The House on Cold Hill (3 page)

‘Good one!’

He saw Caro’s mother clambering out of the driving seat of the Volvo, or the
Ovlov
as he jokingly called it. A doughty lady, and a Brighton and Hove magistrate, Pamela Reilly, in a hooded anorak and baggy waterproof trousers, looked at this moment dressed for a polar expedition.

Her husband, Dennis, who, like his daughter, had always been a consummate worrier, was suffering from early-stage dementia and becoming increasingly forgetful and erratic. A retired Lloyds actuary, his profession had suited him perfectly. A career spent in calculating risk, he now applied that same skill set to everything he encountered in his retirement. A diminutive, balding and meek man, he was dressed in one of his habitual three-piece tweed suits and City livery ties, beneath a fur-trimmed coat and a black astrakhan hat that gave him the appearance of a bonsai Russian oligarch.

Twenty minutes later, after the kettle had boiled on the Aga, and tea and coffee had been distributed in mismatched mugs – all they had been able to find so far – and a packet of digestive biscuits torn open, they had an organized team. Caro stood at the bottom of the stairs, just before the atrium, directing the items which the chain of removal men carried in. Dennis stood at the top with a list created by Caro’s organized mind of what went where, studying it with a furrowed brow in childlike concentration, occasionally looking around in total, but enthusiastic, bewilderment. Jade let the cats out of their carriers, closed the kitchen doors to keep them contained, then went exploring.

Ollie stood with Pamela in the porch, with a checklist of which of the carefully labelled boxes should go into the house, and which belonged in the outbuildings around the rear, for now, until work inside the house was completed.

The shaven-headed man-mountain lugged a massive box, labelled B
EDROOM
1 (M
ASTER
), past them, with a grin.

Ollie ticked it off the list. He watched Caro, inside, look at the label and direct the removals man up the stairs. Then, as the man disappeared from sight, Ollie glimpsed a shadow crossing the atrium, like the flit of a bird across a fanlight.

His mother-in-law turned to him with a smile, her eyes wide open, almost bulging in excitement. ‘Did you see that?’ she asked.

Pamela, despite being an extremely well-respected magistrate, had a fey side to her. Early on in his relationship with Caro, Pamela had confided in him that, although she wasn’t sure if she was actually
psychic –
whatever that really meant – she would always know when someone was going to die, because she would have a recurring dream. It involved a black raven, a lake and a tombstone with the person’s name engraved on it.

What had she seen?

Caro was already uneasy enough about moving here, to this isolated property, without her mother spooking her out. It was the last thing he needed on this first day here, the first day of their new, dream life.

‘Did you see it?’ she asked again.

Her smile suddenly irritated him. There was a smugness, a
told-you-so
something about it.

‘No,’ he said, emphatically. ‘No, I didn’t see anything.’

4

Sunday, 6 September

Jade, her long fair hair clipped back, dressed in jeans, socks and a crop top, with a note to herself written in blue ink on her left hand, was in her bedroom, which had wallpaper that she thought was a bit naff. She had spent much of this first weekend sorting her things out, with the occasional help of her mother. Her favourite song, ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, was blasting out from the Sonos speaker on top of a wooden chest of drawers.

It was Sunday evening and she was bored of unpacking now. Stuff lay ankle-deep on the floor, and Bombay was curled up on the patchwork quilt of her wrought-iron bed. The tortoiseshell moggie, which had adopted Jade within hours of being brought home from the rescue centre three years ago, lay contentedly amid a pile of cushions, her head resting on Blankie, the grey blanket Jade had had with her since she was an infant, and nuzzled up against Jade’s yellow, bug-eyed minion. Above the cat, Duckie, her gangly, mangy cream duck, with yellow feet and yellow bill, that she’d had almost as long as Blankie, its feet entwined in the metal latticework of the headboard, hung down gormlessly. Suspended from the other side of the headboard was her purple dream-catcher.

She’d had to admit, reluctantly, that this was a nicer room than her previous one, although it was a yucky pink. About five times larger, and – big bonus! – it had an en-suite bathroom, with a huge, old-fashioned bathtub with brass taps. She’d already luxuriated in it last night with a Lush bath-bomb, and felt like a queen.

