No Going Back (12 page)

C
OMPLICATIONS

“
Y
ou might as well show yourself because I know you're there,” I said as I made my way home.

Dad slunk out from behind a row of conifers.

“Have you been spying on me?”

He did have the grace to look shamefaced.

“Not all of the time,” he replied. “What's that you're carrying?” I clutched the cardboard box close to my chest.

“It's a present from Sam.”

“Oh yes?” He sounded suspicious.

“Don't be like that. It's one of the best things anyone's ever given me.”

He raised an eyebrow, trying to look nonchalant, but I could tell that he was burning up with curiosity. So he
was
telling the truth. He really hadn't been watching me all of the time. Maybe my message was beginning to get through after all. I stopped, sat on
a low stone wall and put the box on my lap.

“Do you want a peek?”

The chance of him saying no was absolutely zilch.

I opened the top of the box.

“What on earth is that?” Dad spluttered as Gloria mewled a greeting.

“I'd have thought that was obvious,” I replied. “I've called her Gloria. Isn't she gorgeous?”

Dad had taken one look and then several paces back.

“What's the matter? Don't you like her?”

He had his hand clasped over his mouth and nose.

“She's a cat!”

“Well spotted.”

“Cats don't like me.”

“Don't be silly. She's only a little kitten and she's never met you before. She doesn't know not to like you.”

“No, I don't mean that. What I mean is – I'm allergic to them.”

“Oh!”

All sorts of thoughts raced through my mind but I didn't think it would be a real problem.

After all, Dad was a ghost, not a human. Just because he was allergic to cats in a previous life didn't mean that he would be now, did it? And then he sneezed, several times. It was a real man sneeze and Gloria almost jumped out of the box. An elderly lady on the other side of the road gave me a funny look. I turned away and smoothed Gloria's spiked-up fur.

“We'll be home soon and you can come out of there,” I said to her before closing her in.

“No!” Dad was quite emphatic. “You can't keep her.”

“I'm sorry?” I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

“You can't keep her, Laura. Not if you want me to stay around.”

I gasped. “That's blackmail.”

He didn't reply, just stared at his feet.

“How can you say that?” I demanded. “Don't you want me to be happy?”

“Of course I want you to be happy. You know that I want that more than anything in the whole world.”

“Well it doesn't seem like it right now.”

He stood very still. His edges didn't ripple at all. His face was like a mask.

“Stop ignoring me,” I said, kicking out. I was only trying to make gentle contact with his aura but instead I hit his leg. I saw my foot go straight through it and at almost the same time he leaped in the air.

“Ouch!”

He held his foot in his hand and hopped around. It was totally over the top.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kick you and I didn't know it would hurt – but you shouldn't have blanked me like that.”

He looked upset. “It just feels as if you'd rather have the kitten than me.”

Gloria was scrabbling away at the box, getting distressed. I couldn't stay here, standing in the street with her.

“I never thought I'd have to make a choice. Before Sam gave her to me I'd have said that I might have problems with Mum or Gran – but not with you.”

“Well, things don't always turn out the way you expect them to,” he said softly, so softly that I hardly heard the words.

He lifted his head.

“I hate to say this, Laura, but I can't stay around if you keep the kitten.”

I stared at him.

“You don't mean that.”

My heart felt as if someone had sawn straight into it with a jagged knife. But he wasn't going to budge. I could tell from the set expression on his face. I clutched the box to me. It wasn't fair. He wasn't being fair. I hated him, really hated him in that moment but, at the same time, all those years of love, of wanting him around were swelling up and swamping me. I couldn't risk losing him now. So I turned around and headed straight back to the vicarage with tears streaming.

“Laura, let me in.”

Mum pushed against the door but I'd dragged the chest of drawers in front of it and barricaded myself in my room.

“I'm fine.”

“No, you're obviously not.”

The chest of drawers slid slightly on the bare boards as the door opened by about ten centimetres.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

There was a long pause but I knew Mum was still outside the door. I could almost hear her thought processes as she wondered what to do for the best.

“All right,” she said at last. “If that's the way you feel. I'll be in the garden if you change your mind.”

I heard the creak on the top step of the stairs as she left me alone. I knew exactly what she was going to do next. She was going to ring Sam and find out what had happened. She and Gran were expecting a kitten. Where was it? What had gone wrong? I couldn't explain, could I?

They had been waiting for me when I got back to the farm, their faces full of anticipation and excitement. In front of the range there was a snug little drawer lined with a pink blanket and, in a corner of the kitchen,
a brand new bowl with paw prints painted on the front. I'd seen them through a blur.

