The House on Cold Hill (8 page)

It took some moments for the water to heat up sufficiently, then she stepped in and ducked her head beneath the shower head, grateful for the stream of hot water that was waking her more every second. She reached for the shampoo, tipped some into her hand, and massaged it into her hair.

Then she smelled the pungent reek of burning plastic.

The water stopped.

She heard the crackle of a fire.

Opening her eyes, stinging from soap, she saw to her horror flames shooting around the blackened shower controls.

‘Ollie!’ she shrieked, pushing open the shower door and stepping back into the bathroom. She stood transfixed like a rabbit caught in headlights, as flames licked the controls then died down, acrid black smoke rising around them.

‘Ollie!’ she called out again, running through into the bedroom, dripping wet, shivering, blinking away the soap. He was sound asleep.

‘Ollie!’

He did not stir.

She ran back into the bathroom and peered into the shower. The smoke was dying down. ‘Fuck!’ she said, watching the control unit warily. The last wisps of smoke rose and then there was nothing.

‘Fuck,’ she said again, touching her soapy hair, and walked over to the washbasin. She turned on the mixer tap and, to her relief, water poured out. She waited until the temperature was OK, then ducked her head under the stream.

As she rinsed off the shampoo she suddenly felt a sharp tug on the left side of her head. Then a harder tug that hurt, making her cry out in pain.

Something was yanking her hair, pulling it down.

She tried to raise her head, but she was being pulled down further. Further. Further.

It felt as though a hand was trying to pull her down into the plughole.

‘OLLIE!’ she screamed, trying desperately to raise her head, feeling her hair tugging painfully against her scalp. ‘OLLIE!’

Then she heard his voice. ‘Darling, what is it?’

‘HELP ME!’

The water stopped, abruptly. Ollie said, ‘It’s OK, darling. It’s OK.’

She felt his hands on her hair. Then, suddenly, the pain stopped. Gingerly, she stood up. ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

‘You’re OK, darling. You’re OK. You just got it caught on the plughole.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘It freaked me out. I really felt like someone was pulling it.’

‘Why didn’t you use the shower?’

12

Monday, 14 September

It was a warm morning, the heatwave continuing. An hour and a half later, as Ollie drove Jade for the start of her second week at school, she told him about her nightmare last night in which a woman, with an expression of menace, was standing at the end of her bed.

When she had been younger, Jade had suffered from night terrors. Terrible dreams that had made her sleepwalk around the house in her onesie, totally unaware. They had found the solution, which was to talk jokingly to her and make her laugh. Saying, repeatedly, ‘Hi, darling, stick your tongue out,’ was something that normally worked. Her face would turn from an expression of fear into a big smile. Then they could put her back to bed.

But last night she had been too afraid to leave her parents’ room, until he and Caro had finally coaxed her back to her own bed, and then let her sleep with the lights on. It had taken Ollie a long time to get back to sleep. He had lain until dawn, his mind whirring, thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

Deeply disturbed.

After dropping a yawning Jade off at school and returning to the house, Ollie had an immediate word with the plumber about the shower. Maguire told him it was over thirty years old and it looked as if, at some time, the wiring had been gnawed by rodents. He told Ollie that, like so much in this house, it should have been scrapped a long time ago.

After instructing Maguire to replace it as quickly as possible, he briefly discussed various issues and queries the workmen had raised. Then he climbed up to his office and immediately settled down to work, checking carefully through the amendments he had carried out to the Cholmondley Classics website. There were so many cars on it that he coveted. He paused for some moments to admire an immaculate blue and cream 1963 Mercedes 280SL Pagoda before, with some trepidation, emailing his client the link to the finished site.

He frittered away the next fifteen minutes replying to emails, Tweets and Facebook posts which had been coming in daily, wishing him and his family luck in their new home. There were dozens of comments in response to his Instagram posts too, as well as a ton of spam from various trade companies. Then he turned his attention to a less urgent, but equally challenging commission from another client, a revamp of the very basic website of an Indian restaurant in the centre of Brighton, The Chattri House
.

