‘Hi, Mum.’ Rachel caught her breath and looked back up. ‘I’m sorry to just drop in on you like—’
‘I’ve made lasagne,’ Mary said, close to monotone. ‘There’ll be plenty for you.’
‘Oh … right.’
‘So, come in.’
Rachel shifted her rucksack. ‘I don’t have a key any more.’
Mary looked confused at that. ‘But it’s open. And when you wash your hands, you get right up to the elbow, remember? Right up.’
‘I remember,’ Rachel said, and the window upstairs screeched shut. Only this time Rachel didn’t hear metal. She heard rubber and plastic and copper wire. The twist of a power cable, pulled tight with a pendulous weight.
You can do this, she said to herself, it’s just sad events and us getting through them.
She even visualised a team of guys from work high-fiving her like they do in TV. Telling her she’d smash this and be fine. But in reality, Rachel knew she could cry on this path, right now. She could turn away and rush toward her car and never, ever come back here. But that felt like a very immature thing to do. And what had this last ten or so years of burying been, if not an immature attempt at dealing with that horrible week? Judging by her nightmares and dead cat smells, that method wasn’t working. Time to try the adult approach.
She wouldn’t cry. She’d go in. She’d wash her hands, and her forearms and elbows and be a grown-up.
So she stepped toward the door, to find it really was open.
In fact, now it was gaping wide, eager to let her in.
‘You’re letting the cold in,’ Mum mumbled, as she trotted down the staircase.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Matt shuffled on all fours across the wooden panels of his new loft, so that the kneecaps of his jeans dragged channels through the dust. His daughter Amelia had wanted to come up here too. Insisted, in fact. This was a new house, and she wanted to scope out every room (as long as it wasn’t her own). He got the impression that she was spying out alternative bedrooms. She crawled directly behind him.
‘Do not fart,’ she said. ‘I’ll get it right in my face if you—’
‘Release?’ he faked the sound of one against his palm. Something loud and wince-inducing. She squealed and her hand slapped the back of his thigh, hard. ‘Ow.’
She giggled.
So did he.
They shuffled on.
There was no light bulb up here so he’d have to rig one up some day. Just another little Saturday job to add to the expanding list of DIY. So they could see up here Amelia had fished out two head torches. An old Christmas gift from one of Wren’s aunts. One was shaped like a monkey’s head and the other, a tiger’s. Both with torch bulbs for eyes, threaded through a stretchy Velcro strap. She’d opted for the tiger. He moved his head like a robot, and the monkey’s eyes blazed its sentry beams across the piles of cardboard boxes.
‘It’s like that bit in Indiana Jones.’ He turned back to her. ‘You remember that massive storehouse?’
‘Nope.’ She squinted from his beams. ‘What’s VHS anyway?’
‘Ah … well … let me tell you the tale …’ He filled her in on the wonders of magnetic tape, and the ancient war with Betamax, while he dragged boxes out filled with CDs and tapes. At one point, he found an old Donkey Kong game he’d had as a kid. One of those old Nintendo flipper things, with two screens. ‘That’s coming down.’ He slipped it into his back pocket for later. It’d be perfect for downtime between lectures. During, even.
He finally found the Akai video cassette recorder (now with Video Plus!) sitting under a pile of stuff he’d taped from TV. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Jason and the Argonauts. A few TV shows.
Amelia read the spine of a tape. ‘What on earth is Airwolf?’
He grabbed it. ‘TV Gold, is what that is.’
He shimmied the player out, fished out the remote control and coiled up the dusty SCART lead that was still hanging from the back, then he and Amelia headed back toward the ladders. She spotted a stuffed turtle she’d bought last year from the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. With a little baby teddy, tucked in a pouch. She grabbed it from the box. ‘There it is!’
She went to move off, smiling.
‘Amelia?’
‘Yup?’
‘How’s the room situation going?’
She slowed down. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, will you be turning the light off tonight?’
Neither of them were looking at each other properly. If they did, they’d blind each other with the head torches. So he was looking at her arms when she pulled the turtle a little tighter toward her. She spoke in her I’m-being-reasonable tone. Her negotiation voice. ‘Maybe in a month. How about that?’
‘And this feeling you get in your room. What’s causing it, exactly?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s a ghost. I bet a lot of people have died in this house.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Er … it’s over a hundred years old. I checked. So I bet someone died here. Maybe even in my room. Maybe in yours.’
She was possibly right, not that it mattered. ‘But have you got enough evidence to make you scared? Do you see anything? Like proper people and shapes? Do you hear them?’
‘Nah. It’s just a shadow. It doesn’t say anything.’
‘Perhaps that’s because it’s just a shadow.’
‘Hmmm,’ she started to pick something from her nose. ‘It’s usually when I’m about to fall asleep.’
‘Interesting …’ he said. ‘Then here’s your new word for today … ready?’
‘Yep.’
He ran a hand across the air. ‘Hypnagogia.’
She looked at him, puzzled. ‘Huh?’
‘When the human brain’s about to fall asleep it starts
