“The Franklins were a difficult family,” Latham said. “As I said to you before, I only came into direct contact with him the once or twice, and it was never a comfortable experience, but, Dolores was a different kettle of fish. She had quite a high profile in the village. So much so it was difficult to avoid her, as much as one might want to.”
“And did you? Want to, I mean.”
“Oh God, yes. Didn’t manage it though. I was stuck at the school and she was always paying us visits on one pretext or another. Always causing trouble with complaints about this or that. It was the same when she visited the local shops, and various societies in the village. She was asked to leave a number of them. In fact, according to Gwen, the chairwoman of the Women’s Institute threatened to resign unless Dolores was kicked out.”
“So she was a troublemaker.”
“That and more. She was a self-styled flower child; saw herself as one of nature’s children, and dressed and behaved accordingly.”
“She doesn’t sound that bad,” Beth said. “Couldn’t she just have been a bit of a hippie? A throwback to the sixties? Harmless surely?”
“I take your point, and if she’d been all love beads and pot I’d agree with you, but there was more to Dolores than that. Gwen crossed swords with her a number of times and she still describes Dolores Franklin as thoroughly evil, and Gwen isn’t one to think badly of people.” He finished making a fresh mug of tea, and set it down in front of her. “Try that.”
She sipped it and murmured appreciatively. “In what way was she evil?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say for sure. Dolores was fond of putting hexes on people—cursing them if they upset her. Total bollocks of course, but I think some people—those with limited intellect—and there’s more that a few of them around here—took her rants seriously, and let them affect the way they lived their lives.”
“But not Gwen, surely?”
“You say that, but for all her intelligence, and believe me, Gwen is ferociously intelligent—puts me to shame—but for all that, I think Gwen is still susceptible to superstition. I think a part of it is connected with her illness. She took the news that she has MS particularly badly. She first suffered symptoms of it a few days after a run-in with Dolores Franklin, and I think part of her is still convinced the illness was caused by a curse. A hex.”
“Really?” Beth said. She failed to keep the disbelief out of her voice. “Is Gwen really that credulous?”
“I don’t know,” Latham said. “Being diagnosed with a condition like that can mess with your mind. It certainly messed with Gwen’s. She was looking for something—someone—to blame. I’m afraid Dolores Franklin presented herself as a rather easy target.”
“So you don’t share Gwen’s conviction?” Beth was thinking about how her own mind might have been messed by being chained to her chair.
Latham swallowed the last of his tea, and switched the kettle on again to make himself another. “I’m afraid I’m too much of a realist,” he said. “I think that’s why I’m so passionate about gardening. I plant a seed, water it, tend the shoot, nurture it until it buds and blooms. It could be seen as a miracle, a supernatural event, but it’s just nature.”
“Gwen said you had green fingers.”
“I delude myself that without me the garden would wither and die. Again total bollocks. No. All I have is patience. It’s just nature’s way, a totally natural cycle of life that would continue with or without my input. Some things are immutable, like Gwen’s illness. Blaming Dolores Franklin, and the supposed hex the woman put on her, is just Gwen’s way of dealing with the lousy hand she’s been dealt. The MS was always going to get her. It lay dormant for years in her DNA and then, when it was ready, it woke up, burst out and clobbered her. Dolores Franklin had nothing to do with it.” He glanced pointedly at the wheelchair. “You’ve been through some difficult changes in your life, too.”
“So if I told you that Dolores Franklin…and her daughter Jessica…were haunting Stillwater, you’d tell me I was imagining it.” She looked challengingly at him. “Or would you blame my disability?”
Latham’s eyes narrowed. He dropped a fresh tea bag into his mug and splashed on some boiling water. “I’d be interested to hear what led you to that conclusion before I commented one way or another.”
“Fair enough,” she said, and proceeded to tell Latham everything she had experienced since moving into Stillwater.
“I’m sorry to hear about your cat,” Latham said, as she wound up her summary. “Very sad. It probably left you devastated.”
“It left me feeling guilty. Teddy never asked to come up here. I dragged him along regardless of his feelings.”
Latham nodded slowly in agreement.
“So what do you think?” She pressed him. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she needed him to see things from her point of view; needed affirmation.
“I think an awful lot has happened in a very short space of time. It’s as if you’re being battered into submission by the house. I think the incident in the bathroom is particularly disturbing. The woman you saw when you were drowning…submerged, can you describe her?”
“Mid-forties, long dark hair, refined, almost regal features, attractive; some would call her beautiful…”
Latham stood abruptly and left the room, leaving her side of the conversation hanging in the air. When he returned he was grasping a creased color photograph in his grubby hand. He laid the photo on the table in front of her. “I thought Gwen had got rid of this years ago, but she’s a bit of a hoarder.”
