‘It was exciting. There was a great music scene for a start. Classical, jazz, rock, whatever you wanted. Pubs, social life, pretty girls, brilliant professors, punting on the Cam.’
‘Did you study music? Somebody told me you’re a composer. Is that true?’
I told her that it was, and what I composed. Naturally, she had seen some of the movies I had scored but couldn’t remember any melodies. I told her that meant I had done my job, but that the films wouldn’t have been half as effective without the music.
‘ The Birds worked,’ she said. ‘Without a musical score, I mean.’
I raised my eyebrows. It was true that The Birds had no music, but most people didn’t even notice. It made a good trivia question, a way of separating the bluffers from people who knew what they were talking about. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But that was the point of it, really, wasn’t it? The lack of music was the soundtrack, in a way. Or the birds, themselves, were, the sounds they made.’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘Who are your favourites?’ she asked.
‘The classics. Erich Korngold. Max Steiner. Bernard Herrmann. Franz Waxman. And maybe some of the more avant-garde composers who worked with great foreign directors. Toru Takemitsu. Nino Rota.’
‘ La Dolce Vita,’ said Louise. ‘I love that movie. And the music.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘You seem to know a lot about the subject.’
She turned away, as if embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, and looked at me sideways again. ‘There was a time I went to the movies nearly every day,’ she said. ‘Classics. Hollywood blockbusters. Art house. Foreign movies. The lot. I had no discrimination. It was pretty much my life in those days.’
‘Escapism?’
‘I had a lot to escape from. But tell me more about you, how you work. It must be very exciting.’
As we continued with our small talk, I found myself wondering whether Louise was aware what I knew about her. I imagined that perhaps one of the family solicitors Heather had talked to might have mentioned my name.
Louise gestured towards the grand piano. ‘Is that where you work?’ she asked. She had an Australian accent, but it wasn’t as strident as some I had heard, and she didn’t effect the kind of slang you usually get on TV. Louise was far more soft spoken, and there was a definite English cadence in her educated speech. Her early, formative years with her father, I imagined, along with her own education, perhaps.
‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘I’m working on a piano sonata.’ I don’t know why I told her that.
‘Like this?’
She meant the Schubert B flat, which had just started. ‘I’m not quite up to that standard.’
‘It’s a beautiful piano.’
‘It was your grandmother’s,’ I said, and held my breath. I had no idea what her reaction would be, whether she would be angry or upset, how much she knew, or even whether she cared at all. She was silent for a few moments, thoughtful, sipping her sweet tea. It crossed my mind that she was a very serious young woman. There were frown lines on her brow. I hadn’t seen her smile once yet. ‘You are Louise Webster , aren’t you?’
She glared at me defiantly. ‘I’m Louise King. I changed my name. It’s all legal.’
‘That’s a version of your mother’s name, isn’t it? There’s been a lot of name-changing in your family.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Someone told me you’d been asking questions about my grandmother. Why are you so interested in her?’
The family solicitors again, I guessed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe because I live in what used to be her house.’
‘Is her ghost haunting it?’
‘Why does everybody ask me that?’
‘It seems the obvious question, I suppose. Though she wasn’t killed here, so there’s no reason why her ghost should linger, is there?’
‘None,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think it is. I hear a lot of noises, that’s all. Old house noises. See things in the shadows.’
‘Have you ever seen her?’
I thought of the figure I fancied I saw in the wardrobe mirror and in the sewing-room chair the other night. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Me neither. Only the ones inside my head.’
‘You’re haunted?’
She nodded, as if it were a simple answer to an everyday question. ‘What about my grandfather?’ she asked. ‘After all, he’s the one who died here.’
‘I haven’t seen him, either. What made you sell the place?’
‘I need the money. Well, that’s not strictly true. Daddy left me plenty of money. But I didn’t want an old house. I didn’t want it hanging around my neck. It seemed to make most sense to sell it. I hope you’re happy here.’
‘I’m doing all right.’
She put her cup down on the table beside her.
‘More?’
‘No, thanks. I should go.’
‘You’re welcome to stay for something to eat if you want. It’s nothing special. I was just going to cook up some salmon.’
‘Did you catch it yourself?’
‘No, not exactly. Supermarket special. There isn’t any around here.’
‘I don’t know much about nature, except that we need to respect it more.’
‘Me neither.’ But I’m learning, I might have added. ‘Anyway, what about it? Tea?’
‘OK. Thanks. That’s nice of you. No rush. I’m not starving or anything.’
‘How did you get here from Staithes?’
‘I drove. I’m parked in Richmond market square. I walked up here.’
‘Quite a way back. I’ll drive you to town later, after tea, if you want.’
‘Cool. Can I use your toilet?’
I showed her the way to the one at the top of the stairs. While she was gone, I took the salmon out of the fridge and started to prepare it. She must have heard me puttering around in the kitchen, because when she came back down she joined me there and sat at the table, gazing out of the window towards the drystone wall and the woods at the end of the dale. ‘That’s quite the bathroom,’ she said.
It was one of the old kind, with a claw-foot bathtub, gold-plated fittings, high ceilings and blue and white tiles, after the Portuguese fashion. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should imagine it’s been that way for years, probably since the days your grandparents lived here.’
‘It’s very remote,’ she went on. ‘How do you put up with it? I think I’d go batty.’
‘I do go batty sometimes,’ I said, wrapping the mustard-smeared salmon fillets in prosciutto. I glanced up at her. ‘Perhaps that explains why I’m so interested in your grandmother’s story. It helps me put up with being so isolated here.’ I realised as I said this that, in an odd way, Grace was company for me, but I didn’t say it out loud because I knew how crazy it sounded.
Louise was watching me work now, as if fascinated by the simple kitchen techniques. I wondered just what kind of life she had lived. I remembered what Heather had told me, and I knew that this slight young girl sitting before me had found her mother and stepfather dead from point-blank shotgun wounds. What kind of damage that inflicts on the psyche I could hardly imagine. She had run wild, so Heather had told me, and that could mean anything – drugs, crime, alcohol, bad company, maybe all of them.
I put on some rice and began to chop vegetables. Louise still watched me, fascinated. When I had done that, I unscrewed the cap from a bottle of red wine and offered her some.
‘I don’t drink,’ she said, shrinking in on herself, as if every cell in her body wanted to reach out and accept. I had seen the signs of alcoholism before, but not in one so young.
‘I suppose I don’t need to, either,’ I said, and put the bottle away, out of sight.
‘I don’t care if you do,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’m not against it or anything.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘No skin off my nose. It’ll do me good to abstain. At least, I’ll wait and have some later with the meal. In the meantime, you said you came to have a look around the old place, so would you like the guided
