The Grey Girl (9 page)

Everyone was quiet at breakfast the next morning. Nell had made some excuse not to come into work at Dudley Hall that day, and I didn't blame her. I'd want to stay as far away from Dudley Hall and its ghosts as possible if I had a choice. It was just me, Toby, Aunt Meredith and Richard sitting around the breakfast table. The sound of Richard buttering his toast and then munching loudly was like a cheese grater rubbing against my fragile head. I clanked my knife against my plate and closed my eyes, trying not to get angry. I felt as though I had the shortest fuse in the world. I searched my brain for something that might calm me down and remembered one of my favourite quotes from
Othello.
‘How poor are they who have not patience,'
I said aloud.

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, ready to force myself to eat some toast. Toby was staring right at me as though I was a total stranger. After our day exploring the attic I thought we'd made friends, but right then he was looking at me as though I was the most frightening thing in the world.

‘No book on spies to read at breakfast this morning?' I asked him, trying to smile.

Toby's gaze flickered nervously to my hands. I glanced down at them. My fingertips were still red-raw from where I'd tried to claw my way out of the locked attic room. I made a mental note to put on a long-sleeved sweater after breakfast, one that I could pull down over my hands and hide my bruised and bloody fingertips from the world.

‘I prefer Toby not to read at the breakfast table,' Richard said. His steely gaze bore into me like ice. ‘Bad manners to read whilst eating. A dinner table should be used to hold engaging conversations around it. Toby will never learn to do that if he is forever reading.'

‘More tea, sweetheart?' Aunt Meredith said briskly. She seemed different this morning – on edge. I wondered if it was because of what had happened to me yesterday or if she was always like this around Richard. There was something forced and rigid about her demeanour, and she was wearing more make-up than normal and had made more of an effort with her hair. Maybe it
was
Richard to blame for her unease, not me. The thought only made me more annoyed that he had come back to Dudley Hall.

Richard nodded sharply and Aunt Meredith leant over Toby and began to pour tea into his cup. Richard lifted the cup and took a loud slurp. I looked at him with unbridled disgust.

‘So, I've been working on a new idea for a murder mystery party with a flapper theme,' Aunt Meredith said brightly. ‘Prohibition America,' she continued. ‘Everyone could put on American accents. I've got a wonderful Charleston dress that would look lovely on you, Suzy. Suzy's been doing a marvellous job of playing the murder victims,' she said to Richard.

Richard nodded. ‘Yes, I hear you want to be an actress one day.'

‘Actually, I'm going to be a writer,' I corrected him. ‘Although I might act in my plays and films. A lot of people do that.'

‘Do they?' He smiled patronisingly. ‘Well, I think it's wonderful that you're managing to be so focused, despite all your difficulties.'

‘Maybe you'd like to put that creative brain of yours to use coming up with ideas for new murder mystery parties,' Aunt Meredith said before I had a chance to react to Richard's words.

‘And can I write it?' I asked quickly.

‘Umm … you can certainly have a stab at it,' she replied. ‘Actually, we have a different sort of party arriving this weekend.'

‘Different how?' Richard asked, sounding as if he wasn't the least bit interested in the answer.

‘The group is younger than we usually have,' Aunt Meredith replied. ‘It's a hen party. I've told them to come dressed in school uniforms – I thought we could base the murder mystery during the time that Dudley Hall was a school.'

‘I have the perfect storyline you could use for them,' I blurted out.

Richard sighed and crossed his arms over his broad chest, leaning back into his chair and smirking at me as though I was about to prattle out some kind of nonsense.

‘I've been writing a story set here in the house, whilst Dudley Hall was still a school,' I said, ignoring Richard.

‘Is it a murder mystery?' Aunt Meredith asked, sounding genuinely encouraging.

I shook my head. ‘Not exactly. It's more of a ghost story. But I could tweak it slightly, and maybe you could use it this weekend? It's called
The Ghost of Dudley Hall
.'

‘Original,' Richard muttered to himself.

‘I think it sounds wonderful.' My aunt smiled at me. ‘Why don't you do some more work on it and then come and show it to me?'

