wireless, I remember – when we all heard this almighty crash and the sound of breaking glass and someone screaming – you screaming – from upstairs. Dad was first to his feet, I think, shortly followed by me. We dashed up the stairs two, three at a time, probably both of us with the same thought in our heads – the wardrobe had somehow come open or fallen over and some terrible accident had resulted, that maybe you were hurt.
‘Anyway, we ran into the room, me just behind Dad, and there you were, just standing there looking terrified, blood streaming from your hand. The curtains were closed, but they were made of thin material and it was still light outside, so the room wasn’t in complete darkness. The wardrobe door was swinging open and the mirror lay smashed in pieces all over the floor, as if someone had slammed the door shut too hard.’
‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘Was it me?’
‘You said it was an accident. We worked out that you must have been asleep and heard it creaking open, or had a bad dream or something, and got out of bed to shut it, but you slammed it too hard and the mirror broke.’
‘And?’
‘Well, nobody could think of any other explanation, though it must have been one hell of a push. I mean, you were only a little kid. We bandaged your hand and Dad took you to the hospital, where they stitched you up. Then Dad came back and calmed Mrs Gooch down – he knew he’d have to pay for the mirror, of course – and I think you slept in their room that night. Things were a bit frosty over breakfast the next couple of days, then we went home.’
‘I don’t remember any of this. And I don’t see-’
Graham held his hand up. ‘Wait. I haven’t finished yet.’
I felt a strange kind of tightness in my chest. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I sensed that it was going to change things, make me feel differently about myself. I almost wanted to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t. Cecilia Bartoli was singing Panis Angelicus, and I took a deep breath and let the music calm me down.
Graham went on. ‘We also shared a room back home in Armley, remember? I think I was twelve or thirteen before we moved to the new estate and got a room each. Anyway, the first night back after the holiday, you couldn’t sleep. Your tossing and turning kept me awake. I asked what was wrong. That was when you told me what happened in Scarborough. You said that you got up to go to the toilet – I think you’d had far too much pop that afternoon – and you noticed that the door to the wardrobe was open. As you passed it to go out to the landing, you caught a glimpse of a reflection. There was something odd about it, you said, so you stepped back and stood in front of the mirror to see. It wasn’t you. That’s what you told me. You couldn’t see your own reflection but that of a young woman, and she seemed to be floating there, reaching out to you, calling you in, as if she wanted to tell you something. Drag you into the wardrobe mirror with her. That was when you slammed the door, out of pure terror, and the mirror smashed.’
I held my breath. A log shifted on the fire. Cecilia sang on.
‘You look pale, little brother. Have another sip of your cognac.’
I did as Graham suggested. I was starting to feel a little drunk.
‘I wasn’t trying to scare you,’ he went on. ‘I was only trying to tell you how you’ve always been over- imaginative, morbidly sensitive, that’s all, the same as with this Grace Fox business.’
‘Yeah, like you’re saying I see dead people. Is that it?’
Graham laughed. ‘Not quite. Maybe you’re sensitive to traces. I don’t know.’
‘Sounds like a load of bollocks to me, big brother,’ I said, with rather more bravado than I felt. ‘Did I tell you what she looked like, this woman?’
‘No. Just that she seemed young and sad. I think you might have mentioned that she was wearing a long nightie. Don’t worry, you weren’t having visions or premonitions of Grace Fox. That’s not why I’m telling you all this.’
‘Then why? What did you make of it?’
‘Well, naturally, I thought you’d awoken from a bad dream involving this young woman in distress, got out of bed half asleep, that somehow the door had come open and you saw your own reflection, maybe thought it was the monster coming out of the wardrobe, and you panicked.’
‘That would seem to be the logical conclusion,’ I said slowly, swirling the rest of my cognac in the large glass.
‘And that’s probably exactly what happened,’ Graham went on. ‘Except…’
I felt a sense of panic. ‘Except what?’
‘No, that’s probably exactly how it happened.’
‘Tell me,’ I pleaded. ‘You can’t lead me this far and then leave me stranded.’
‘It was just something I overheard Dad say later. I don’t think I was supposed to hear it.’
‘What?’
‘Well, the incident gave Mrs Gooch a hell of a shock. It wasn’t just the money. That’s basically what she was telling Dad the next day. But she had a daughter, and that used to be her room before her mother turned the place into a bed and board.’
‘So? There’s nothing odd about that. The daughter got married and left home, and her mother and father converted the house into a guest house rather than move to somewhere smaller. Makes sense. Scarborough attracts a lot of visitors.’
‘Yes. Only that wasn’t quite the way it happened.’
‘Oh?’
‘No. The daughter had a few problems. She was a highly strung girl. She got jilted by her fiance, a soldier, and she… well, she hanged herself in that room. Naturally, Mrs Gooch would hardly tell her guests such a thing, but as I said, she was so upset by the mirror incident that she did let it slip to Dad. The wardrobe door was open at the time, and she saw the reflection of her daughter’s body in the mirror first, before she saw her actual daughter hanging there. What happened to you just brought it all back, that’s all.’
I could think of nothing to say. An icy sensation flooded through me. ‘So you believe that events leave traces?’
‘I never said that. I admit the whole thing puzzles me, and it would be very easy to grasp on to a supernatural explanation.’
‘Couldn’t I have heard about what happened before? Imagined it?’
‘It’s possible, but I don’t see how. You were only four. Even I didn’t really understand what I overheard, but it stuck in my memory. Years later, when I was at grammar school, I tracked down the story in the newspaper archive. It happened in 1945. It would appear, reading between the lines, that an American GI had got the girl pregnant, promised to marry her and take her back to Kansas or wherever with him, then he just abandoned her. She couldn’t face the shame, life without him… whatever, and she snapped.’
‘And that’s who you think I saw in the mirror? Her?’
‘There’s no way of knowing that,’ said Graham. ‘Maybe you imagined the whole thing in the half-darkness. Maybe it was the carry-over from a bad dream.’
‘Or places have memories and I can read them?’
‘Now you are being fanciful. I just don’t want all this Grace Fox business to drive you over the edge, that’s all I’m saying. You’re fragile enough already after the grief you’ve been through over Laura.’
That was exactly what Bernie Wilkins had said, and it annoyed me. ‘It’s not about the noises or the shadowy figures I sometimes think I glimpse,’ I said. ‘Or the piano I hear. They’re all exactly what you say they are, phantoms of an overworked imagination playing on the natural sounds and shadows in an old house. Special effects. It just happens that the house has a history and they heighten it, or vice versa. They don’t bother me at all. They just keep me awake sometimes. I’m not sleeping well.’
‘Most old houses have a history.’
‘Who knows? Maybe I am seeking something to distract me, a mystery to lose myself in. Maybe I am getting a bit obsessed. If I stand back and take stock of myself honestly, I find it hard to know how I got so drawn in, what my motives are, or how deeply I am in. I don’t know where it’s all heading, but I do want to know what happened. I’m not at all convinced, through what I’ve heard from Wilf Pelham and Sam Porter, that Grace Fox really did murder her husband. And even if she did, I want to know it for myself. Does that sound so weird?’
Graham sat up and put his empty glass down on the small round table beside his chair. ‘No, as long as that’s
