36

Back at the house, in the library, Ranald’s mind was part fog, part crystalline clarity.

The phone on the desk rang. It was Quinn.

‘What just happened, Mr McGhie?’ He sounded completely flustered.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ demanded Ranald.

‘I can assure you I couldn’t be more at sea.’

Ranald talked, and over the next few minutes, as if putting all the pieces into place, he explained his cousins’ plot.

Silence. Then.

‘Good lord.’ Quinn paused. ‘I don’t know what to say, Mr McGhie. Do you have any proof of this? Do you want to press charges? We could take out a civil suit on your behalf and sue them for emotional distress.’

‘Stand in front of a court and say my cousin had sex with me; told me she was hearing things in the walls – crying babies and ghostly women – all to get me to sell the house? And that she and her brother then faked her death? How well do you think that would work, Mr Quinn?’

‘Marcus is a formidable lawyer,’ he replied, doubt in his voice.

‘He will have covered his tracks. I doubt Mr and Mrs Hackett will have the stomach for it and, besides, who would believe that they would go to such lengths?’

‘And the burden of proof is yours, Mr McGhie.’

‘Quite,’ said Ranald. ‘I’ll settle for knowing what I’m dealing with and plan never to meet either of them ever again.’

That night he didn’t even bother with the pretence of going to bed. Instead, he grabbed his quilt, pillows and a book and settled in the lift for a read. Mrs Hackett might have tried her best to push him away from her, but he needed to believe.

As he lay there, he listened as the house settled around itself. Floorboards shifting, pipes creaking, slates clicking. The sounds of a living, breathing home.

He felt a breeze and she was there leaning into his side.

He turned to hear, feeling his heart swell. She still cared for him. He wished he could demonstrate in a very real way how he felt about her. How her presence was making everything that happened more bearable.

I know, Jennie, he sent her as he thought about his Uncle Alexander’s letter. I know everything.

He felt a slight pressure on his cheek as if a pair of lips had been pressed there. Then heard, ‘You know nothing, my love. Nothing.’

And her scream was a sharp, endless note that lasted through the night.

The following morning, he was woken by a nudge on his shoulder.

‘Ranald.’ Pause. ‘Ranald, you really must learn to sleep in your bedroom.’ It was Mrs Hackett. ‘I thought I was finished waking up you Fitzpatrick men in this lift.’ She shuddered. ‘I told you that stuff about the mirror was rubbish.’

He sat up and pressed his thumbs into his eyes as if that might push away his early-morning fatigue. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked, the words poorly formed in his mouth, as if his tongue was fighting against cotton wool.

‘Almost noon,’ she replied. ‘I saw you here when I arrived, but you looked so … cosy, I thought I’d let you sleep.’

He stood up willing the fog of his tiredness to lift.

‘Get dressed, Ranald, and come meet me in the kitchen, will you? We need to talk.’

Minutes later, wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, Ranald was sitting at his kitchen table, both hands wrapped round a mug of freshly poured coffee and poised over it like the aroma was the only thing keeping his eyes open.

‘A long night?’ asked Mrs Hackett.

‘You don’t want to know,’ Ranald replied.

Mrs Hackett took a sip of her drink and sat back in her chair, as if using the wooden back to strengthen her spine.

‘If I am going to carry on here as your staff, Ranald, I need … we need to talk about what happened yesterday.’

‘We do?’ Ranald leaned on the table, resting his forehead on the heel of his right hand. ‘As far as I’m concerned, what’s done is done. I’ve moved on.’

‘You may have. I haven’t.’ She paused a beat. ‘We haven’t.’ She looked into his eyes, her own sending messages of humility, sorrow and not a little injured pride. ‘We made a terrible error of judgement and we want you to know that you have our complete loyalty from now on; and if we ever betray that…’

Ranald was about to answer with flippancy, but stopped himself when he realised that it would be ill judged. Mrs Hackett was being deadly serious and she needed something similar in return in order that she could, indeed, move on herself.

‘Thank you, Mrs Hackett,’ he said and dipped his head. ‘I appreciate the sentiment and the courage it would have taken you to say all of that.’

She gave a little smile in response and her shoulders sagged a little as if she had been holding herself tight.

‘Now, if we are back to normal I’m going for a swim.’ He stood up.

‘Mind if I detain you a little while longer?’

‘Aye?’ He sat down, a little confused.

‘In some ways, I think it would have been better for you if you had sold the house.’ Her mouth shaped a smile of apology.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked as he considered Donna’s warning to sell up before he became the latest victim of whatever was going on in this house.

Her arm moved up and away from her body as if it was pointing at the lift.

‘You need to meet someone. This thing you have about Alexander and Jennie … You need to get out and about. Meet real people, not some woman in a mirror.’

‘You know that there is something going on in this house.’

‘And that is why you need to go.’

‘But my great-uncle provided all of this for me. He spent decades trying to make up for his early mistakes. He spent all this money trying to set up a home for me. He built that library for me. He sought me out, Mrs Hackett, and, a bit late, I admit, he tried to look after me. I can’t let him down.’

‘Yes, he did all that. I remember him coming back from your graduation ceremony. The smile on his face. He was so very proud of you, Ranald. But if you are going to take on this house – and I mean really take it on – you have to know everything.’

‘Go on…’ Ran folded his arms tight around himself.

‘She – Jennie – worked under my mother. And mum told me everything. She was haunted by it.’

Ranald thought about the details he’d read in the letter. ‘I should think so.’

Mrs Hackett raised herself in her seat slightly as if she was going to rush to the defence of her mother, but then seemed to rein herself in.

‘You said my mother should be haunted by what happened. What did he tell you in that letter?’ she asked.

‘That Mrs Winters, your mother, had it in for Jennie from the moment she met her…’ Mrs Hackett took a sharp breath and held a hand to her mouth. ‘That she told everyone Jennie was a witch and was trying to … eat a child while casting a spell…’

‘The old…’ She interrupted Ranald, then stopped herself as if she was about to say something she considered too foul to be uttered. Her mouth was a scolding thin line as she worked through her anger at what Ranald said. ‘The guilt might have tortured him, but he clearly didn’t want you to think badly of him.’ She gathered her thoughts. ‘My mother did watch out for Alexander and Jennie, that bit is true. But not in the way he said.’

‘In what way then?’

‘Right enough, she didn’t believe the wee lamb at first. But then she did what she could to help her. The poor girl was terrified of him.’