Eleanor sat in the bay window of the living room, her headache circling her skull, half listening to Richard playing with the children in the kitchen. It was the first weekend since Isobel’s accident and she still felt as though she were living underwater. They knew now they’d been lucky: it looked like Isobel’s arm would heal completely. They could forget about the accident; Richard said that they should. But they might not be lucky next time. Eleanor had promised herself she would do something about the house. She just had no idea what.
She pressed her forehead against the cold glass. The change in sensation made her feel better temporarily. Her vision was focused on her reflection; the street outside was blurred. She was submerged in her headache, barely noticing a slight rustling sound outside the front door.
Then something caught her eye: some movement, something not right outside the house. She pulled her face away and looked. There was someone walking away from the front of the house. It was the girl again. The girl in the black duffel coat. She crossed the road and sat down opposite the house on the pavement, staring up at it. Eleanor was half frightened, half thrilled: the thing in her head was made manifest. She looked at the girl and they made eye contact.
Eleanor was still for a moment. Her overwhelming instinct was to go outside, but propriety stopped her – what would she say? What would she do? Then a woman ran towards the girl. She was out of breath, and she tried to pull the girl roughly up from the pavement. There was a brief struggle. She heard the woman say, ‘Come on, Emily!’ Eleanor reeled back. The woman looked up at the house and their eyes met. Eleanor was certain that she saw something there: recognition.
The woman knew who she was. Eleanor ran into the hall and out of the house, slamming the front door behind her. She registered a fresh line of stones outside the door. The girl must have put them there; her stomach turned. She cantered down the steps and ran across the road but the girl and the woman were no longer there.
She whirled round and saw them walking away, towards London Fields. Eleanor was paralysed for a second. Richard was at the front door, calling her name and for a moment, she wanted to go back inside. Maybe she was wrong. Emily was a common name. Maybe it was better not to know. Then she turned and went after them.
The woman glanced back furtively and quickened her pace; she yanked at the girl’s arm to get her to keep up. They crossed the road and before Eleanor could follow, her vision was obscured by a lorry cutting in front of her. Helpless with frustration, she waited for a break in the traffic and started to run, across the road and into the fields.
She ran up the short hill past the tennis courts and the paddling pool, through the trees, heavy and full with purple leaves. She was gaining on them. The woman’s steps were brisk and short, but she did not run, as though she was refusing to indulge in the madness of being chased. Eleanor picked up speed, navigating the prams and cyclists, getting steadily closer.
‘Mrs Ashworth?’ she called out before she had time to think. There was no reply; they walked faster.
‘Mrs Ashworth? Emily?’
She was close now, right behind them. Eleanor knew the woman could hear her; one or two other passersby had turned their heads when she spoke. If she was wrong, and they were not who she thought they were, the woman would look round. But she was deliberately ignoring her. Eleanor was close now, inches from the back of her head. Her hair was thin; there was a tangled greasy knot forming and Eleanor could see patches of scalp. Then abruptly, in the middle of the path, the woman halted. Eleanor was slightly too slow to stop, so when the woman turned, her face was unnaturally close.
‘Look, I’m sorry, OK?’ the woman said, and her voice was not quite right: a little strained, a little hoarse, suppressed. ‘Please don’t make a scene. Please. I’m sorry she keeps coming back. But it’s not my fault. It’s the house!’
Eleanor was briefly stunned. For a moment, everything seemed hyper-real: the faded red jumper hanging from the woman’s frame, as if she’d shrunk inside it; the green grass; the woman’s arm yanked back from her shoulder as the girl in the duffel coat, Emily, tried to pull away. The prominence of her bones, the way her face seemed to have sunk underneath its structure, the cross-hatching on her skin, and the hundred things scrawled on her face: exhaustion, fear, grief. Emily finally wrenched away and ran out onto the grass. The woman opened her mouth, then she closed her eyes and sighed. Emily was crawling on her hands, picking up leaves, examining each one intently, judging it before discarding it or keeping hold of it.
The woman was breathing loudly and shortly; with some effort, she brought it under control. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Her tone was more even now; quiet, defiant. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been having problems too. I’m sorry we sold it to you, but we didn’t have any choice. We couldn’t live there any more. It’s not us. It’s the house!’
‘What’s the house?’ Eleanor asked, dumbly.
‘I don’t know! I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know any more! We just couldn’t live there and I’m sorry if you can’t either, but there’s nothing I can do.’
Eleanor felt her breath grow rapid, some sort of dark energy returning. ‘What sort of problems did you have?’
‘Just . . . the . . . oh, look, I don’t want to go over it all! I try and stop her coming back, but I can’t always control . . . She’s not always . . .’ She looked at Emily on the grass, absorbed in the leaves.
‘You left your things . . . your quilts, blankets. I kept them. You can have them back.’
Mrs Ashworth flinched. ‘I don’t want them! Get rid of it all, burn them, I don’t care. I don’t want anything more to do with that place. I’ve tried to keep her away, I promise, I’ve tried, but she just goes back! I wish to God we’d moved further away. I didn’t know it had some kind of – hold over her! That house!’