Beth leaned forward, and studied the curled and tatty photograph. The orange cast that leached the colors from the paper betrayed the age of the photo, as did the clothes and hairstyles of the group of women captured in it.
Beth stared at it, studying the faces. Gwen was unmistakable, even though she was standing at the back of the group and weighed at least fifty pounds lighter. But it was the woman standing slightly to the side of the group who commanded her attention. Tall and slender, with a mane of wild, dark hair and almost aristocratic features, lips clamped shut, making no attempt at a smile. If anything, the eyes in the beautiful face looked positively hostile, as if the photographer were an unwelcome intruder, invading her own, personal space.
Beth lifted her hand, and pointed at her with a slightly shaky index finger. “That’s her. The woman in my bathroom.”
Latham sighed. “Yes, I thought it might be from the way you described her. That’s Dolores Franklin at the last WI meeting she attended. She was expelled the day after this photo was taken.” He paused and sipped his tea. “Well, the good news, Beth, is that she can’t be haunting Stillwater.”
“Why not?”
“Because to the best of my knowledge, Dolores Franklin is still alive. Living people don’t haunt houses.”
“But didn’t she disappear?”
“She left her husband and daughter. I know because I drove her to the station the day she left.”
“You drove her?”
“I gave her a lift, yes. She was waiting at the bus stop, with her suitcase. It had just started to rain and the bus wasn’t due for another forty minutes. She would have got soaked. I just happened to be driving past so I pulled in and offered her a ride.” He lowered his voice. “I never told Gwen. I’d appreciate it if that piece of information remained between the two of us.”
“Of course,” Beth said. “Where was she headed?”
“Devon. She told me she was born just outside Totnes, and she’d decided to go back there.”
“Did she say why she was leaving?”
“She didn’t volunteer the information and I didn’t pry. I dropped her off at the station and went home. That was the last I saw of her.”
“So what did I see in my bathroom?”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s a tricky one. For all my realism I do believe that houses can absorb atmospheres, that the memories of dramatic and traumatic events can soak into the fabric, the bricks and mortar, of a place. Sounds fanciful, but there you are.”
“What, and the house stores them like a computer hard drive?”
“Essentially yes; that’s a good analogy. And I think that certain people, people like you with open and unguarded minds—free thinkers—can sometimes access that hard drive and catch a glimpse of what’s stored on there.”
“So instead of seeing ghosts, what I’m actually seeing are memories?”
Latham shrugged. “It’s a theory,” he said. “And not in any way a scientific one. Gwen would have it that it’s just the ramblings of a deluded old fool.” He laughed suddenly. “She may be right.”
She had been unconscious in hospital for two days. Not in a coma; the doctors explained the technical difference between being comatose and not, but she wasn’t in any frame of mind to absorb the information.
When she awoke there were so many faces peering down at her that for a moment she thought she must be lying on the road, and everyone was pushing to get a look at the accident that had just happened. The accident that was her.
She could remember every second of the car crash; it had all been in slow motion. The red light at the junction that she didn’t see. The truck that didn’t see her in time. She could see her car being lifted into the air as if it were playing out in a movie. There was a violent smashing noise, followed by silence as if she were holding her breath. Then the almighty roller coaster as the car somersaulted and turned. The impact of hitting the lamppost was like falling into a deep dark abyss where she was weightless.
She saw bright white lights like people said they had when they experienced near death, but they told her later that was the doctors shining light into her eyes to find eye movement.
She begged the nurses to let her get out of bed, but they just looked at her with the awful awareness of someone who knows a secret they mustn’t share.
It was left to the consultant to whisper the secret, and when he did she wished she had stayed ignorant. He was a kindly man, Indian by birth, and he had a daughter about Beth’s age. Tears welled in his eyes even though he spoke the words professionally. Beth could imagine he felt as if someone was telling his own daughter what he had to explain to her, and he wasn’t fining it easy. Well, neither was she.
He didn’t say she would never walk again, but it was highly unlikely. She would have no feeling below the waist, and that was almost certainly permanent, although he couldn’t rule out the return of some sensation. He explained the physical reasons for what had happened, but by then she had zoned out his voice and all she could see was the small dark mole on his cheek.
The next few months consisted of painful rehabilitation, as they worked her muscles to retain some semblance of normality. They made her get up every day. She had to hold her own weight with her arms, and the exercises they made her do were exhausting.
There was so much she had always taken for granted. Simple things she could no longer do with ease; personal tasks that now needed planning and some effort.
Getting the wheelchair, sitting in it, was the worst day of her life.
Her confinement had begun.