This was a complete back-to-the-drawing-board job, to which the client, Anup Bhattacharya, whom he had met with last week, enthusiastically agreed. The man owned a chain of twelve themed Indian restaurants around the country – so a lot was riding on getting this right. He looked through the notes he had made on his iPad at their meeting: the look and the feel of the site that Bhattacharya wanted; the road map of contents; the number of pages; the social media interaction and links. There was an e-commerce side as well, with branded food products to go on sale in the entrepreneur’s online deli.

At 11.00 when he went down for his mid-morning coffee, he hesitated before entering the atrium, as he now did each time, looking around carefully. As he stepped into the room the only thing he noticed, and perhaps it was his imagination, was that the temperature seemed to have dropped a fraction. He stopped and looked around. It wasn’t a big room – it was square, about fifteen feet by fifteen. To the left, the panelling was shaped into three arches, which fitted with this once having been the altar of the chapel of the monastery. Ahead was the window and door out onto the rear garden and grounds. To the right, past two wooden Doric-style columns, was the doorway into the kitchen.

This was the area where his mother-in-law had very clearly seen what he could only presume was a ghost. The same one described by the old man in the lane. And from the sound of it, the one seen by his father-in-law, Dennis, yesterday. Gliding out of the altar wall to the left, moving across the tiled floor and disappearing into the wall to the right of the kitchen door.

He suddenly felt uncomfortable standing here, feeling again as he had last night that someone was watching him. He walked through to the kitchen, selected a strong capsule for the Nespresso machine, switched it on, then checked the water level at the rear, waiting for its its twin green lights to stop blinking. The feeling that someone was watching him persisted. Someone standing behind him.

He turned round, sharply. There was no one.

This is not going to get to me, he thought. I’m not going to let it.

Below in the cellar he could hear the whine of a drill. Somewhere above him was the sound of hammering on metal. One of the painters outside, working on the worst of the window frames, had a radio blaring out music. A clean protective runner had been laid along the hallway by the builders. He could smell fresh paint.

He carried his coffee up to the bedroom, where there was still a smell of burnt plastic from the shower, retrieved the section of the
Sunday Times
where he had seen the article on ghosts last night, and carried it on up to his office. Then he sat at his desk, in the upright orthopaedic chair Caro had insisted he buy, to improve his posture and stop him getting stooped from so many hours crouched over his computer. He opened the paper out and began to read.

Fifteen minutes later, he tore the page containing the article out, folded it and placed it in a drawer. There were a couple of names in there that might be useful, he decided. Then, fighting the distraction, he focused on The Chattri House website for the next two hours.

Shortly after 1.30 p.m. he decided to take a break and walk down into the village to see if he could find the old man. He planned to grab a bite of lunch in The Crown pub and see what kind of food it served – and perhaps book for Sunday lunch for Caro, himself, Jade and her friend Phoebe, who was coming over for a sleepover on Saturday night, and Ruari, who was joining them on Sunday. Then, on second thoughts, he decided it would be nicer to have the lunch at home – and a lot cheaper.

As he reached the front gate he heard the roar and clatter of a tractor towing a large piece of agricultural machinery on a trailer up the lane at speed. A grizzled man in a tweed cap, sitting in the cab, stared rigidly ahead. As he waited for it to pass, Ollie gave him a wave, but got no acknowledgement.

He watched it for some moments rattling on up the road, almost expecting to suddenly see the old man walking down the hill. But there was no sign of him in either direction. He noticed to his irritation an empty Coke can and discarded food wrapper lying close to the front gates. Litter louts made him furious – what the hell gave people the right to just throw things out of their cars at random because they were too lazy to find a bin? He made a mental note to pick them up on his return.

He headed down the hill. As he reached the dilapidated-looking cottage on his right, with the very faded sign, G
ARDEN
C
OTTAGE
, he saw the front door was a few inches ajar, and decided to go and introduce himself, as this was his nearest neighbour. The gate was sagging so much on its hinges that the latch no longer closed properly. He pushed it open, feeling it scrape along the bricks of the garden path, then pushed it shut behind him and went up to the front door.

‘Hello!’ he called out. There had been a knocker once but all that remained were the two corroded brass clasps that had held it. There was no sign of a bell. He rapped with his bare knuckles and called out, again, ‘Hello!’

