Eleven New Ghost Stories (5 page)

Once I wanted to stay over, I
had an interview at Falmouth College in Cornwall, and she lived
close by in Penryn. I asked her and it left her all of a fluster,
almost in a panic. She was busy, this wasn’t a good time, why
hadn’t I called earlier? I called a whole month ahead but she was
already fretting about not having enough food in the house or it
being the same day as she was supposed to go shopping or something.
I just didn’t go in the end; it was too much of a headache.

I didn’t go to college that year
anyway; I took a gap year and went travelling. It was on my travels
that me and Alan met. Our groups started travelling together and
one thing led to another, and well, we’re settled down now,
married. Nan didn’t make it to the wedding; I remember Dad being
quite upset about that. More than I was; Alan’s parents were enough
of a challenge and I hadn’t spoken to Nan in years at that
point.

She made it to the christening
at least, although she didn’t seem happy to be there. I think Dad
might have literally dragged her. She muttered a lot, kept saying
what a distance it was and how much she’d been put out. She didn’t
stay long after the lunch. That was the last I saw of her, or heard
from her. She died four of five years later, in her sleep. The
cleaner found her – Dad was upset, but hardly devastated.

There was no will. All her
belongings went straight to Dad, including her house, a beautiful
Penryn town house. Dad dealt with all the funeral and estate
arrangements himself; he was never good at accepting help. He’d
inherited some of her stubbornness.

He got quite a bit of help from
Nan’s cleaner at least. She was the only one who saw her
day-to-day; she’d been with her a couple of years – a record by
Nan’s standards. She couldn’t get on with cleaners; everything had
to be just perfect, everything had to be in its right place. They
couldn’t take her fussiness; there was a period when every time I
spoke to Dad he seemed to be complaining that another cleaner had
come and gone. She kept accusing them of stealing and deliberately
moving things around. But the thing was, Nan was fussy and didn’t
like change, but she couldn’t remember things either. She’d move
stuff and then forget about it.

But this last cleaner was a
retired hospital nurse, so she’d dealt with worse and knew how to
handle difficult folk like Nan.

Anyway, it was about six months
after she died that Dad offered us her house. I was flabbergasted;
he was offering it to us for free, as a gift. He said he wanted to
give something to us, and he knew we had struggled to get a
mortgage – we were still renting in London at the time.

He thought it would be good for
Jessica too; he didn’t think we should bring her up in the city,
and frankly neither did we. We hadn’t planned it that way, but
money kept getting in the way; we couldn’t get enough together for
a mortgage and Alan was afraid about getting work away from his
contacts in London. By the time Nan died, Jess had already started
school and we had started to think about moving away again.

Well, Alan mostly – I knew I’d
miss living in the city. I’d been living in London since I was a
kid and I just couldn’t imagine living out in the country. I mean,
what do people do out there? I know that sounds stupid, but you
just get to thinking like that when you’re in London, like
everything in the world revolves around it.

I agreed that Jess would be
better off going to school somewhere else. You hear bad things
about city schools, and there’s all that bad stuff about gangs and
hoodies as they get older. But I’d already given up so much to be a
mum; I hardly saw my friends anymore, hardly got a chance to go
out. Don’t get me wrong; I never regretted being a parent, but I
missed the excitement and freedom, you know? Everything had moved
so quickly with Alan, I sort of felt I’d missed out a bit on my
twenties and then moving away from London seemed liked I was
finally settling down once and for all into my middle age. I’d only
just started working again too, and it seemed like such a shame to
give all that up already.

Dad said we should go down there
for a week and see what we thought. He was convinced that we’d love
it there, and that kind of close-knit community would be perfect
for Jessica. And the schools were good too, so we’d heard. And
Cornwall is beautiful, so it did sound appealing. And a free house?
That was too good an offer to just pass up on.

It was a good excuse for a
holiday too. But Alan couldn’t get the time off work because of
project deadlines. We tried to work it out; I was determined to
make it a short break down there, really get to know the place if I
was going to move there. But we couldn’t make it work with his
schedule, not for months anyway. In the end, I decided to go down
for the week, and he would come down for a long weekend.

