The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

lovemaking.

I shuddered and sat down on the bed. I was disgusted by my thoughts, yet still aroused by them. The house was still and silent as it always was, and yet I sensed something hovering on the outer edge of my perception: the haunted, broken laughter of Lorna Loomis.

Allison Rand had told me the house was not safe for children. Could it be that it was not safe for lovers, either? Roy and I had been so happy when we bought the place. I had blamed our problems since on his war experiences, but what if the house itself was the cause of our breakdown? The house working on us and through us, the same as it had with the Rands.

I dismissed the idea as so much rubbish and tried to put it from my mind but I went to bed still thinking about it and that night I had a horrible dream. I was in the study drawing the curtains, but each time I looked away they would open again. It was dark outside, and I was afraid to look out of the window. I became increasingly agitated, because I knew Roy was waiting for me downstairs, only I was scared it would not be him I found when I went down there. I went to the wardrobe to fetch my evening dress, and found the girl from the allotments curled up inside. She lay quite still, her bony knees drawn up to her chest. She was staring right at me, but I knew she was not really seeing me, and when I shook her by the shoulder I discovered she was not the real girl at all but some kind of copy, papery and weightless and balloon-like, reminding me of the pleated orange fruits of the Physalis francheti that grew in my parents’ front garden, years and years ago when we lived in Birmingham. Chinese lanterns, they were called. I hadn’t thought of them in ages.

I closed the wardrobe door and then woke up. I was breathing heavily, and I had the feeling I might have called out in my sleep although there was nothing to prove this either way. I turned on the bedside lamp and got out of bed. It was still dark, still early. I tiptoed out on to the landing. There were shadows bunched in every corner but no human presence, at least none that was visible to me.

I used the toilet then returned to the bedroom. The girl was lying on the bed, looking right at me as she had in my dream, only this time she was seeing me, I was sure of it. She had on the same grey school skirt and green cardigan she’d been wearing on the day she disappeared.

In the yellow light from the lamp her eyes gleamed like glass marbles.

I began to shiver, my teeth chattering in my head as if it were November and freezing. Yet it was warm in the room, warm enough to sleep naked, although this was something I rarely did when Roy was away.

“You shouldn’t be here, Nancy,” I said. “It’s time you went home.”

If you’re thinking it was brave of me to say that, you don’t know how scared I was. I spoke mostly to see if I still could speak. I said the first thing that came into my head.

“I don’t want to,” said the child. “I like it here. You’ve got lots of books. The soldier said I could read them, if I wanted.”

She rolled on her side, drawing her knees up to her chest the same way she had when she was in the cupboard. I felt my back muscles stiffen.

“What do you mean, the soldier?” I said. “There are no soldiers here.”

“He was crying,” Nancy said. “He thinks it’s all his fault that the other man died.” She smiled a secretive little smile that reminded me unpleasantly of Allison Rand. “The other man was going to die, though, anyway. So it wasn’t the soldier’s fault at all, really. The soldier was just trying to help.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“I have to go now.” She unfurled her legs and slipped down from the bed. When her feet hit the floor they made no noise. “We can look at the books soon though, can’t we? I like the books with trains in. And animals.”

“If you like,” I said. There was a ringing in my ears, and I felt overcome with a feeling of faintness, the same feeling I experienced if I happened to cut my finger while chopping vegetables. It’s the sight of blood that does it. Roy always thought that so funny, a crime writer who can’t stand the sight of the red stuff.

She flowed past me and out through the door. The moment she was out of sight I felt certain she had never been there, that the whole thing had been in my head, an after-effect of my nightmare. I got back into the bed and pulled up the duvet. You will think I kept the light on, but I didn’t. I wanted darkness around me, the deep kind of darkness that makes it impossible to see anything.

The call came the following morning. For a moment I thought the man on the other end of the line was Steven Rand, and felt a sharp, sweet lurch of the heart, that he wanted to phone me. Then I realized it wasn’t Rand at all. The man asked me if I was alone in the house and if I had any friends or neighbours that I could call. I remember thinking: what the hell business is it of yours? Then he told me that Roy was dead.

I thought he was going to say it was one of Roy’s bombs that had done it. He was a brave man, but his number finally came up. What he actually said was that Roy had shot himself.

“We’re not sure yet what led to this tragedy,” he said. “But you can rest assured there’ll be a full enquiry.”

I could tell he was embarrassed, that making a phone call like this was a job he dreaded. Absurdly, I told him not to worry.

Three months later one of the men from Roy’s unit drove over to see me. He brought some things of Roy’s: the folder of photographs he was always looking at, the wallet made of dark green leather I had given him for his birthday the year before. The wallet’s silk lining was torn. There was a photo inside, a picture of the two of us on holiday in the Lake District. We’d stopped a passer-by and asked her to take it. Both of us were grinning like fools.

I asked Roy’s comrade if he would like a cup of tea. He said no at first but then changed his mind. “I’d love one,” he said. “But only if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

He told me Roy had shot a man, a young soldier who had been caught in an ambush and injured so badly that all they could do was move him to the side of the road and wait for him to die.

“His face was mostly gone,” he said. “He was screaming like a man on fire. Roy had real guts to do what he did. It was like none of the rest of us could move, and only he was able to do what needed doing.”

I was starting to show by then, and the man kept darting worried glances at my belly. I leaned back against the kitchen cabinets, gripping the edge of the worktop in both hands. My limbs sometimes felt heavy and throbbing during those later months of my pregnancy. My blood pressure was up slightly, but my doctor said that so long as it didn’t get any worse it was nothing to worry about.

I could tell that Roy’s comrade was wondering whose child it was.

“Don’t you think you should sit down?” he said. He jumped up from his own chair and shoved it towards me, almost knocking over his mug of tea.

“I will in just a moment,” I said. “It’s good for me to keep moving, though. It stops my ankles swelling.”

I wanted to reassure him that the baby was Roy’s, that she had been conceived the night we made love during Roy’s last leave. To tell him that in a sense Roy was still alive in me and always would be. In the end though it was not his business, and I knew he would be embarrassed if I tried to explain.

Thank God I had stopped taking the pill. I don’t think I believe in God actually, but you know what I mean.

I glanced at Nancy. She was sitting quietly at the kitchen table, cutting pictures out of a magazine to stick in her scrapbook. Her tongue poked from the corner of her mouth as it often did when she was concentrating on something. I could smell the glue she was using, Gloy gum from a plastic tube.

“Will you stay for supper?” I asked the officer. “You’ve had a long drive.”

“It’s good of you to offer, but I won’t,” he said. “I promised the lads I’d be back before ten. We’ve got this card thing going.”

He flushed scarlet then, as if the mention of a card game might make him guilty of some particularly heinous brand of callousness. He seemed nice enough, but I was glad he was leaving. Nancy wasn’t keen on people who couldn’t see her. They made her nervous.

Aside from that I wanted to keep the evening free to work on the book. With any luck I could still deliver the manuscript before the baby was born.

The Third Person