The Grey Girl (14 page)

Nate opened the Old Rectory front door by simply turning the handle. I've never understood why people who live in the countryside don't lock their doors. ‘Mum!' he shouted into the house, making his way towards the lounge – the very same room that Frankie and I had peered into yesterday. The house smelt of wood smoke and cinnamon. Candles flickered on every available surface, filling the air with sweet thick smoke. ‘Mum, Suzy's here to see you.'

I followed Nate into the lounge. Fiona was sitting on the sofa, her legs sprawled out in front of her on a footstool, with a book in her lap. She was still wearing her pyjamas and dressing gown, a pair of thin glasses sat on the end of her nose and her hair was pulled up into an unbrushed bun on the top of her head. Fiona closed the book she'd been reading as we came into the room, then leant forwards and eyed me with suspicion.

‘Suzy. Nate's friend who lives at Dudley Hall,' she said, her voice flat and giving nothing away.

‘I'm just staying there for a few weeks,' I explained, nervously moving my weight from one foot to the other.

Nate plonked himself down in a beaten-up leather chair by the fireplace that was framed by flickering candles. He pulled a cushion into his lap and looked between me and his mum with expectation. I stood by the door feeling awkward, suddenly unsure of what to say. Now that I had what I wanted, a chance to ask Fiona everything she knew, I wasn't sure how to start.

‘Mum, Suzy wanted to ask you a few questions about Dudley Hall,' Nate said. ‘You can sit down,' he said to me, as if I was stupid.

‘I'm not sure what you think I can help you with,' Fiona said, narrowing her eyes at me. Her voice was edging towards unfriendly. ‘I don't have anything to do with that house. I don't think I'll be able to help you.'

There was a small chair in the corner of the room. I walked over and sat on it, straightened my back and looked Fiona in the eye. This was the only chance I had to discover the secrets of the house; I couldn't blow it. ‘The last time I saw you was by your mother's grave,' I said. ‘You told me that I'd seen the grey girl, that you could see that just by looking at me.'

Her cold eyes bore into me. ‘Nate, have you offered Suzy a drink? Would you like something to drink, Suzy? Maybe some tea? Or lemonade?'

‘No, I'm okay …'

‘Nate, go and put the kettle on, please,' Fiona instructed him, her eyes not leaving me.

Nate lifted his eyebrows and gave his mother a nod. He flashed me a small smile as he left the room, almost as if he was wishing me good luck.

‘Nate doesn't like to listen to me talk about the house,' Fiona said, leaning towards me. ‘Neither does my sister. But then again, she goes there every day, she doesn't need reminding of what happened there.'

‘And what did happen there?' I asked, my hands suddenly cold and clammy in my lap. I brought one hand over the other and began to absently scratch the back of my hand for warmth. ‘Who is she, the grey girl?'

Fiona sat back on the sofa and stared at me coldly. ‘Tell me what it is that you think you've seen.'

I could have told her the truth, I could have risked it. I could have so easily told her about the times I had seen the grey girl from my window in the dead of night, running towards a boat that I knew had been un-riverworthy for decades. I could have told her about my curtains opening by themselves each day, about the poetry book I'd found sat on my pillow. About the time I'd climbed up the side of the house and scrambled into the attic room only to come face to face with the grey girl who now haunted my dreams. ‘Nothing,' I lied. ‘I'm just curious, I guess. I like ghost stories.'

‘I think there's something you're not telling me.'

I shrugged, momentarily wondering if I should let this stranger in. If I should tell her my secrets and open myself up for her to easily pick apart. But I'd promised Nate he could trust me – I couldn't lie forever. ‘The house seems to hold so much history,' I whispered, the words beginning to tumble out of me. ‘The walls and floorboards seem to be imprinted with memories of a time no one is there to remember. It's like something – someone – is still there when they shouldn't be. I want to try to make sense of it all.'

Fiona studied me intently. She knew there was more I wasn't telling her, that maybe I was holding back. Keeping my cards close to my chest until she had showed me hers. It was like some kind of unspoken game, and we were both making up the rules as we went along. ‘Dudley Hall was once a school, you know that, don't you?' I nodded. ‘My mother, Nate's grandmother, was a schoolgirl there after her parents were both killed in the war. The school closed soon after she left. The building stood empty for years.'

I knew all of this. I needed her to tell me something new, something I didn't already know. ‘Who's the grey girl you thought I'd seen?'

‘You know who she is,' Fiona said with a wicked smile. ‘That's why you're here, to ask me about her.'

‘I don't know who she is,' I admitted. ‘I don't know what she wants, or why she died, or why she keeps –'

‘Appearing to you,' Fiona finished. She paused, waiting for me to deny it, but I denied nothing. I sat still and silent and gave her the slightest of nods. ‘You've seen her, haven't you, Suzy? That's why you're really here.'

‘Yes,' I whispered.

‘I don't know who she is,' Fiona whispered back. My heart sank. She had to be lying. She had to know. ‘But I know that she's there.'

‘How?'

‘I've seen her too.'

‘Do you take milk and sugar, Suzy?' came Nate's voice as he poked his head out from the kitchen. ‘I can't remember.'

‘She'll have black coffee like me, won't you, Suzy?' Fiona said.

‘Yes please,' I managed to say to Nate, without my voice shaking as much as it wanted to.

Nate disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving Fiona and I alone once again. ‘When did you see her?' I asked.

