.
There’s one of a kind-looking old man with a grey beard and another of a man who resembles him but looks younger and less friendly. This man is wearing some sort of soldier’s uniform
and has black eyes and a dark moustache. He glares out of the picture at me.

‘That’s Captain Jack,’ announces a woman’s voice.

There’s a lady in a dark uniform and white shirt stacking postcards on the reception desk. She looks old – about thirty or so. She smiles at me as I walk towards her.

‘He was a funny piece of work,’ she says. ‘Lady Eleanor’s only son. Always up to mischief. He never inherited this place, thank God.’

I smile because I don’t know what she’s talking about.

‘You must be Tabitha,’ she says. Her dark eyes dance. ‘We were told that the new family were moving in this weekend. I’m Dawn.’

I reach over the desk piled up with brochures and cards and shake her hand.

‘I do the tickets here,’ she says. ‘And sometimes I’m on security. We all just muck in and do whatever needs doing. You’ll get used to us being around.’

I smile at her and hover for a bit. Then I glance at my watch.

‘I’m late for school,’ I say. ‘See you later.’

I push open the heavy front door of Weston Manor, run past the Edwardian shoe-scraper and the old-fashioned bell pull and down the tall flight of white stone steps. There are cars pulling up in
the horseshoe-shaped drive and other members of staff are getting out of them but I haven’t got time to speak to anyone else so I leg it out of the grounds and down Weston Drove towards the
bus stop.

It’s only as I get on the bus, finding my seat next to Gemma as it drives back up past the entrance to the manor, that I look at the house and get a little thrill in my bones as I see it
sitting there all white and quiet.

‘Did you know that I live there now?’ I say to Olivia White, one of my so-called other friends from school.

She shoots me a scornful look. ‘So?’ she says. ‘It’s just a house. And my mum says it’s really weird and she wouldn’t want to live there anyway.’

I sink into my seat feeling a bit deflated even though Gemma whispers to me to ignore Olivia because she’s the biggest bitch out there.

I miss my last home. I miss my old bedroom and the private garden that we had there, and even though life wasn’t perfect I kind of see what Gran is saying when she says things like,
‘Better the Devil you know.’

I’ve left so many good things behind me.

School seems to drag on for years.

Then again, it always does when you’re impatient for something to happen later on.

I sit through maths, chemistry, English and religious studies and me and Gemma text like mad underneath the desk all day, and then finally the bell rings and I go to the loo with Gemma to get
ready for my date with Jake.

‘Shame about the gross dress,’ she comments as we peer at my reflection in the grimy mirrors in the school loo.

It’s May so I’m wearing my blue school dress with the short sleeves, which is kind of vile, but we both know that if I flout the school rules and get seen outside in my own clothes
then my life won’t be worth living.

‘You can borrow these if you like,’ says Gemma. She pours a slinky armful of blue jangly bracelets on to my thin wrist and I clink my arm up and down, enjoying the feeling of cold
metal.

‘Ah, thanks,’ I say. ‘They match my earrings! You’re a mate.’

I smile at Gem in the mirror. She’s kind of kept me going over the past few years when things have been tough at home. She has a friendly round face, long wavy hair and big sky-coloured
eyes. We look about as different to one another as two people could possibly look.

‘And your hair,’ says Gemma. She pushes my head upside down into the sink and sprays a load of volume stuff all over it. When I tip my head back up my long blonde hair has got new
layers in it and falls in a dishevelled mess all over my shoulders.

‘Nice,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

Then she runs off home and leaves me pretending to be cool and disinterested just outside the school gates.

Jake’s already there, with his hands in his pockets. He’s whistling all casual, like he’s forgotten I’m due, but when I go up to him he flushes and pecks me on my cheek
and gives me one of his cute soppy looks.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘D’you want a pizza or a curry or something?’

My heart kind of sinks a bit. It’s hardly the most romantic declaration of undying love ever. And I am kind of a romantic. Mum says I watch too many slushy American films and I know deep
down that they’re rubbish, but after the last few years it feels like good escapism from everything that’s going on in my life. I like all those films where a boy meets a girl and they
almost get it together but they don’t and there turns out to be some reason, like one of them is a vampire or suffering from a terminal illness.

‘Intelligent girl like you should watch decent films,’ Dad is always saying to me. I sigh and stuff my fingers in my ears.

Thing is, I know he’s right. I get high marks at school.

But being clever only ever seems to land me in trouble.

So I watch trashy films and read romantic books and they kind of dull things down and make me feel safe.

Or that’s the plan.

Jake takes me to a pizza place in town. It’s really noisy and full of babies crying and toddlers having parties so it’s quite difficult to hear what he’s
saying, but I enjoy looking at his gelled-up hair and his blue eyes and tanned skin, and as usual he gives me masses of attention and doesn’t even look when a gang of really pretty blonde
girls come in for a party, pushing past our table in their summer tops and leggings. I keep reminding myself that he IS one of the hottest boys in school and I’m so busy staring at him that I
don’t hear what he’s asking me for a moment before I realise he’s asking me about the manor.

‘I said, did you know that my gran won’t go in there?’ he says. ‘She reckons it’s kind of spooky inside.’

I laugh in what I hope is a cool and casual way, pulling all my long hair to one side and arranging it over one shoulder.

‘Yeah, it’s maybe a bit weird,’ I say. The voice sounds as if it’s coming from somebody else, somebody all grown-up and sophisticated. ‘But actually it’s
really cool living in a manor.’

