The Ghost Writer

I should tell him about the story and how it haunts me. But then he'll want to read it, and he might

I must not think about it any more.

12 AUGUST

Alone with H. at last. He asked me if something was wrong and I said no, just a bit of a headache, which was exactly the wrong thing to say, because he insisted on taking me home.

I keep thinking he's not as passionate as he was a month ago, but I'm so tense and miserable I don't know if it's him or me. I'm sure he loves me. I will not read the story again.

20 AUGUST

Filly is acting very strangely. I keep watching her-about Hugh I mean-I can't help myself. Sometimes I think I must be going mad.

25 AUGUST

Hardly slept at all. H. very busy again at the saleroom. Tried again to tell him about the story and couldn't.

10 SEPTEMBER

Very close and airless. H. stayed late again playing Scrabble. Kept willing Filly to go to bed but she wouldn't, even though I could hardly keep my eyes open-just played on and on until H. realised he'd missed the last tube. He said not to worry about making up the spare bed, he'd sleep on the couch in the library. I wanted to go downstairs with him but he said good-night on the landing in front of Filly.

By then I was too angry to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours until I gave up and went and stood at the window and looked at the moon. And I thought, I'll go down to the library and have it out with him.

Filly's door was locked and it was deathly quiet. Until I got to the landing outside the study and heard the noise. A squeaking, creaking sort of noise. Coming through the ceiling.

I tiptoed up the attic stairs and there they were, on Lettie's old bed, stark naked in the moonlight. He was sprawled along the mattress with his head hanging over the foot of the bed. She was riding him like a horse, straddling him with her hands on his shoulders, lashing his face with her hair. I couldn't move and I couldn't look away. Then her whole body arched and shuddered and she threw back her head and looked straight at me.

(The rest of this page, and all the remaining pages in the diary, had been torn out.)

I read through the diary by torchlight, sitting on Anne's bed with the faded white tennis dress floating at the edge of my vision. I could not associate the mother I had known with the woman in the attic, and yet the final scene left me with a nightmarish sense of having witnessed my own conception. It was also disturbingly like one of the fantasies Alice and I had shared. I remained staring at the torn page until a very faint rustling somewhere overhead set the hair on the back of my neck bristling.

Downstairs in the comparative safety of the library, in an armchair beneath the four great windows, I read through it again. I had known, really, since I first read Miss Hamish's letter. Why else would Aunt Iris have turned so violently against Phyllis? (I would not think of her as 'my mother' any more.)

Phyllis had found the diary; had probably been reading it all along. 'Filly is acting very strangely: I saw what must have happened, set out as clearly as an endgame at chess, with Phyllis always one-no two moves ahead… Owe came true, indeed. Anne's record of the closing trap had gone with the torn-out pages. But why had Phyllis put the rest of the diary back in its hiding-place after-whatever she had done to-had done with Anne? It made no sense: after all, she had taken 'The Revenant'.

And there was something else… something that didn't fit. I took out Miss Hamish's letter to check the dates. Somewhere around the middle of September, Anne had written to say the engagement was 'all off'. But the 'dreadful set-to' between Phyllis and Iris hadn't happened for another fortnight or so. Anne clearly didn't tell her friend why she'd broken off with Hugh Montfort. Then Iris had changed her will and died within days of learning the truth. And Anne had last been seen alive in Mr Pitt's office on 26 October.

Miss Hamish. The diary did not once mention Miss Hamish.

How could this be? Unless she hadn't been nearly as close to Anne as she imagined… but no, Anne had left her the estate. For a few wild moments I toyed with the notion of Miss Hamish and Phyllis conspiring to murder Anne, but that was idiotic. Every detail in her letter fitted exactly with my own discoveries, and with Anne's diary, including Mr Pitt the solicitor. And the police would have investigated Abigail Hamish, as the sole beneficiary, very carefully indeed.

No: the only obvious answer was that Anne simply hadn't included the friendship-and presumably whole other dimensions of her life-in the diary. Odd, all the same. I leaned back in the armchair, staring up at the gallery where the veiled woman had appeared in my dream.

A woman in a dark green gown. Greensleeves.

The back of my neck prickled. Of course it had been a dream. I didn't-did I?-seriously believe in ghosts. Any more than I believed in spirit messages from beyond. I looked over at the stack of butcher's paper on the table. Something about the planchette had changed.

The squeak and scrape of the chair rose into a high, drawn-out note as I stood up. There was my question:

WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNE?

but the planchette had moved on. In faint, spidery letters, an answer had appeared:

Filly murdered me

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: None

Date: Wed, 11 August 1999 19:48:21 +0100 (BST)

…later I rang Mr Grierstone's clerk and asked her if the cleaners, or a security patrol had been in the house last night, and she said no, certainly not, no one else has keys, Miss Hamish was most insistent about that. She said the only way anyone could have got in was if I hadn't locked up properly last night, and I know I did.

I felt angry when I first saw the message. A defensive reaction, I suppose. Someone's playing games with me, I thought, but I'll show them. I wrote down another question, something no one else could answer, thinking, that'll prove you're not a ghost. It seemed perfectly logical at the time. But I knew really, even before I went out to phone, that it couldn't have been a cleaner or anyone like that. Who could possibly know that my mother was Filly to the family?

Maybe Mr Grierstone lives a double life, creeping out at night to frighten his clients. I wish I could believe that.

The only other possibility-the only one I want to think about-is that I wrote it myself, when I was sitting at the table yesterday afternoon, doodling with the planchette. But I KNOW I didn't do that. I can see myself sitting there yesterday, trying to convince myself that Mother couldn't have killed Anne, and the planchette doesn't move.

So either I'm turning into one of those 'missing time' people with alternate personalities, or Anne's ghost is telling me what I already know from her diary. I don't know which is more frightening. If I did write that message, what am I going to do next? What if it's inherited?-the condition, whatever it is? Am I going to turn into a murderer too?

I know what you'll say: I'm letting my worst fears run away with me. If only. It would actually be a relief, now, to believe what I've just written. Because I don't. I keep getting flashes-like the shadow of something truly monstrous creeping up behind you. Your mind keeps saying no, no, but your skin and your spine and your hair and the pit of your stomach know what's coming. In that house, anything is possible.

Alice I know we agreed to wait but I really need to talk to you right now. I've never felt more alone in my life. This morning in Family Records I looked you up, or tried to, I just couldn't help myself. You weren't born in England, so why have you always let me believe that you were? And that the accident happened here? After the shock of