‘Please, can you just tell me what was wrong with the house? Was it illness or Emily or . . .’
The woman’s voice broke. ‘We were all right before we moved, she was all right, but then the bad things started and now this is just what she’s like!’ She was starting to lose control, squeaks setting in. ‘I’ve said to her, we were all unhappy, we were all sad when the baby – went. Her father lost his mind, did some stupid things, and then he took off when he couldn’t deal with her any more. And with me being . . . poorly for so long after he left . . . She saw things a child shouldn’t see and I’m sorry for that, but it’s hard for all of us and we get on with it! We don’t behave like this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Eleanor said.
The expression of sympathy caused a sudden reaction: Mrs Ashworth immediately stiffened, galvanized. ‘Well, thank you, but we keep going in our family. I’m sorry for those stones she’s been leaving, but this is just what she’s like—! Bringing things into the house, birds, stones, hoarding. I tell her, she should have grown out of this by now, but she’s got worse, if anything. And then the accident – I couldn’t take it any more, I wasn’t going to wait to sell it! We just had to get out.’
‘What was the accident?’
She closed her eyes. ‘The accident, the burning – I – I don’t . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ Eleanor said again and reached out her hand. Mrs Ashworth opened her eyes and pulled away.
‘Look, what do you want me to say? What else was I going to do? We couldn’t stay there! We’re good people, a good family, I promise you – there’s just something wrong with the house!’
She looked over at Emily, who was sitting cross-legged on the grass, arranging the leaves in a line. ‘Come on, you. We’re going home. And you’re not taking those with you.’
Emily looked up and Eleanor looked directly at her for the first time. She must have been about seven or eight. There was a sadness in her face, and a kind of defiance. For a moment, Eleanor wanted to take her in her arms. Then Emily’s expression changed and she snarled, ‘No!’ at her mother, the noise loud and distorted enough for Mrs Ashworth to glance behind her fearfully, in case anyone was looking. Eleanor felt a curious flash of sympathy for Emily, perhaps envy, and then, too self-conscious to watch them argue, she turned around and walked home.
*
She walked back slowly along Litchfield Road and put her key in the door, dazed. Richard was in the hall, waiting for her.
‘Eleanor! Where did you go? You have to stop running out of the house like that! I was worried about you!’
‘I saw the people that used to live here. They were just outside the house.’ She shrugged off her coat limply and walked into the living room, where Rosie and Isobel were watching television. She sat down at the kitchen table, sinking her chin into her hands. Richard followed, shutting the double doors behind him, and sat down opposite her.
‘How did you know it was them?’
‘The way they looked at the house . . . I don’t know. I just did! I went after them and I spoke to them.’ She repeated the conversation to Richard, her voice thin and halting, trying to process it as she spoke.
‘God, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘That sounds really upsetting. But doesn’t it make you feel better? Now we know.’
‘How could it possibly make me feel better? To know that they feel like that about our house?’
‘To know there’s nothing sinister about them, that Emily’s not a . . . ghost-child or something. She’s just a little girl who’s had a bad time. It sounds like they had an awful run of things, but it’s not anything . . . supernatural. It’s just bad luck.’
‘But she said it started when they moved house! They were fine before they moved here.’
‘Eleanor, love . . . Bad things happen in any house. And what did she say exactly? Someone died? Illness? They’re ordinary things, Eleanor – horrible, I agree, but these things happen to people.’
Eleanor looked up. ‘She said there’s something in the house.’
‘But she doesn’t sound . . . She sounds quite . . . damaged.’
She lowered her voice. ‘I could live with it, Richard, I would live with it, but Rosie! I can’t bear what it’s doing to her! The night terrors, Girl . . . She’s picking up on something!’
‘She’s behaving like a typical toddler! We know this. Tantrums, night terrors, imaginary friends: it’s all normal stuff. She’ll grow out of it. And remember, you’ve not been well either, Eleanor: if she’s picking up on anything, it’ll be that. She’s not going to like the house if you don’t.’
‘Mrs Ashworth . . . she said something about a burning.’
‘Well, that sounds nasty, but like I said—’
‘But Isobel! Isobel got burnt, Richard! What if it was the house?’
He got up and walked away from her. He put his hands on the worktop and lowered his head. When he turned round, his expression was gentle, sympathetic. For a moment, she thought he’d finally heard her.
‘Eleanor . . . I don’t think it was the house.’
‘What do you mean? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘It wasn’t your fault. I understand why you feel guilty, but it was an accident, bad luck, like whatever happened to the Ashworths was bad luck. We don’t have to . . . make up a story about it.’
Her breath was hoarse and ragged. ‘You think I’m making things up?’
‘I think you’re unwell. And it’s hard to think straight when you’re unwell.’
She sat in silence, head bowed, staring at her hands lying in her lap. He kissed the top of her head.
‘You just need to rest.’