Dreaming of Amelia (49 page)

•   It was a small room — a large closet, really — with sloping ceilings, various mechanical units along the walls … and crowded onto the floor in there: a mattress piled with bedding, a floral nightdress, a portable stove, a basin holding a sponge and soap, a pile of books, a box of dominoes, a basket of fruit, a small radio, a tin of paint …

•   ‘Somebody lives in there?' wondered Jacob Mazzerati.

•   ‘She does,' said Emily, triumphant, and pointed at Constance Milligan. ‘
She's
the Ashbury ghost! And
she
attacked Seb Mantegna's painting!'

•   And then, to everyone's surprise, Constance Milligan fainted.

•   ‘Maybe we should postpone this meeting,' murmured Chris Botherit, to himself — and —

Meeting Closed: 9.00 pm

www.myglasshouse.com/emthompson

FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER

My Journey Home

My Dear and Wonderful Readers of this Blog.

I have a surprise.

It is me!

I am back.

Even though I said that this blog was complete, and therefore you have already grieved for me … well, you never know when someone might return … (eg ghosts!)

Do not be too excited, though, as it is a once-only encore performance.

My dear friends, I cannot blog! It is the time of summer and freedom, the HSC is done, I am no longer a student compelled to write blogs about
My Journey Home
,I am a citizen of reality! Soon to be a student of the law!

(Yes, I modestly say that my HSC marks were somewhat great to me, and I think I have enough to get into Arts-Law at Sydney, in accordance with my lifelong dream. Also, please note that Lydia, Amelia and Riley, amongst others in my year, were top ranked in the state in certain subjects. Therefore, life is on track.)

However, I am not here to talk about life! I am here to tell you something astonishing.

I have spoken to the Ashbury Ghost
.

She is alive and well and living in a closet in the archives.

(At least, she
has
been living there — the school will expel her now — ha ha.)

Her name is Constance Milligan.

Well, I can guess what you are all saying:
What? I thought the ghosts' names were Sandra and Kendall!

Or maybe you are saying:
Huh. Interesting, but we need more information?

Very well. I will tell the story.

Earlier tonight I went to a meeting that was in a conference room in the Arts Rooms of Ashbury. Constance Milligan, former Ashbury student and profoundly old person, was at the meeting. Many things were said, including by me — but I will only tell you the relevant ones. Here! Come with me to the key moments that night …

… As I arrived, I overheard somebody saying that Constance had
never
met or spoken with Amelia and Riley.

… I was talking about the attack on Seb's artwork, and I mentioned
splatters of red paint
. As I said those words, a memory splashed into my mind. Red paint. Where had I seen it before?

… Constance said that wicked young people
look at nude pictures of young women
. Another thought splashed into my mind: Seb's artwork had a nude picture in it. Hmmm.

… Constance said that Amelia and Riley were always laughing, and had a penetrating gaze — nobody else
seemed to notice this, but it smacked me in the face:
If she had never met Amelia and Riley, how did she know this
?

My mind raced. Could Constance have spied on the interviews somehow? Climbed the side of the building and looked through the window? (Unlikely.) Somehow seen them from above? What was above this room anyway? I looked up.

The archives room
.

And that's where I'd seen red splatters of paint!

So I ran up the stairs — and there, at the end of the archives room, behind the compacting files, was a door.

I opened the door, and found … a large closet.

Inside that large closet?

Evidence that someone had been hiding in it! an old person! there was a floral nightgown! a pile of bedding! a stack of books! a bowl of water! an electric cooker! a little rose jug holding a toothbrush and toothpaste! a box of dominoes! and an air vent that looked down on the conference room!!!

Dear Readers, I hope you are keeping up with me!

It was an astonishing night.

I made them all come upstairs with me, threw open the door to the closet, and Constance fainted.

But she woke up when we called her name.

‘I am undone,' she cried, trembling with excitement, flinging her hands in the air.

So everyone gathered around her there in the archives room, and she sat on a crocheted cushion (someone got it out of her closet-room for her) and confessed.

She said that she first hid in there the night before the progress interview with Amelia and Riley. They must
never lay eyes on
her
, she said, but it was essential that she see
them
.

‘To find out just how they cast their evil spells of enchantment on you,' she explained matter-of-factly, looking around at the members of the committee. ‘It was for your own protection.'

She had such fun, she said, staying overnight and watching the conference room, that she decided she might come back now and then.

And that's what happened. Over the year, she spent more and more time in the building. She wandered the corridors by night, and hid in the closet during the day, watching the classes below.

‘I belong here,' she said, blushing. ‘I'm an Ashbury girl through and through.'

She was truly a ghost! A spirit from the past returned to haunt the place she had once cherished!

And also, truly, she
was
the ghost.

I admit, I do not think she was responsible for
all
our ghostly encounters — some of those are just day-to-day life — I am older and wiser now and have realised, for example, that pens
do
roll across desks sometimes, just of their own accord, and that mandarin peels may simply be left behind by cleaners, and that feathers can float long distances, and that distant sounds of traffic might
resemble
the sound of someone sobbing, and perhaps a person might
imagine
the smell of sausages frying just because the person is hungry, so I wisely admit that these things were probably not the ghost, but listen …

The book that once belonged to Sandra Wilkinson,
The Complete History of Politics in Australia
— Constance had brought in a pile of her old schoolbooks to help her feel
like a schoolgirl. She had accidentally dropped that one in a corridor! She admitted it when I asked her! (Turns out Constance got Sandra's old textbooks after Sandra died.)

