The Haunting of Tabitha Grey (6 page)

‘I reckon we’ll have a takeaway tonight,’ she says. ‘I fancy a night off cooking. Might go and do a bit of dancing downstairs.’

Then she floats out of the room leaving a cloud of Chanel perfume on the air behind her.

Dad and I gaze in the direction she’s just gone in for a moment without speaking.

Then Dad breaks the trance by leaping up to grab his keys.

‘Chinese?’ he says. ‘I won’t be long.’

Then he slams out of the flat, leaving Ben and me alone.

We look at one another without speaking.

Ben slinks off to follow Mum down to the basement.

I go upstairs to my bedroom and curl up under the duvet for a bit.

Dad takes nearly an hour getting the food. He comes back in rubbing his hands and carrying two large bags with steaming hot Chinese food in them.

‘Go get your mother,’ he says to me.

I roll my eyes and swing my legs off the sofa where I’m now watching a re-run of
Gossip Girl
.

Dad starts opening boxes and packets and a gorgeous smell fills the air so I head off towards the basement to get Mum so that I can stuff my face as soon as possible.

On the way down to Mum’s dance room I meet Ben sitting on the basement steps watching her through the window in the door.

‘What are you doing?’ I say. Stupid question, really. He’s doing what he always does – hanging around and getting in the way.

I step over him and continue downstairs.

Mum is dancing with one spotlight trained down on to her so that she stands in a pool of light. She’s standing on pointe, on one leg with the other stretched up high behind her.

I’m about to tell her that supper’s ready but something stops me.

It’s the look on her face.

It’s like she’s suddenly got five years younger or something. All the fine lines on her face have vanished and her skin is glowing. She’s looking downwards at the floor and
smiling like she’s remembering something lovely that has happened.

I try to think when I last saw Mum’s face looking like this but I can’t. Suppose it’s probably how she looked on stage most nights at the Royal Ballet when she curtseyed and
took her bow whilst the audience threw red roses at her.

It’s a beautiful look. Kind of pure and shining and glowing with love.

Maybe the fact that she got dressed up when Dawn came has made her feel better.

Anyway, it’s kind of nice that she’s looking so serene and not grey in the face with her usual migraine.

‘Mum,’ I say, then again, louder, ‘MUM. Dinner is ready.’

My mother jumps and clutches her heart.

‘Tabs, don’t creep up on me like that,’ she says, but she’s still smiling.

By the time we get back upstairs to the kitchen her face has taken on its usual mask again and looks dull and cold.

I crunch my way through a bag of prawn crackers and text Gemma who now wants to come and spend a night in the manor because her parents reckon it’s haunted.

‘Don’t bother,’ I say. ‘Nothing much ever happens here.’

Then I wonder why I wrote that.

We go to bed early because Mum has faded back into tiredness again and Dad’s going out to patrol once around the manor with Sid to check everything is OK.

I make sure that Ben is tucked up in the little room next to my own and then I lie in bed and try again to remember when it was that I last saw Mum’s face looking so amazing.

I think and think and then at last, just as I’m dropping off, I see it.

It was the night Ben was born. He came at home because there was no time to get to the hospital and, after the midwife had left, Mum got up, clutching her sides and her back, and went over to
the cot next to her bed.

She leant over the side of the cot and looked down at Ben.

Her face was all glowing with happiness.

She squeezed my hand and said, ‘Look, Tabitha. Your new little brother. I hope you’re going to take care of him.’

‘Yeah,’ I mutter to myself as I fall asleep. ‘And I’m still taking care of him now.’

Then my eyelids slam down like steel shutters.

I dream of croquet all night long.

T
he next day Mum agrees that I can leave the flat.

I’m feeling loads better and I’ve almost managed to convince myself that everything weird I saw or felt in the manor was a dream connected to having the flu.

Every now and again there’s this little voice in my head that whispers, ‘But you KNOW it felt real,’ and then I try hard to stamp it out again. I figure that if I fill my head
with rubbish it will keep everything else at bay, so I watch loads of trashy telly, I sing loudly as I jump in the shower and I play CDs and text my mates and ring them on the phone to talk about
nothing in particular – just school gossip and what Jake’s up to now and whether I’ve done any of my half term homework yet (which I haven’t, but I reckon that being ill is
a good excuse).