Mum had been waiting for me so there was no escape. She'd sat me at the kitchen table briefly and tried to find out what had gone wrong. Eventually I escaped to my room and blocked myself in – or, in actual fact, tried to block other people out. It was pointless of course. The one person I was trying to keep out was Dad and no amount of piled-up furniture would do that, not that he was coming anywhere near me at that moment. Even he seemed to show some sensitivity and realise when he wasn't wanted. I cried myself to sleep and when I woke up my whole face ached. It was as if it had been screwed up like a piece of scrap paper and then someone had tried unsuccessfully to smooth it out again. I sat up and moved to the dressing table. I looked awful, puffy and blotchy. Downstairs I could hear the signature tune of the evening news on the television. There was the vague aroma of something cooking too. Life was carrying on as normal, which just made me feel worse.

I pulled the chest of drawers away from the door
intending to wash my face in the bathroom. My skin felt tight where the tears had dried in vertical strips like Scotch tape. As I stepped out onto the landing I got a shock. Gran was sitting right outside my room, ramrod straight in the high ladder-backed chair.

“Gran, what are you doing there? How did you get upstairs?”

“I'm waiting for you, Laura, and it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.”

She looked around, as if searching for something, before turning back to me.

“Can we talk?”

“What about?”

“About why you took that kitten back to Sam.”

I shook my head. “It's complicated.”

“Life generally is, sweetheart.”

I blinked. The last thing I wanted was someone being kind to me, especially Gran. But she reached out and took hold of my hand, examined my fingers.

“I want you to know, Laura, that I'm here for you. If you need me, if you want someone to talk
to, I've got plenty of time to listen, in confidence.”

I stared at her, wondering exactly what she was trying to convey. Now it was my turn to look around, to see if Dad was lurking somewhere, listening.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “But I can't explain about the kitten. I just can't. I'm sorry.”

Gran looked at me, long and hard. “What about me?” she asked. “What if
I
wanted the kitten? Would that be all right?”

“No,” I whispered, “I don't think it would. It might trip you up or claw at your furniture or…” I felt the tears start again.

“Let's leave this conversation for now,” Gran said, stroking my hand. “Go and wash your face and come downstairs for some supper. Your mother's made a lasagne.”

“Did she speak to Sam?”

“Yes.”

“I bet he hates me. I bet he thinks I'm completely screwed up.”

“I'm sure he doesn't think any such thing,” Gran said.

“Well I hate myself,” I said.

“That's just silly, and feeling sorry for yourself won't solve this problem.”

“I won't change my mind.”

Gran stood up slowly and made her way to the top of the stairs. She leaned heavily on the banisters, shaking away my offer of help.

“Actually, the kitten is not the problem I was referring to,” she murmured and she concentrated very hard on putting her feet firmly on each step.

I watched her descend, one careful footstep after the other, until she reached the bottom.

She knows about Dad, I thought to myself. Or at least she suspects. And suddenly this massive sense of foreboding dropped over me like some dark, heavy piece of material.

C
ONSEQUENCES

I
didn't know what to do, who to turn to. If Gran knew about Dad there was one thing I was absolutely certain of – she wouldn't want him to stay here. She'd be determined to get rid of him. I hadn't seen him since I'd barricaded myself in my room. I kept expecting him to appear, to comfort me. I half hoped that he'd beg my forgiveness and say that he'd changed his mind. But he didn't. He steered clear. As soon as I was sure that Gran was out of earshot I went back into my bedroom.

“Dad?” I called softly. “Are you there? You've got to come out. I need to talk to you.”

Silence except for a hedge trimmer whining in the distance.

I banged my hand on the windowsill.

“I thought you heard me when I called you.
I thought you said you'd always be there if I needed you. You're a liar.”

That did it. He materialised in the corner of the room, his forehead wrinkled by a frown and his lips set in a stubborn line.

“It's not nice to call someone a liar, Laura. What's the matter?”

“It's Gran!”

He groaned. “The bane of my life and my death.”

“She knows about you.”

“You've told her?” He looked incredulous.

“No, of course not. Have you appeared to her? You said when you first arrived that you might do that.”

“Well I haven't, so I have no idea how she's cottoned on. Are you sure?”

I nodded. His frown deepened. His eyes seemed to darken.

“She'd want to get rid of me, wouldn't she?”

“Afraid so.”

We were on the same wavelength. I could almost see the thoughts whirling around in his head.

“I don't want to leave you, Laura.”

I bit my lip. Hard.

“Can you go away for a little while and then come back?”

He shook his head. “I don't think so. I'm not sure. What if I make the return journey and then can't get back to see you for ages – or maybe not at all? I can't take that risk.”

Despite the fact that I was cross with him I wanted to hug him, to hold on to him, to tell him that I never wanted to let him go again either. Instead I tried to be practical and not to let my emotions run away with me.

“You'll have to keep a low profile for a few days,” I said. “No icy draughts as you waft through the house. In fact, maybe you'd better not be in the house at all. You could stay in one of the outbuildings for a while.”