‘Yes, who is it?’ asked a friendly, female voice, with a booming, county accent that seemed very grand for this little abode.

He heard a loud meow, then the woman saying, ‘There’s someone at the door, Horatio!’

A moment later Ollie was facing a tall, elderly woman, with flowing white hair, fine features and clear blue eyes, who stood there with an inquisitive smile. She was dressed in flip-flops, dungarees covered in flecks of what looked like dried clay, and a frayed cream blouse, with more flecks of the stuff on her face.

‘Oh – I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said, politely, removing his sunglasses for a moment. ‘I’m Oliver Harcourt – my wife and I have recently moved into Cold Hill House. I thought I would just pop round and say hello as we’re neighbours.’

‘Well, how jolly nice of you! And welcome to Cold Hill – hope you’ll be jolly happy here. Excuse my appearance, I’ve been throwing pots.’

Ollie wondered for a moment if she was bonkers, then he realized what she meant. ‘Clay? You’re a potter?’

‘Yes, I’ve got my wheel and kiln out in the back. Tell you what, I’ll make you and your wife—?’

‘Caro.’

‘Caro! I’ll make you and Caro a vase, as a moving-in present. My name’s Annie Porter.’

‘Are you a famous potter?’

She laughed. ‘Good God, no. Most of my stuff explodes in the damned kiln anyway – but every now and then something survives! Do you like elderflower cordial?’

‘Not sure I’ve ever tried it.’

‘Got some of my own homemade in the fridge. Jolly good it is, too. Come in and have a glass and tell me a bit about yourselves. I hear you’ve a little girl. Nice to have a young couple come to the village – too many old fogeys like myself here!’

What little he saw of the interior house as he followed her through into the rear garden was as dilapidated as the exterior, although evidently good quality. There was a threadbare Persian hall carpet and a handsome grandfather clock. On one wall was a photograph of a man in naval uniform next to a frame containing a row of medals, and on the opposite wall, a couple of fine seascapes in ornate frames, and a black-and-white photograph of a modern warship. Several gaily painted vases and mugs were arranged on shelves in the kitchen, which they passed through on their way out to the unkempt rear garden. It was filled mostly with vegetables, Ollie noticed, rather than flowers, and there was a row of cloches. At the far end was a shed that looked in imminent danger of collapse, which presumably housed her pottery studio.

They sat at a small round metal table on hard chairs, under the glare of the sun, and he gratefully sipped the sweet but refreshingly cold cordial. It was several minutes of being pumped with questions by Annie about himself, Caro and Jade, before he had the opportunity to ask her anything back.

‘So how long have you lived here, Annie?’ he said, finally.

‘In Cold Hill? Gosh, let me think. About thirty-five years. We bought this place as a bit of a retirement dream – my late husband and I. But you know how things work out.’ She shrugged.

‘I’m sorry – did you split up?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ She looked sad, suddenly, for the first time. ‘No, Angus died in the Falklands War – his ship was hit by one of those Exocet missiles.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s how life goes sometimes, isn’t it?’ She pointed at a small bed planted with tall sunflowers. ‘They always make me smile, sunflowers!’

‘They make everyone smile,’ Ollie said.

‘Daft-looking things. Daft but happy. We all need a few daft things in our lives, don’t you think?’

‘I guess!’ He smiled and sipped some more of his drink, wondering whether it would be polite or rude to ask any more about her life. ‘This is delicious.’

She beamed. ‘Good, I’ll give you a couple of bottles to put in your fridge. I always make far too much of the bloody stuff! I give it out to several people in the village. The shop want me to go into mass production so they can stock it, but I can’t be bothered with all that!’

‘You must know most of the people here, I imagine?’ Ollie said.

‘Oh, everybody, dear. Everybody. Well, nearly everybody. Most people who come here stay – for a good long while, at any rate. So, are you all happy in the house?’

After a moment Ollie said, ‘Yes, yes, we are. Very. Well, my daughter, Jade, is a bit miffed about being separated from all her friends. We lived in the centre of Brighton previously – well, Hove, actually. Are there any young girls, around twelve, here in the village? I’d like to try and find her some friends.’