I try to keep my head filled up with stuff and then I reckon that nothing else will be able to get in there.

‘Coming with me around the manor?’ Dad says after we’ve had cereal and coffee for breakfast. ‘I’ve got to finish the upstairs inventory today.’

‘I’ve got masses of homework,’ I say. It’s true enough, even though I don’t much want to do it.

‘Oh come on, Tabs,’ says Dad. ‘You’ll love it.’

I freeze with my cup of coffee in my hand but Dad looks so big and reassuring and excited that I nod and try to look calm as I finish my breakfast.

So I can stick close to Dad, right? I don’t need to go into any rooms on my own and even if I do I’m pretty sure that I was just feverish last time and imagining things.

The manor does look quite beautiful as we stroll down the long corridor from our flat to the entrance hall. It gleams in the sunlight and all the paintings are lit up, highlighting the beautiful
faces of people who used to live here hundreds of years ago.

‘Morning,’ says Dad to Dawn as we pass the reception desk.

She flushes pink and busies herself with arranging a pile of guidebooks on the desk in front of her.

Visitors are already queuing up for tickets as we walk through the entrance hall.

I sneak a look at the fireplace but there’s nobody there, just an arrangement of dried orange flowers in the centre and, above it, the portrait of Lady Eleanor Thomas-Fulford in her long
dark dress, her serious face in profile and a small black dog nestling at her feet.

‘Miserable-looking woman, isn’t she?’ says Dad as he catches me looking. ‘She loved this place, mind you. She refused to die until she’d made sure it would be left
as a museum.’

We go into Lady Eleanor’s morning room just as he’s saying this and I catch my breath.

Lavender.

It’s a choking smell.

I cough and pull my T-shirt up over my nose.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ says Dad, amused. ‘It’s not dusty in here! Everything is cleaned, top to bottom.’

‘No,’ I say, struggling for breath. ‘Can’t you smell lavender, Dad?’

Dad takes a few deep sniffs.

‘Nope,’ he says. ‘Faint smell of furniture polish.’

Maybe that’s it. I’m glad when we’ve passed out of this room and gone up the ornate staircase but I keep a nervous eye on the door to the library.

Don’t much fancy going in there after what happened last time.

‘I need to do Mr Thomas-Fulford’s bedroom today,’ says Dad, and to my relief he takes me into a room I’ve not yet been into.

There’s another of the ornate four-poster beds in the centre of the room but this one is made of brass and has a cream-coloured embroidered spread over the top.

There’s a small round mirror with a three-tiered table underneath it by the window.

‘Shaving mirror,’ says Dad, ticking it off on his list. ‘Shaving was a big thing for Victorian men. A manservant would have done it and it took ages.’

I nod and look around me. At the top of the bed are two long ropes hanging down, one on either side. There’s a label on one of them which says ‘Upstairs’, and another one which
says ‘Servants’ Hall’.

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘So he could lie in bed and pull these and the servants would come up?’

‘Not only that,’ replies Dad, picking up a silver comb and inspecting it. ‘You see that lever next to the ropes?’

I hadn’t noticed it but there’s a little handle on the wall and it’s attached to a long gold pipe which runs right along the wall and ends up by the bedroom door on the other
side of the room.

‘Look,’ says Dad. He pulls the handle and a bolt slams down into the lock on the bedroom door. ‘So he didn’t even have to get out of bed to lock his door. Clever stuff,
eh?’

I nod, grinning. This house is full of surprises. Not all of them good, but this lever and lock thing is really brilliant, so I have a couple of goes of it myself and the rest of the morning
passes smoothly. After lunch in the flat, I continue to go round the house with Dad and it’s all light and cheerful in the two bedrooms he’s working in so I feel OK, although I try not
to look outside at the croquet lawn too much. When I do, all I can see is a group from the Women’s Institute having a picnic underneath a tree and a coachload of kids about to come into the
manor to dress up as Victorian children and do loads of projects around the house.

It’s kind of comforting seeing all this normal life going on and I feel better by the end of the day.