So I packed our things and set
off. It’s a long drive down there; if you’ve never done it, you
have no idea. You almost can’t believe the country goes on that
far. You take the motorway for ages and ages and then you end up on
long country carriageways that wind round through town after town,
each one with Pen or Tre in the name.

Beautiful though, all very
healthy clean and healthy green. Stunning views too, but only I got
to enjoy it though; Jessica slept the whole journey!

We’d never really been on a
proper holiday since she was born, just a few short breaks. I knew
she’d enjoy seeing the beach again, and proper sandy beaches too,
not like the rocky one down at Brighton.

I’d almost completely forgotten
what Penryn was like. Picturesque, if a bit odd. It’s all up the
side of a hill, one small high-street with a small scattering of
shops – bakery, pharmacist, unusual number of hair salons… oh and a
combined tattooist and sex toy shop – just what every town
needs!

I remember as a child seeing
druids in robes walking down the high-street. That sort of thing
probably still happened; you get a wide range of “alternative”
types in places like Penryn.

Yes, a peculiar place. Lots of
winding alleys and odd-shaped houses. Very improvised as towns go,
it looked like it had all been built in blocks. Small bursts of
construction – three or four buildings that looked the same,
followed by another small burst of construction, three or four more
houses but they’d look a bit different from the ones before. A town
like a patchwork quilt, but a pretty one; a bit odd, but quite
pretty in its way.

It feels like a small place at
first because the high street is quite small. But actually it’s not
so small after all. There’s this whole more modern estate hidden in
a sort of valley behind the high-street. Now there’s also a
development down by the harbour. Expensive flats and other things
being built down there. Probably finished by now, but still being
built when we were there.

Nan’s old place was down one of
the roads that dipped down from the high-street. Sort-of newer
houses, but still in the old style, fairly even in the way they
looked. Nan’s was the one with the red door, I always remembered
that. It was always bright and polished – I suppose good
impressions start at your door step.

I didn’t like the smell when we
arrived. Stale musty air, but the place was very clean. It was only
when you opened a cupboard or drawer that you realised the place
was full of junk. She was one of those people who never threw
anything away. I bet she knew where everything was though. She
probably knew where each piece of junk belonged; she just wouldn’t
have been able to get at it because of all the other junk on
top.

It was part of my agreement with
Dad that I’d start to clear the place out. I don’t think he cared
really what we did with the stuff: give it away, sell it or bin it.
I don’t think he wanted to go back there. Too full of bad memories
for him.

It is amazing how things flood
back to you. One of the things that my Nan always used to complain
about was knock down ginger – the old kids’ game. Run up to a door,
give it a knock and then run off. She made out that it used to
happen all the time. Dad used to tell me about it, and even I
remember hearing her complaining about it too.

She was always going on about
the neighbourhood kids anyway, too noisy, too rude, too badly
behaved, etcetera. But knock down ginger; that was the thing she
complained about the most. It made me smile: a grumpy, strange old
lady like her; she was a born target for young boys I suppose. Bad
tempered, but harmless. Like poking a toothless old dog with a
stick; it barks but doesn’t bite.

The reason I remembered so
quickly after I arrived, was that I had been there for no more than
maybe 15 to 20 minutes before it happened to me. I was going
through the cupboards, seeing if any of the tinned food was worth
keeping, when we got a knock on the door. I thought it must be a
curious neighbour, but there was no one there. No one at all. I
looked up and down the street, no sign of anyone. I thought to
myself, the kids in this part of town must be pretty quick off the
mark to pick up on me arriving so quickly.

The house was as nice as I’d
remembered: three bedrooms upstairs, large living room, dining room
with porch and a small garden. Jessica liked that, obviously we
didn’t have a garden in London; we had a minimal-maintenance
concrete yard with no sunlight. She particularly liked the pond,
although I instantly had nightmares about her falling in and tried
to keep her away from it.