He pulled a face.

I must have looked exasperated because he threw his hands up in the air as if in surrender.

“All right, if that's what you want. I'll do my best but I'm sure everything's going to be fine.”

Except it wasn't, for loads of reasons. I hadn't
heard from Sam since taking the kitten back. I hadn't even been able to bring myself to look in the box. I'd just whispered, “Goodbye and good luck,” to Gloria before depositing the box back in Sam's arms without a rational explanation. I didn't want to go out in case I bumped into him and he started asking awkward questions or, even worse, blanked me. So I stayed mostly around the house with the odd trip over to the hay barn where Dad had set up camp. I felt on edge, as if Gran was watching my every move. Then her tablets went missing and as Mum and I hunted all over the house Gran made some comment about ‘strange things happening'.

“You remember when that photograph moved?” she said to Mum.

“Yes, yes,” Mum said distractedly.

“Well maybe whoever or whatever did that has taken my tablets.”

Gran didn't look at me but I knew exactly what she meant. Mum stood up and looked at both of us.

“It wasn't me who moved the photograph,” I protested.

Mum shook her head and threw a couple of
cushions back on the sofa in a random way. I knew what she was thinking – that Gran was going senile.

“Perhaps you put them down outside,” I said to Gran and at the first opportunity I slipped out of the back door, across the farmyard and into the barn.

“Psst, Dad,” I whispered, checking that Uncle Pete was still tinkering about with his tractor on the other side of the yard. “Come out. I need to ask you something.”

He poked his head out from around the corner of a hay bale.

“Gran's lost her tablets. Did you take them?”

“No, of course not.” He sounded a bit indignant.

“Well they've gone missing and we can't find them anywhere.”

“So you think it's me?” He looked hurt now.

“I just thought that you might be a bit annoyed at having to move out here and…”

“Laura, I wouldn't do something like that. She's probably put them down somewhere and forgotten about it.”

I felt really bad for accusing him.

“I'm sorry. It's just so tense in there.” I tilted my
head towards the house. “Mum and Aunt Jane are still bickering, Liberty's making herself unavailable and Gran's watching me like a hawk.”

He stood in front of me and blew a kiss on to my forehead. “It's just taking time for things to settle down, that's all. You've all had big changes to adjust to. Your mum's lost her job, moved house and is now looking after your gran. It's not easy for anyone. Things will get better.”

I smiled. “What are you now, some fortune teller?”

“No, just someone who knows that you are all kind and sensible people who can make this work. Now why don't I come and give you a hand looking for these tablets?”

So we walked back over to the house together and I felt reassured by Dad's words. In the end it was him who found the tablets, in the pantry, next to the sugar.

“Oh!” Gran said. “I must have put them down when I got up to make myself a cup of tea in the night. Silly me. I'm getting so forgetful.”

Suddenly she looked close to tears.

“I'm nothing but trouble these days.”

Mum dropped a hand on to Gran's shoulder. “Don't upset yourself, Mother. It's all sorted now.”

Two days after that, Gran and I were sitting watching television together. Mum had gone out for a drink at the pub with Sam's dad. He'd been around to visit Gran a few times and Mum seemed to like talking to him too. In fact, I began to wonder if he was really just coming to see Gran. I think she did too. I was just hoping that Mum would find out about Gloria and if she had a nice new home to go to, when an orange rolled through the slightly open door. It came to a stop just beneath Gran's feet. For a minute or so I thought that she hadn't seen it. I was about to reach down and pick it up when she turned her eyes from the television and looked straight at me.

“Where did that come from?” she asked.

“I've no idea,” I lied. Dad was just outside the sitting room door, beckoning to me.

“Laura,” he mouthed. “I want to talk to you.”

I stood up. Gran was quiet for a moment.

“I could have fallen over that,” she murmured,
“and seriously hurt myself. Is that what he wants? To finish me off?”

I felt all of the energy draining out of me.

“Who?”

My voice was so weak but perhaps it was because Gran, despite the quietness of her voice, suddenly sounded and looked so much stronger in herself.

“Your father, Laura. That's who I'm talking about.”

I judged it was better to say nothing. To be honest I didn't know what to say.

“I haven't lived in this house for all of these years, not to know when there's something funny going on.”

She looked around the room.

“Is he here now? Can you see him?”

I glanced over to the door, not knowing what to do or say. Dad was sitting back on his haunches mouthing, “Sorry.” Immediately Gran followed my gaze. I hadn't intended to but I'd given him away. Actually no, that's wrong. He'd given himself away by rolling that stupid orange.

Oh, Dad, I thought, as he sloped off into the shadows. You don't know what you've done.

“He can't stay, Laura. He doesn't belong here.”

Keep silent, I said to myself. If you don't speak, you can't say anything incriminating. Dad had blended into the shadows of the hall now. Gran struggled to her feet and waved her stick in the air.