‘Honestly, Meredith,' Richard said, sounding bored. ‘You're not helping the girl. Letting her think that some silly story is good enough to use is only going to damage her more when you don't –'

‘Damage me more?' I interrupted, feeling as though a weight was suddenly crashing down upon my chest.

Richard looked at Aunt Meredith and rolled his eyes. She cast me a nervous glance and opened her mouth to speak but stopped short as the sound of the telephone rang out around us.

‘Not while we're eating,' Richard said, glancing towards the ringing phone in the hallway. Toby cast his eyes down to his plate and Aunt Meredith studied the table in embarrassment. I looked at Richard incredulously. Who did he think he was? Yes, this was technically his house that he'd spent a small fortune buying and renovating. But he had no right to tell people how to live their lives. He had no right to tell me what to do. He wasn't my father. He wasn't my teacher. He wasn't even my real uncle, he was my aunt's fourth husband.

The phone continued to ring and ring. It sounded like a chainsaw in my head. Whoever was ringing was certainly persistent. My head throbbed and it rang and rang and I knew I'd throw my plate across the room in frustration if the noise didn't stop.

I pushed my chair back and got to my feet.

‘Suzy …' Aunt Meredith said in warning.

Without looking at her or Richard, I quickly made my way out into the hall towards the blaring telephone.

I violently picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,' I said, relief flooding through me that I'd made the unbearable racket stop.

‘Suzy!' came a voice, a male voice down the end of the phone. The way he said my name made my stomach plummet. I recognised the voice instantly; it was a voice I hadn't particularly ever wanted to hear again.

‘Sebastian Cotez,' I said into the receiver. I felt eyes boring into the back of my head and turned around to see Richard standing in the hallway glaring at me furiously. I turned my back to him and walked off with the phone. I sat down on the bottom of the grand staircase next to the shining suit of armour. The satisfaction I briefly felt for annoying Richard was quickly replaced by the dread of hearing Seb's voice. Just like Frankie, Seb was someone I did not want to hear from. He was someone who reminded me of everything that had happened at school, everything I needed to forget. ‘Why are you calling me?'

‘I'm worried about Frankie,' Seb said slowly. It's always annoyed me that Seb takes forever just to say one single sentence. He thinks about every word before he says it. I like people who just speak their mind, to hell with the consequences. ‘I don't know what to do to help her. Frankie really needs a friend right now and –'

‘Yeah, and I really need to distance myself from anything that reminds me of what happened at school, Sebastian. There's a reason I'm locked away in a country house in the middle of nowhere. There's a reason I don't want to speak to Frankie, or you or … hang on, how did you even get this number?'

He sighed and spoke slowly. ‘Frankie told me where you were staying. Your aunt's murder mystery business lists this number on the internet. Look, Suzy, I know what happened at school was horrible. But you weren't the only one who has to deal with it. Frankie's not coping. She's –'

‘I don't care if you think I'm selfish, Sebastian. The doctors said I need to do what's right for me. And that's being away from school, and Frankie and you and anything else that reminds me of what happened. Frankie has you to talk to if she needs someone.'

‘Suzy, please, if you could just call her – maybe visit her. I really think –'

‘Goodbye, Sebastian. Don't call me here again.' I hung up before he could argue with me. Good job I was speaking to him on a phone and not face to face. Sebastian had always made me feel nervous. He has these deep blue eyes that stare right into you when he speaks to you. He never smiles, he's always so serious. He unnerves me. Frankie thinks he's hot, but he's way too intense for me.

‘Who was that?' came Richard's voice from the corridor. My head was splitting and I needed air. If I didn't get out of the house quickly the next murder mystery party would be trying to piece together fragments of Richard's skull instead of the jigsaw pieces of a fake murder.

‘I'm going for a walk into the village,' I announced, walking towards the front door. I grabbed my hoodie from a peg on the wall and slammed the heavy oak door behind me as I left.