On the curved shelves on the far side of her bedside table, she’d arranged some of her silver trophies, including her
Virgin Active Brighton Tennis Club Championships
,
Mini Green Runner-up 2013
and
Star of the Week Dance Club, 2013
, along with a photograph of the rear of a pink American convertible with a surfboard sticking out of the back seat. Next to it was propped her guitar in a maroon case, alongside a music stand on which lay a curled book titled
Easy Guitar Lessons.
She’d already unpacked most of her books, and put them on the shelves on the opposite wall. All her sets of
The Hunger Games
and
Harry Potter
were in their correct order, as well as her collection of David Walliams, except for one,
Ratburger
, which was on her bedside table. Also next to it on the table were piled several books on training dogs, as well as one she loved, called
Understanding Your Cat.

In front of the huge sash window was her wooden dressing table, minus its mirror which her father had not yet fixed into place. The surface was littered with cans of her body sprays, bottles of perfumes and Zoella products. Her orange plastic chair sat in front of it.

She was feeling lonely. On weekends in Brighton she would have walked round to Phoebe, Olivia or Lara’s house, or they would have come round to her, and made music videos together, or she’d have seen Ruari. Right now her parents, and her gran and gramps, were flat-out downstairs, busy unpacking boxes and getting the house in some kind of order – at least, the rooms they could live in for now, until the builders and decorators had got the house straight. Which was going to take months. Years. Forever.

The large window looked past the row of garages, over the vast rear garden and the lake, a couple of hundred yards in the distance, to the paddock, and the steep rise of the hill beyond. Her mother had told her the paddock would be perfect for the pony she had always hankered after. That brightened her a little, although she was keener at this moment on a labradoodle puppy. She’d spent a lot of time googling dog rescue centres and labradoodle breeders, and looking up all sorts of possible alternatives on Dogs 101. So far she’d found no rescue places or breeders in their area with any puppies, but there was one breeder about an hour away who was expecting a litter soon.

It was coming up to eight o’clock. No doubt one of her parents would be up soon to tell her ‘no more screen time’ and to get ready for bed. She went over to her dressing table, picked up her phone, and for some moments gazed wistfully at a video clip of Ruari, with his sharp hairstyle, nodding his head and grinning to a piece of music. Then she dialled Phoebe on her FaceTime app.

It was still light outside, despite the dark clouds and the rain, which had not relented throughout the weekend, pattering against the rattling window in front of her. ‘Uptown Funk’ was playing again at full blast. That was another plus about this new house – her room was at the far end of the first floor, with empty rooms between, so she could play her music as loudly as she liked without her parents coming in to tell her to turn it down. Mostly in their previous home she’d had to resort to wearing her headphones. At this moment she didn’t even know where the headphones were. Buried somewhere in one of the four huge boxes of her stuff that she had still not yet unpacked.

Beep, beep, beep.

The phone went dead.

‘Come on, come on!’ The internet connection here was rubbish. Her dad had promised to get it sorted tomorrow, but he was so useless at dealing with things it would probably take a week, knowing him. They were all going to have to change phone providers. God, it wasn’t like they were in the back of beyond or anything – they were only ten miles from Brighton. But at this moment, they might as well have been on the moon!

She tried again. Then, dialling for the third time, she suddenly saw Phoebe’s face filling the screen, blonde hair hanging over her forehead, and her own face in a small square in the corner.

Her friend, grinning and chewing gum, said, ‘Hey, Jade!’

Then she lost the signal, and Phoebe with it. ‘Come on, come on, come on!’ she shouted at the screen, and redialled. Moments later she was reconnected.

‘Sorry about that, Phebes!’

‘You OK?’

‘I am so not OK! I miss you tons!’

‘Me you, Jade! Mum’s in a shit mood with Dad, and taking it out on me. And all the gerbils escaped. It’s, like, not been a great day. Mungo was running around with my favourite, Julius, in her mouth, with his legs wriggling, then she shot off down the garden.’

‘Did she kill him?’

‘Dad buried him – what was left of him. I hate that cat!’

‘No! Did you get the rest of them back?’

‘They were all under the sofa in the sitting room, huddled together, looking terrified. Why would they want to escape? They had everything they needed – food, water, toys.’

‘Maybe they don’t like the weather and decided to go south for a holiday?’

Phoebe laughed. Then she said, ‘“Uptown Funk”! Turn it up!’

‘OK.’

‘What do you think – I’ve bought the latest
Now
CD for Lara for her birthday?’