I had packed a Fireman Sam DVD
to keep her busy, so I stuck it on while I explored the place and
sorted out the bedrooms. Although the sheets would’ve been changed
after she died, I still felt like I had to change them again, just
to be sure. I brought all my own sheets too. Nan had about a dozen
I could’ve used but they didn’t seem to bend as much as I usually
like my fabrics to. Practically starched rigid!

We were both pretty tired after
the journey down and I really didn’t fancy cooking. There were a
couple of fish and chip shops in the area, so we made do with that.
Jess fell asleep watching Eastenders with me, and, after putting
her to bed, I felt like going down myself too.

It was only ten o’clock when I
turned the TV and the lights off – not that late, but late enough
to be spooked when there was another knock at the door. On my own
and in a strange place, it made me tense very quickly. There was no
peep hole in the door. And the window next to it doesn’t give you
much of a look around, not if the person is stood just a bit to the
right of the door.

I couldn’t see anyone, so I
shouted “Hello?” There was no answer.

I opened it slowly and took a
look outside. There was no one – again. I took a step out and
looked up and down the street, but it was dead quiet, absolutely
dead; not a noise or anything.

That made me feel pretty
uncomfortable. I mean, sure, it’s just a game, but it’s a bit late
for games. And I’d only just got there. Were they doing this every
night? Even when the house was empty? Surely they’d have heard
about my Nan dying? Or would they? I suppose today, even in small
towns, people don’t talk to their neighbours. But it had been six
months…

They would have to have been
so quiet
though. I didn’t hear anything. Not a footstep,
even though they would’ve had to have run away, wouldn’t they?
Where did they go? And how fast? And how quietly…

It was weird and made me feel
pretty odd. I didn’t sleep that well that night, although I think
that was probably something to do with the lumpy mattress I slept
on. I wasn’t sleeping in the main bedroom until we’d changed the
bed, or at least the mattress. That was certainly where Nan had
died.

I wasn’t keen on doing anything
too serious straight away. Instead I went shopping. Falmouth’s the
closest proper town to Penryn; it’s walkable, but I took the bus
anyway. Jess was pretty excited to see the sea, and started
pestering me to get her a bucket and spade. Nice town; busy, but
quaint. Lots of local stores, arts centre, couple of small
supermarkets. Some old fashioned pubs, some bars. Not much of a
club scene, as you’d expect, but we were probably a bit old for
that anyway. Lot of students around, of course; it was good to see
them. Made me feel like it wasn’t just a place for pensioners and
retirees.

The beach was quite busy, but
not too busy. Jess loved playing in the sand and I bought myself a
coffee and played with her and read my book while she went paddling
at the edge of the water and built sand castles. We had a lovely
day and she had a really good time. You forget just how good fresh
air is when you’re in the city. I wanted to walk back from the
beach and take it all in, but Jess had tired herself out, so it was
the bus back again.

It was such a lovely day, but of
course, something had to happen to spoil it. I was going to make
pasta for dinner (I’m not much of a cook) but had forgotten the
pasta sauce. Jess was fast asleep so I thought it would be all
right if I just ran up to the local shop to get some and be back
before she was any the wiser. Just as I was about to leave though,
I couldn’t find the house keys. I was sure I’d left them in the
kitchen but found them ages later on the dining room table. I
wasn’t sure how’d they got there; when I come to a new place I
always instinctively find a place to put my keys and always put
them there, every time. I didn’t know how they’d ended up there; I
wouldn’t have put them there and I didn’t think Jess would have
moved them.

Jess hadn’t woken up so I
thought I still had time to run up to the shop. But when I got
there there was this group of kids – teenagers, four of them. I
heard them whispering and sniggering when I got in there, and what
they said was not flattering.

One of them came up close to me,
pretending to look at milk in the fridge and then he grabbed my
bum. I turned around, shocked, and then another one of them came up
to me and said “Sorry about them luv. Oi, leave the girl alone
alright? You wanna be careful of guys like him, here let me walk
you home, keep you safe from these muppets.”