As I marched away from Dudley Hall I pulled the hood over my head and buried my hands into the sleeves. I didn't care if I looked like a teenage extra from
Crimewatch
. Good. Maybe that would make people stay away from me. I found my iPod in my hoodie pocket and blasted loud music into my ears to drown out the sounds of the world around me. A world I no longer trusted. I marched in the middle of the road to the music's punishing beat, getting a buzz every time a passing car beeped and swerved to miss me.

In the middle of Dudley-on-Water was the ancient church. Every English village has an old church – the village my school was in had one too. And they all look the same. Crumbling stone walls, faded stained-glass windows. Crooked gravestones surrounding it. The church in Dudley-on-Water had one solitary bell tower that reached up into the grey sky. Surrounding the small church was the obligatory sprawling graveyard. At school I'd read somewhere that if you were being haunted you should go to a graveyard, collect some soil and sprinkle it in the place where you see the ghost. Apparently, the soil acts as a reminder to the spirit that their place is in the world of the dead, not the living, and it will then leave you alone. Walking into the Dudley-on-Water graveyard, I remembered the time I'd made Frankie traipse into town with me in the darkness one night. She watched me gather up soil from the local graveyard and take it back to my dormitory at school. It hadn't worked. The haunting only got worse after that. I wished banishing ghosts was as simple as scattering graveyard soil, but the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

I absently took my headphones from my ears as I walked through the gate of the graveyard. I strayed from the pebbled path and began to weave my way through the moss-covered graves. The crooked headstones were blackened and smooth with age. 1798, 1821, 1876 – there were some really old graves in there. I guessed that some of the graves were even older, but were unmarked, forgotten. As I walked I wondered about all the dead bodies that I might be walking over. Mothers, brothers, children, cousins. Every person had once been alive and had a story to tell. But at the end of the day we all end up the same, dead and buried. I only wished I knew why some of us came back to haunt when others were content to stay sleeping.

A figure crouched over a grave in the far corner of the graveyard and scraping away at the gathering moss caught my eye.

It was Nate.

He didn't look like he normally did – shoulders pulled back, head held high. He was on his hands and knees, carefully tending to a grave. I felt like I'd stumbled on a very private moment, as if I was seeing the real Nate for the first time – all his bravado stripped away.

I walked between the graves towards him. He must have heard me approach but he didn't look up. I came and stood beside him and looked down at the grave he was tending to.

Annabel Dixon

1945–2012

Mother, Grandmother, Friend

‘Come here often, do you?' Nate said without looking at me.

‘Was this your grandmother?' I asked before I could stop myself.

He nodded. ‘You okay?' he asked.

‘Why are you asking me that?' I knew I sounded prickly, but I hated the fact that he was asking if I were okay. He must have heard what had happened the day before. I felt a sudden stab of betrayal – I thought I could trust Nell not to tell him.

Nate looked up at me, his eyes wide. ‘No reason,' he said. ‘I just wondered what you were doing in a graveyard – it's not exactly a normal place to go for a walk.'

I walked over to a bench a few metres away and sat down. I chewed at my lip as I watched him rise to his feet and walk towards me. Maybe he didn't know what had happened yesterday. Nate sat down next to me and we both stared out into the graveyard in silence. ‘I just needed to get out of the house, get some fresh air,' I said eventually.

‘So you came to a graveyard?' he asked softly. He seemed quieter today than the other times I'd seen him.

‘It's not like there's anywhere else to go,' I shrugged. ‘Is this where you come too, when you need to get away?'

He shook his head and looked towards the church. ‘If I need to get away then I get on the back of my bike and really get away. It would have been my grandmother's birthday today, that's why we came here.'

‘We?'

He gestured towards the door of the church as Fiona appeared through it. She looked up and smiled at Nate and started walking towards us. ‘Your mum?' I asked.

Nate nodded silently, and I noticed the pain in his eyes as he watched his mum approach. He seemed like a completely different person to the boy I'd first met at Dudley Hall. Sitting next to him on the graveyard bench there was no bravado, no cocky jokes. It was as if his mask had slipped, as if he no longer had to pretend.