“I know you're here, Gareth, and you're not welcome. This is my house, not yours. I don't want you here. Haven't you caused enough trouble in life without coming back? GO AWAY!”

“Mother! Laura! What's going on? What on earth are you doing?”

Mum stood in the doorway staring at Gran as if she thought she'd completely flipped. Gran stood so still I thought she might have died on the spot. Then she began to wobble. I took her arm and she leaned heavily against me. She began to tremble and I tightened my grip.

“We were playing a game,” I said to Mum, my brain scrabbling for an explanation that she would believe. “Gran was showing me what she'd do if she thought the house was haunted.”

“Which it isn't,” Gran said, a bit too quickly.

“But you mentioned Gareth's name,” Mum said.

“Oh no!” Gran replied, her features rearranging themselves into a picture of innocence. “You must have misheard, dear.”

Mum looked at me.

I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders. “Don't think so, Mum.”

She stared at me. For a moment I thought she was going to dig deeper but we must have made a convincing team, Gran and I, because Mum plonked herself down in the chair and just let it go.

“How extraordinary that you should be talking about ghosts,” she said. “Sam's dad and I have been discussing the same thing. It turns out that we've got our very own ghostbuster on the doorstep. The vicar is part of the Diocesan Deliverance Team which deals with ‘unwelcome spiritual visitors'. Did you know that, Laura?”

“No,” I whispered, “no, I didn't.”

“So,” Mum said, picking up the orange which I had left on the table, rolling it between her hands, “if we ever
do
get any trouble of that kind, we
know just where to go, don't we?”

I didn't look at Gran. I didn't dare. But I had a good idea that I knew exactly what she was thinking.

“Dad,” I said later when I was in my bedroom and I heard Mum running the bath, “will you PLEASE make an appearance. I need to talk to you face to face.”

He materialised sitting in the chair.

“You're in big trouble,” I said. “Why on earth did you roll that orange?”

“I was trying to get your attention. You'd told me to be careful so I wanted to stay outside the room.”

“What was so urgent that it couldn't wait?”

He shrugged, looked a little upset.

“I wanted to talk about your mother. You know she's seeing that man.”

“If you mean the vicar, they're just friends.”

“Huh!” he said with a whoosh which nearly blew all my random bits of paper off my bedside table. “I don't think so.”

“You're jealous!”

His foot toyed with the fringe on the edge of the rug.

“Dad, Mum is entitled to go out with people. You've been dead for ten years. You can't expect her
to stay single for ever.”

He didn't reply.

“Don't you want her to be happy too?”

He looked up then. “Of course I do. It's just… difficult, seeing her with someone else.”

“She's hardly been out with anyone since you died. He seems like a nice, kind man.”

He nodded. “You're right. But it still hurts.”

“You do realise that Gran's going to talk to the Reverend Tim about you? And then he'll come around and ring bells and wave incense or whatever it is they do. Anyway basically he'll get rid of you, send you back to where you came from.”

He didn't look that concerned. “Maybe that would be for the best. Maybe it's too upsetting for everyone, me being here.”

“You don't mean that,” I replied. “I think you need to go away from here for a while, just until things settle down.”

“Like where?”

“I don't know, take a holiday or something, go back to The Other Side, just temporarily.”

“I told you, it's not as easy as that.”

“Well we've got to do something. What about Cousin Penny? Could you stay with her for a while? Maybe she's got a spare bedroom you could hole up in.”

“I'd rather stay here with you.”

“And I'd rather have you here,” I said.

“Let's wait,” he said. “All of this will probably blow over and your gran will forget all about it.”

I stared at him. If he thought that Gran would let this go he really was deluding himself. I knew that once Gran got her teeth into something there was no way she was going to let it drop.

I was just coming out of my bedroom the next morning when I heard her on the phone. From the landing window I could see Mum hanging out washing in the garden.

“We need some help,” she said.

I paused, crouching by the banisters to hear her voice more clearly. “We have an unwanted presence in the house and it needs to be dealt with. Liz said that you can arrange that sort of thing.”

She was obviously talking to the vicar but from
the tone of her voice you'd have thought that she was arranging an assassination – which in a way she was.

“Oh yes,” Gran continued. “I know exactly who it is.”

There was a pause as the person at the other end spoke.

“All right,” Gran said, at last. “I'll wait to hear from you with a time but can you try to make it sooner rather than later? And Tim,” she added, “I'd rather Liz didn't know about this for now. Can we just keep it between ourselves? I don't want her to be upset.”

Another pause as the vicar spoke.

“Oh, Laura knows,” Gran said. “I suspect that Laura's the reason he's come back. She's always had this rather gilded view of her father. That's partly Liz's fault. I suspect that the entity we are talking about…”