The work day was over now, and as the sun gradually jogged on to other countries she could only see a few lights on up there in the offices. A figure was moving in one of them. A tall woman with a mass of permed hair. She was spraying a cupboard door with something and wiping it down with a bright-yellow cloth. She wondered if it was Kassy’s cleaning company who’d had that contract. Maybe Jo was up there now lugging a Henry Hoover about and spraying taps with Viakal. Maybe she’d dust a window ledge and spot where Rachel was right now. Down here. Back here.
Would that be good if she knew, or bad? She couldn’t tell.
All the tallest buildings in Menham were here, making this her very own cut-price Canary Wharf. As well as the council offices, there was Brett House. A gun-grey 80s building that housed a bunch of local businesses. And on the far side of the road she could see the old mill. At one point it made oat-based cereals and bread for the local yokels. Now it was some sort of personal storage facility for the junk people didn’t want, but couldn’t quite let go of. They’d painted a massive yellow sign across the top of it, with its phone number and website. Leave it with us! it said.
If only, she thought.
Because in the centre of it all, enclosed by buildings and a border of road, was a square patch of land about the size of an adult swimming pool. The sign still said CONDEMNED in thick red letters on white. Only these days they’d rigged up a much higher fence of wooden panels that a local school appeared to have painted on, to make it look nicer. In the picture, loads of stick children were playing in a park, flying kites that touched a messy rainbow above them.
It was horribly ironic, seeing all those kids here.
So the big fence was new, but the atmosphere here was very, very old indeed. She felt that familiar churn of the stomach. The slow creep of bumps mutating her skin. Turning her flesh into a frightened reptile.
She glanced at her watch and saw it was 5:30pm. In a few hours’ time, she’d be talking to her dead sister. Supposedly.
She stared at the pictures. The colours. The happy scene that had been placed across somewhere that had no colour. That had no light. A community’s attempt at therapy, perhaps.
And looking at the picture of those kids, scrawled in busy, bright paint, made her consider something. That maybe it didn’t matter if the seance was going to be real or not. Maybe it was just about closing a door, regardless of it being marked natural or supernatural. Psychological or para-psychological, if that was even a word. Maybe her bravery in facing this door, and closing it, would make her a better person. A more attractive human being to be around. Maybe she’d meet someone like Debbie again and they’d not remark on what a ‘downer’ Rachel always became, when the sun dropped. Maybe she wouldn’t have to sit in the middle of a bar with a salsa band playing, leaning over to hear a horrible phrase like ‘self-pity isn’t attractive, Rachel’. And the real killer, when the night filled up the bedroom with: ‘sorry, but melancholy people are a turn-off.’ One of the little truth bombs Debbie dropped that still, even now, had its bitter aftershocks.
No. She’d had enough of it.
She wouldn’t even have to tell the Hodges the whole deal, because perhaps that was a door she needed to close on her own. Or with the girls, at least. Tonight she could just talk directly to Holly and see what she said. Whether that was from the swirling mists of the ether, or the bubbling soup of her subconscious.
The thought prompted her to stop leaning against the car for safety. No more. Instead she pushed herself off the escape pod and held her breath. She crossed the road, heels of her pumps skimming the concrete. She wasn’t a nut. She had no intention of actually touching the fence around the stretch of wild grass. But she had noticed a thin split in the wood that showed her the inside. She did stand on the pavement, and walk close enough to look through the gap. Not enough to touch. But enough to see the breeze quiver the thick wild grass and reeds in there. Like the patch of land itself was alive and wriggling.
She could hear her own heart beat too. The squelch-pulse rhythm squeezing around her brain.
She grabbed her phone and checked her messages. Still nothing from Jo, which was odd. Kassy wasn’t coming to the seance, but Jo had insisted she be there. The two of them were going to meet up before the seance kick-off and have a glass of wine in town. Have two, maybe. Seven. Her brow crunched again in confusion. No reply to her calls.
So she flicked through the menu to find Kassy’s number. Nervous about speaking to her on the phone. She answered almost instantly.
‘Yeah?’ Kassy had the drawn-out bored tone that perfectly encapsulated the speaker. She could picture Kassy, staring at her nails at the other end. Yawning with tedium, while baby kittens died in flames all around her. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s Rachel.’
‘And … what do you want?’
‘It’s about the seance.’
An unpleasant peal of laughter crackled down the phone. ‘I told you. I’ve got better things to do than talk to a tabletop.’
‘I’m not asking that.’ Rachel looked down at the pavement.