Then I get a text from Jake. It buzzes in my pocket while I’m helping Dad inspect and check a soldier’s uniform of a red-buttoned jacket and white trousers hanging in a glass-fronted
cabinet in the guest bedroom.

‘Hope you’re having a cool half term,’ it says. ‘Worried about you. Haven’t heard from you for ages. Do you want to meet up? J.’

‘Ages’ is in fact one day.

I put the phone back in my pocket without replying.

It’s good helping Dad. The afternoon sun is streaming into the rooms and there’s a nice feel up here, and Dad’s good humour is infectious.

I help him polish some fenders and move furniture around, and then Dad and I head back to the flat feeling happy with our work.

Dawn’s packing up and the last visitors have gone.

As we walk past her I try and will Dad not to look at her but he’s behind me and I can’t quite see what he’s doing, except he does linger for a moment by the reception desk.
When I turn round Dawn pretends not to see me, reaches for her coat and heads off outside to her car.

Dad clears his throat and then bounds ahead of me to open up the flat.

‘It’s good living here, isn’t it?’ he says as we go in.

I smile but I don’t say anything because it might not be what he wants to hear.

I mean – I enjoyed today with Dad. And the house is beautiful in the sunlight and it’s kind of interesting looking at all the old things.

But – I can’t shake the feeling that somebody or something is waiting in store for me and that I’m needed for something.

‘Stupid,’ I say to myself as I go into the warm flat.

Then Ben’s hugging my knees and all my fears get forgotten in the chaos of him, asking what’s for supper and Mum nagging me at least to try and do a bit of homework ready for Monday.
I don’t think much more about the manor.

Until.

Dad’s cooking so he gets out one of his famous recipe books and then pats his pockets with a quizzical look on his broad face and he turns to me where I’m painting my fingernails a
deep dark black. He says: ‘Tabs, I think I’ve left my specs upstairs in Charles Thomas-Fulford’s bedroom. Be a love and run up and get them. Here.’

He detaches a single key from the large group that always jangles from his hip and turns back to the fridge.

‘Can’t you go?’ I say. My heart feels like it’s going to stop.

‘I’m cooking!’ says Dad. ‘Go on – you know where it is. Just make sure you lock up afterwards.’

I look at Mum. ‘Will you come with me?’ I say. ‘Please?’

Mum laughs. ‘Don’t be silly. And anyway, I don’t really like the place at night. Too many shadows.’

Oh great.

So she’s scared of the manor but it’s OK to send me up there in the dark.

‘You won’t be in the dark,’ says Dad, reading my mind. ‘It’s not dark outside yet. If you need to switch on a light, you know where they are. OK?’

I’m running out of excuses now so I get up, put my phone in my pocket and slide my feet back into my flip-flops.

‘If I’m not back in five minutes will you come and get me?’ I whine as I leave.

Dad gives me an exasperated look from where he’s chopping onions so I head into the corridor outside our flat.

The door clangs shut behind me and for a moment I consider letting myself back in and pleading cowardice.

But Dad will go mad. He hates me acting up and stressing out Mum.

I take a deep breath.

‘It’s all fine,’ I say to myself as I walk along the corridor past the dining room and drawing room. The doors are shut and locked so at least I won’t be able to look
inside.

I reach the entrance hall. The desk looks bare without all the postcards and books laid out and there’s a smell of polish and beeswax because the cleaners have been in today.

‘Just go straight upstairs,’ I say to myself, gripping the large key Dad’s given me. ‘Upstairs and across the landing and into that room, grab the glasses and get back to
the flat. OK?’

I wonder why I appear to be having a conversation with myself, but it kind of works because I find myself at the foot of the stairs about to go up.

I stand by the arched cabinet that used to be a doorway and part of me registers that it’s really quite cold where I’m standing.

And then I freeze for real.

The staircase is twisted so that I can only see the bit that goes up straight ahead of me and then there’s a small landing in the middle and a further few stairs which are over my head but
which I can’t see from where I’m standing.

Except that I can hear them.

Somebody’s footsteps.

Coming downstairs.

Heavy, slow, like an old person or an overweight person or somebody who needs to take their time coming down.

I stand rooted to the spot with my eyes growing wider and my heart pounding and my hand closing over the mobile to call Dad except I’m too scared to make a sound so I just carry on
standing there.