‘Does she still have a CD player, Phebes?’

There was a long silence. Then a defensive, ‘She must have.’

‘I don’t think we have one any more.’

‘Whatever. When are you coming over?’

‘I have to negotiate an exit from here with the Cold Hill House Escape Committee. But my parents say I can have a birthday party here. Three weeks’ time! I’m going to have a retro photo booth with Polaroid cameras! And we’re going to have pizzas – everyone can order them and Dad said he’d collect them.’

‘Epic! But that’s three weeks, can I come over and see your place before then?’

‘Yes. I’ve got a great room – the biggest bath you’ve ever seen. You can almost swim in it! Can you come the weekend after next? Sleepover Saturday night? Ruari said his mum’s going to drive him over on the Sunday.’

‘Maybe we can have a swim in your pool, if it’s nice?’

‘I’ll have to get Dad to remove the dead frogs first. And fill it and heat it. That is so not going to happen.’

‘Yech!’ Then suddenly Phoebe’s voice changed. ‘Hey, Jade, who’s that?’

‘Who’s what?’

‘That woman!’

‘Woman? What woman?’

‘Er, the one right behind you? Hello!’

Jade spun round. There was no one. She turned back to the phone. ‘What woman?’

Then her phone screen went blank. Annoyed, she redialled. She heard the sound of the connection being made, and then Phoebe’s face reappeared.

‘What did you mean, Phebes? What woman?’

‘I can’t see her now, she’s gone. She was standing behind you, by the door.’

‘There wasn’t anyone!’

‘I saw her!’

Jade crossed over to the door, opened it and looked out onto the landing. She held up her phone, pointing it down the landing so Phoebe could see, then she closed the door behind her, walked back across the room and sat down again. ‘There’s no one been in, Phoebe, I’d have heard them.’

‘There was, I saw her clearly,’ her friend insisted. ‘I’m not making it up, Jade, honestly!’

Jade shuddered, feeling cold suddenly. She turned round again and stared at the closed door. ‘What – what did you see?’

‘She was, like, an old lady, in a blue dress. She had a really mean look on her face. Who is she?’

‘The only old lady here’s my Gran. She’s here with Gramps, helping unpack stuff downstairs.’ Jade shrugged. ‘They’re both a bit weird.’

Twenty minutes later, when she had ended the conversation, Jade went downstairs. Her parents were sitting at the refectory table in the kitchen, piles of unopened boxes still on the floor around them, drinking red wine, with the bottle on the table in front of them as they opened all the ‘Good Luck In Your New Home’ cards sent by friends and relatives. Sapphire was crunching dry food in a bowl close to the Aga.

‘Hi, darling,’ her mother said. ‘Are you ready for tomorrow?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Time for bed. Big day – your new school!’

Jade stared at her glumly. She was thinking about all her time at school in Brighton. She had loved being in charge of the School Walking Bus. Making the phone calls every morning, starting off with one friend, collecting another, then another, so by the time they arrived at school there were ten of them altogether. Now the rest of them would be doing this tomorrow, without her. She would be going instead to bloody St Paul’s Catholic College in Burgess Hill.
Nowheresville
.

And they didn’t even go to church regularly!

‘Where are Gran and Gramps?’ she asked.

‘They went home a short while ago, darling,’ her mother responded. ‘Gramps was very tired. They said to say goodbye and give you their love.’

‘Gran came up to my room.’

‘Good,’ her mother said.

‘But she didn’t say anything, and went out again. That was strange of her. She always kisses me goodbye.’

‘Were you on your computer?’

‘I was talking to Phoebe.’

‘Maybe she didn’t want to disturb you, darling.’

Jade shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Her father looked up and frowned. But he said nothing.

5

Monday, 7 September

Monday morning came as something of a relief to Ollie. The rain had finally stopped and a brilliant, warm, late-summer sun was shining. Caro had gone to work at her office in Brighton shortly after 7.30 a.m. and at 8.00 a.m., listening to the Radio Four news, he got out Jade’s Cheerios for her breakfast, while she busied herself, first feeding the cats, then switching on the Nespresso machine, which she loved using, to make her father a coffee. Amazingly, Ollie thought, she had actually got up early this morning! But even so they were running short of time and, anxious not to be late for her first day at her new school, he gulped down his muesli, then hurried her out to the car and checked she had belted up.