The handkerchief? Her schoolgirl handkerchief! (She had a pile of them in the closet!)

The lilac talcum powder? Constance wears it! (I had smelled it on her in the meeting, actually.)

The faint music — Constance listening to the radio!

The dripping in the ceiling of the bathroom? Constance admitted she had been bathing in a bucket and now and then the water spilled. It had leaked through to the bathroom next door to the conference room!

Even the attack on Seb's painting!!!
IT WAS CONSTANCE!

She had to admit this — there was paint in her closetroom, and splatters on the floor of the archives room. But she had no remorse: she had saved the world from wicked pornography, she said. (She is quite mad.)

And, do you know what I have realised? The clattering sound I once heard when I was in the archives room, that terrified me so much? Well, that must have been her! She must have been there in the closet at that time! (I wonder what she was doing.)

As for the creaking and cracking that everybody thought was the ghost, it turns out that those are just the building settling under the weight of the extensions.

(But cracking sounds are also caused by changes in temperature . . . and guess what was in the closet with Constance? A control panel for the airconditioning! Maybe she had been switching buttons on and off?
Which brings me to the cold draughts in Room 27B
. . . I say no more!!!)

But I always do say more, don't I? Before I go, I want to personally thank Astrid. I am thinking about my value as a ‘friend' these days, as I was not a very good friend to Amelia and Riley, and I have not always been that great to Astrid. She has annoyed me, a bit. Sorry Astrid. And despite that, she went to the effort of finding that report about Sandra and Kendall's accident!!

Thank you, Astrid.

A round of applause for Astrid!

Even if you did get the ghosts wrong.

Never mind.

You know, I must admit, I feel strangely sad that the ghosts are not Sandra and Kendall any more. They seemed like part of the theme of the year — true love torn asunder. Me and Charlie. (Singapore! Of all places.) (Setting aside the fact that I tore us asunder to begin with. That was an error.) Lydia and Seb. Amelia and Riley . . .

But no. It is not so . . .

Oh, there is one thing more.

You have met the ghost before.

Her name is not just Constance Milligan.

It is also
FloralNightie.

She is a reader of this blog.

This came to me while Constance was gathering her things from the closet-room, and we were all watching, and pretending not to. She had said something earlier that sounded strangely familiar: that the ghost was ‘surely Kendall Mason Patterson, angry at the way his money is being spent' — and I couldn't figure out why it was familiar. But, then, as Constance folded
a floral night dress, I remembered — a comment on my blog!

Surely it is KL Mason Patterson, feeling angry about the way his money has been spent,
the comment had said!
FloralNightie
was the person commenting!

I asked her right then, and she was proud to admit that she had been using the school's computers at night!

Which means
she's
the one who saw Lydia kissing Riley in Conference Room 2B! And wrote about it on my blog!

As to which: why did Constance/FloralNightie do that?

Well, that is the final mystery I suppose.

Anyhow, we all trudged from the building tonight — weary but sparkle-eyed with amazement — some of us helping Constance to carry her things. I found myself walking between Mr Ludovico and Cassie's mum, Patricia.

Patricia congratulated me on getting into Law at Sydney Uni. ‘After your performance in the conference room tonight,' she said, ‘you're seriously going to knock them dead in the courtrooms one day soon.' Patricia is a lawyer herself, so that was praise indeed.

I glanced sideways at Mr Ludovico. Was he smirking at me? Laughing his nasty laugh? Saying something sarcastic about my chances as a lawyer? No! His face was actually
sulky
.

‘How about that, eh?' I said, turning to him innocently. ‘There
was
a ghost in the Art Rooms all this time! You owe me a
huge
apology, Bill!'

The others laughed; Bill scowled like a child; and, for the first time in my life, I thought I might like being an adult.

The great tragedy for
you
, my readers, is that this really is my final blog. It is time for me to go and greet my future. This last year has been the storm. Life, from now on, will be the calm.

Now, I will fly into the arms of my family downstairs. William is baking something that smells
fantastic
and
full of chocolate,
and I can hear Mum and Dad arguing about who will get to taste it first. (It will be me.) And even as my heart is alive with the knowledge that soon I will leap into the world of the grown-ups, still, I will always have this family. Even as I grow old and ugly and crazy myself, like Constance, still, even then I will have the
memories
of this beautiful family . . .

I'm a very lucky girl.

And I am home.

(Huh. How about that.
My journey
. . .)

And now:
Fly, Emily! To the chocolate!
(Bye.)

2 comments

Yowta772 said
. . . Or you could fly to Singapore to see me, Em.

Astrid said
. . . You are totally sweet saying *thank you* to me, Em! ,,,, And I'm, like, I have to tell you this now . . . remember I once said that Seb and I were together? That was not totally true. We DID get together that *1* night at the party (when u guys were locked in the closet,,,) but S told me he didn't want to keep it going.

I kind of like told you it WAS going b/c my dad said if you really want sthing you shld act like u've got it, and then it will b/come real. But it didn't (b/come real). Even
when I asked S to come up to the archives to help me look 4 info about your ghost [and S is actually the 1 who found that, cos he likes you and Lyd so much] & even when I asked him 2 help me try on my drama costume while we were there in the archives!!! *** He was just like totally sweet, and like, sorry, but it's not happening for me. And now my mum says I shld never listen to dad, and that <> is the best. So, now I am totally honest, and totally sorry
that I kind of like <> to you, and we're still BFF 4eva, yeah?