‘I told you my mother was a schoolgirl at Dudley Hall,' Fiona said. ‘Nell and I always found it so strange that our mother never spoke about her time there. When we were younger we would ask her about her friends, her teachers, about the books she had studied and the games she had played. She told us not to ask questions. She told us not to worry about the past. The past is done, it cannot be changed. But it was obvious to us that there was something about my mother's past that had affected her deeply. I could see it, Nell could see it. You see, my mother didn't speak about her time at Dudley Hall, but she always lived in the old school's shadow. Something about that place haunted her and she couldn't let it go.'

A shiver ran through me as I remembered Frankie telling me in an email how she had gone back to our old school after we had left. She was haunted by what had happened to us there, she couldn't let it go. Maybe Fiona's mother was just like my best friend.

‘Is that why your mother lived here, in Dudley-on-Water?' I asked.

Fiona nodded. ‘She married a local man, my father. Even after he died she stayed here. All our lives Nell and I grew up in the shadow of that place. It was like some kind of invisible chain that bound my mother to this village. When we were younger we used to ask her about the house. How many rooms did it have? What did the bedrooms look like? Where did the schoolgirls eat their breakfast? To Nell and me, as children, Dudley Hall was like some kind of forbidden castle in a fairytale. Locked up behind iron gates and closed off from the world.' Fiona's eyes glassed over as she stared ahead of her. ‘We used to pretend that a twisted and tortured beast of a man lived up there – a hunchback, a cursed prince who waited for us to come and release him. We used to dare each other to climb the gates, to walk down the driveway, to peer into the windows. Before long we were setting foot inside the dark, damp old house.' A shadow seemed to fall over Fiona's face as the memories stirred up inside her. ‘Old school desks, chalkboards and trunks littered the place like cobwebs. Girls' names were scratched into windowsills and the floorboards creaked beneath our feet as we grew braver with our explorations. Room by room, floor by floor, we ventured through that house as though it was some kind of theme park or film set. As though none of it was real. In our heads, in our games, Dudley Hall was a magnificent stage-set, purely there for our entertainment.'

Nate came back into the room and silently put cups of coffee in front of me and Fiona. He slumped back into the leather chair by the fireplace and looked at his mother with concern. This was a story he must have heard before, one that he hated her telling again and again.

‘It was summer time when we first heard her,' Fiona continued without acknowledging Nate or the cup of coffee he'd put down in front of her. She stared ahead as she spoke, as if she was speaking to someone far away in the distance. ‘Each day our parents would go out to work, leaving us alone in the house. And each day Nell and I would run through the village to Dudley Hall. We would spend hours walking through the old classrooms and dormitories, making up stories about the girls who had lived there. The, one day, we were both sitting on the stairs, our backs to the attic floor. The sound came from behind us, from the top of the house. We could hear her crying.'

A horrible shiver ran along my spine as I listened to Fiona's story. She rose from her chair and walked towards an old bureau in the corner of the room. She pulled open a drawer and took a small shoe box from it, closing the drawer again carefully. ‘Nell wanted to run away,' she continued, holding the shoe box in her hands as she sat back down. ‘But I wanted to investigate. I persuaded her to go with me, and together we climbed the rickety old staircase until we stood on the attic landing. We followed the corridor around to the right, and walked towards the last room. The crying got louder, it was coming from behind the door. I rattled the handle, trying to open it but it was locked. The door wouldn't budge. I remember the feeling of being very cold, of feeling every hair on my arm rise to attention. I remember feeling as though my veins were filled with ice, as though my heart would slow down and stop forever. I was so cold. Nell tugged on my arm and together we ran back towards the staircase. And on the step where we had been sitting only moments before, was this …'

Fiona opened up the shoe box and dipped her hand inside, pulling out a shadow puppet. It was just like the one I had found in the attic room. Only this wasn't an elegant maiden, it was different. Fiona walked towards one of the flickering candles above the fireplace. She held the candle behind the shadow puppet and in the daylight it cast the faintest shadow on the wall. It was a man. A knight.

‘Nell picked up the shadow puppet,' Fiona whispered. ‘And I felt my heart grow even colder. As we ran back down the stairs I looked back up towards the attic floor. That's when I saw her. She was looking down at me. Right at me. It felt as though she was seeing into my soul. The grey girl.'

There was a gust of wind through an open window. The candles in the room blew out like flames on a birthday cake and Fiona dropped the candle and the shadow puppet in her hands. She sank to her knees and began to cry.

‘Mum, Mum.' Nate rushed to her side and put his arms around her. She clung to him and sobbed into his shoulder.

‘She looked straight at me,' Fiona whispered to Nate through her tears. ‘The grey girl.'

Nate stroked his mum's head and rocked her gently back and forth. He looked up at me with a mixture of shame and sadness, and in that moment I could have sunk to my knees and embraced them both. I knew what it felt like to have your life touched by a ghost – to question your own sanity and hate the world around you for appearing one way when you knew it to be another. I could have cried with her there on the floor, rocking back and forth until my lungs gave out and I had nothing more to give.

‘Suzy,' Nate said gently.

I rose to my feet and began to make my way to the door. As my feet passed the fallen candle and shadow puppet on the floor I looked back over at Nate and Fiona. He was speaking to her gently, his eyes locked on hers, whispering words I couldn't hear.

Neither of them saw as I quickly dipped down and picked up the shadow puppet between my fingers. They didn't notice as I held the paper puppet close to my chest as I walked out of the living room and out of their house. And they didn't follow as I walked away from the Old Rectory with the shadow puppet in my hands – walking back to reunite the puppet with its partner, back to Dudley Hall.