‘I know.’ Libby glared at the beach. ‘Bull -’
‘In a china shop,’ Fran finished for her. ‘Not quite. Just a mind above other things.’
‘That’s a laugh. My mind is very firmly rooted in the everyday mire.’ Libby turned to her friend. ‘But nice of you to try and make me feel better. Now, are we going to call Campbell McLean?’
The local television news reporter had helped Fran and Libby in the past and never seemed to mind their occasional pleas for help.
‘I’ll ring the office,’ said Fran, fishing out her mobile. ‘We don’t want to disturb him in the middle of a broadcast.’
Kent and Coast Television promised to get a message to Campbell as soon as they could, but warned that as he was out recording a piece about bulls for the evening bulletin it might be some time.
‘Do you think he’s having to get up close and personal with some hulking great beast?’ asked Libby, as they arrived at Coastguard Cottage.
‘Remember him at that farm we went to looking for illegal immigrants?’
Libby laughed. ‘He hated that, didn’t he?’
‘He got a good item out of it, though,’ said Fran. ‘Come on, if we’re going now. You can drop me back here, can’t you? It’s on your way?’
‘Oh, are we still going? I thought you might want to wait to talk to Campbell.’ Libby fished in her basket for Romeo’s keys.
‘Not chickening out, are you?’ Fran waited for Libby to unlock the passenger door, and climbed in.
‘Course not.’ Libby started the engine. ‘Now, as far as I remember, we drive right past Creekmarsh towards the saltings.’
‘But we don’t know if it’s on the main road, do we?’ said Fran.
‘There aren’t many roads in Cherry Ashton. We’ll find it.’
The road followed the river past Lewis Osbourne-Walker’s house Creekmarsh, then turned inland on to the windswept saltings.
‘There,’ said Libby, pointing at a spire above a slight rise. ‘That must be Cherry Ashton.’
‘Is this the only road in?’
‘Don’t know. Look, that’s it, I bet you.’
Ahead of them, against a sky darkening with rain clouds, stood a house. A solitary tree stood opposite on the other side of the road, but that was all. Libby stopped the car.
There was complete silence. The house, part half-timbered and part tile-hung, felt dead, its windows, as Rosie had said, boarded up. A tall wall ran along the front.
‘Come on then,’ said Libby, after a moment. ‘This is what we’ve come to see.’
Fran followed her across the road, and through the archway in the wall.
‘It doesn’t feel right,’ she said.
‘As though we’re trespassing, you mean?’ said Libby. ‘Yes, I feel a bit like that, too. But we’re not. Look.’ She waggled the keys before going up to the front door and peering at the locks.
‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ said Fran. ‘There’s something not right about this place.’
Libby swung the door wide. ‘Fine time to have one of your moments,’ she said, and stepped inside.
‘Exactly the right time, I’d have thought,’ said Fran. ‘I’m not sure I can go inside.’
Libby turned round. ‘You don’t have to. I’ll look round on my own, if you like.’
Fran took a deep breath. ‘No, I’ll come.’ She stepped gingerly forward and shivered.
The hall was long, wide and very dark. Past the sweeping curve of the staircase could be seen a little light, which Libby soon discovered to be a door into the back garden.
‘Well, they didn’t board this up,’ she said, rattling the door handle. ‘I wonder if one of my keys opens it?’
‘Shouldn’t we finish looking round inside first?’ said Fran. ‘If I go outside I won’t want to come in again.’
‘That bad, huh?’ Libby cocked her head on one side. ‘What’s the feeling exactly?’
‘I’m just spooked.’ Fran looked round. ‘It feels as though something’s here.’
Libby frowned. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘Sorry.’ Fran moved back down the hall and made for a pair of double doors. ‘This is the room with the long windows and a piano.’
Libby raised her eyebrows but said nothing as Fran opened the doors.
The boards over the windows had not been fixed particularly well, and there was enough light to see that the room indeed matched Rosie’s description, including, in the corner, a baby grand piano.
‘Nothing else,’ said Fran. ‘Let’s find the kitchen with a bath in it.’
‘That would have just been Rosie’s dream making things up,’ said Libby.
‘Well, it didn’t make this up, did it?’ said Fran, and led the way up the stairs. The higher they got, the colder Libby felt.
Some of the windows at the back of the house hadn’t been boarded up. The very modern tiled bathroom and a large room next to it were as bright as the general oppressiveness would allow, but Libby’s legs still felt as though she was teetering on the edge of a very high cliff.
‘You’re right, you know,’ she said, as Fran opened another door into a pitch dark room, ‘it is very nasty here. Shall we go?’
Fran stopped so suddenly Libby bumped into her. ‘What?’
‘Look.’ Fran stepped aside and Libby peered round her.
Inside the room, which was long and narrow, she could just make out a large roll topped bath with claw feet, and on the other side of the room a deep porcelain kitchen sink. Fran pulled the door shut with a bang.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Come on. This is weird.’
As fast as they could in the semi-darkness, they went down the staircase and out of the front door. Libby let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
‘Now we’ll go round to the back,’ said Fran. ‘Find the door we were going to go out of.’
Libby led the way round the right side of the house through an unkempt garden, in which brambles snaked across a path with a vicious tendency to nip at uncovered legs. Libby’s jeans did better than Fran’s skirt.
‘Oh, my God.’ Fran stopped dead as they rounded the corner to the back of the house. In front of them a rotting wooden door, with a wooden lintel above it, was set into a tall wall of what looked like very old stone.
‘You know,’ said Libby, ‘Rosie must have been here. This is exactly what she described. The room with the piano, the bath in the upstairs kitchen and now this. There’s no other way she would have known. She isn’t psychic. That’s why she wanted you.’
Fran turned slowly. ‘You’re right. Even I can’t conjure up this amount of detail without some prior knowledge.’
‘So why was she here, and why doesn’t she remember? And come to think of it, it must have been since the house was empty, because that’s how she described it. And that can’t have been long ago.’
‘No. A year, the agent said, didn’t he? And it’s a probate sale. So it could actually have been empty for a lot longer if the owner was in a home, or something.’
‘And supposing it had been left to someone before then, maybe years before, and they never lived in it. He did say a
Fran looked up at the wooden lintel above the door. ‘This looks even older than the house.’ She gave the door a tentative push. It moved a little way and stuck. ‘Come on, there’s enough room for us to squeeze through.’
The garden they squeezed into was as overgrown as the one at the side. To their left, in the middle of the back wall of the house, they saw the door into the passage and, further along, the long windows of the room with the piano. To their immediate left, two more boarded-up windows.
‘Stones, look.’ Libby pointed.
Half-hidden by undergrowth and brambles, stones leant at awkward angles, mostly against the further wall of the garden, but a few lying in the middle.
‘Gravestones.’ Fran closed her eyes. ‘The children.’
‘Workhouse children?’
Fran shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’ She opened her eyes and looked at Libby. ‘Jane didn’t seem to be referring to children in relation to the workhouse, did she? No, it’s something else.’
‘More recent?’