I hear myself say all this and Jake’s smiling away so I must be doing a convincing job. But inside there’s a tiny sinking feeling of doubt.

Somehow I get Jake off the subject and I ask him loads of stuff about himself and he goes a bit red when he gives me the answers. It’s nice seeing how much he likes me, so for a few more
hours I forget about my new home and Mum’s migraines and sadness and Ben’s scared look, and I just enjoy having Jake give me lots of attention.

When it gets to seven I stand up and brush crumbs from my school uniform.

‘I’d better get back,’ I say. ‘Mum worries if I’m late.’

The light is fading as I get on the bus. Jake watches and waves from the pavement and I half-wave but inside I feel a bit embarrassed, even though we have been together for months. As the bus
pulls into Weston Drove and I get off to walk the last little bit, I get the sinking feeling again, like I’m about to do an exam or something. It gets worse as I walk up the horseshoe drive
to the manor. All the visitors have long since gone and the shutters are closed in every window. The house stares down at me with those dark, unblinking eyes. I climb the white stone steps and push
twice on the bell like I’ve agreed with Dad so that he’ll come and walk me back to our flat.

While I’m waiting for him to let me in, I glance over to the ruined stable buildings on the right and for just a second I imagine them as they once were, rushing with life and noise.
Horses pulling carriages, grooms brushing them down and stabling them. I swear I can almost smell the stench of horse dung and blocked drains and a whiff of something sweeter – peaches,
perhaps, or grapes? – and then Dad’s pulling open the heavy front door and giving me a hug and all of that sort of melts away when I smell his warm jumper and the deodorant he always
uses.

I hold on to him tight until he moves away to pull down a blind in the entrance hall.

Then something makes me jump.

I don’t know what, at first.

Then it’s there. A feeling at the back of my head. Like a pack of ice has been pressed against it. ‘Ow,’ I say, clapping my hand under the nape of my neck.

I twist round to look behind, out over the semi-circular drive with the weird flight of steps that go nowhere.

Nothing.

Dad’s not listening. He’s jingling his keys and looking around the entrance hall. ‘Quite a place to live, Tabs,’ he says as he locks the big front door behind me.

‘Yeah’, I say. He’s right. The house does look beautiful as we walk down the long corridor to our flat. But I can’t concentrate on looking at the things Dad points out to
me.

The moon shines through the windows of the glass verandah and lights up bits and pieces of furniture in the drawing room and dining room as we pass by their doorways.

I don’t want to look but something in me can’t seem to stop.

That’s why, as Dad is pulling out the key to our flat and inserting it in the lock, I’m still standing by the dining-room door peering into the gloom. It’s very still inside. I
can see the outline of the great polished table. The white faces of the Chinese lions glint in the moonlight from their dark mahogany cases.

There’s something else too. At the far end of the dining-room table, on one of the high-backed gothic chairs. I strain my eyes, trying to see.

‘Come in, Tabs,’ says Dad, already inside our flat.

‘OK,’ I reply.

I turn to leave and follow Dad but I have to look back. I don’t want to. I just have to.

There’s nothing there.

A wave of tiredness hits me. I can hardly drag my feet over to our flat.

‘Come inside, Tabitha,’ orders Dad.

He shuts our door and bolts us safe inside.

M
um’s dancing again.

Well, she’s not dancing for an audience at Covent Garden any more, but Dad’s rigged her up a barre in our flat in the huge basement room which was once the servants’ kitchen
and is now a storage area for council files, folders and furniture. He clears a big space by the wall and drills holes into it to fit the shiny barre. Then he puts up a long mirror and installs
some little spotlights in the ceiling so that they can shine down on Mum and she can see what she’s doing.

At first Mum’s not keen about going down to the basement and dancing there while we’re all upstairs doing other things, but after a few sessions she starts to look forward to it.

Sometimes I creep halfway down the stairs and sit there hugging my knees so that I can watch.

Mum dances like she’s trying to reach something.

Or someone.

Her arms stretch out towards things that I can’t see and her face is filled with this strange yearning look that she doesn’t use in our normal everyday life. When she pirouettes
round in circles her limbs end up folded around her and she hugs her own elbows to finish, like she’s trying to hibernate away from the world.

Sometimes she just puts her leg up on the barre and examines her legs and her feet in their narrow pointe shoes and I can tell she’s missing the discipline of her Royal Ballet training and
maybe wondering whether she gave it all up too early.

Dad never interrupts Mum when she’s dancing.

He’s got about a million and one jobs to do around the manor and his latest project is to update the guidebook for visitors, which means taking a thorough inventory of every single piece
of furniture and every ornament on display in the house.

‘It’s going to take me about a year just to do that,’ he complains, but I can tell he’s really enjoying himself. He gets up early with a determined glint in his eye and
bounds off into the main house every day with a laptop and a big wad of paper, and sometimes he even forgets to come back for lunch and doesn’t reappear until the manor has been shut and
it’s dark outside.

It’s half term so I get a whole week off school to hang around and annoy Mum.

‘Why don’t you go and help your father?’ she says. She’s chosen today as the day she’s going to paint our kitchen and hang new curtains in my bedroom.

I pull a face. ‘It’s cosier in the flat,’ I say. I’m lying about on the sofa in our lounge with my legs in thick stripy socks and my hair all un-brushed and
un-washed.

I love half term but after being freaked out a couple of weeks ago I don’t have any urge to go into the main part of Weston Manor. Plus I’ve got other things on my mind. I think
about Jake a lot. Can’t stop thinking about him.