The office was empty but bore the feeling of recent occupation. A slight warmth, an unidentifiable human scent. I checked the French doors. Unlocked. Looking out into the dark night, I realized that anyone out there could see me. Trying to look official, and reminding myself that Max had asked me to take care of things in his absence, I bolted the doors and pulled the curtains tight to shut out the dark night. To shut out Mrs. Mins. Who else could it have been?
The wallpaper on the computer screen was a shot of Barnsley. The lawn was covered with a dusting of snow, or frost, it was hard to tell. Either way, the beauty of the place stopped me in my tracks. The ethereal majesty of the pollarded willow and the cloud-cut box hedges hovering above the ground was otherworldly, and yet it was only metres from where I sat. I could hardly believe that anyone could leave here and never return. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I could hardly believe that someone could be miserable here. My mother. Daphne. I clicked on the icon for the search engine, hoping to find some answers.
First, and so I would have an alibi in case anyone came in, I logged in to my email. Messages started to load, hundreds of them. Most were junk, but many were from my father, with the subject lines in capital letters somehow managing to convey his increasing frustration. The sheer number of them threatened to overwhelm me with guilt and shame, so I ignored the earlier ones and opened the last, sent only hours earlier. The subject line was “Tessa.” Or more accurately, “TESSA.” Reluctantly I fished out my glasses from my coat pocket and began to read.
Miranda.
You’re not responding to my emails. I’d like to think there’s a good reason, but I suspect there isn’t. The best I can hope is that you are reading them, even if you’re not responding. Which in itself is quite rude, and I would hope we have brought you up better than that.
Eye roll.
I haven’t been entirely honest with you.
The letter you read from Sophia was not the first time someone from Barnsley has been trying to contact you.
A sharp intake of breath that could only have come from me. I had a feeling what was going to come next.
Your aunt Elizabeth has been trying for some time.
Did Elizabeth know who I was? Why hadn’t she said anything?
She will try and convince you that your mother carried out a grave injustice against her as a young woman. Elizabeth has never been able to prove this, and over time, her letters have become more hysterical, angry. I worry that she will take this anger out on you.
Please, Miranda, as much as these people are your family, they are not your friends. This sudden interest should be treated with caution. I only hope you can extricate yourself before they discover your true identity.
Dad
That was it. Just “Dad.” No love, not even any warm regards. I had pissed him off again.
He had always had my back, even at the worst of times, and now it seemed I had finally tested the limits of our bond. I’d been so wrapped up in the lives of these people I barely knew that I had somehow managed to destroy the one true relationship in my life.
We were so close once. When it was just the two of us, and then still when Fleur and then Ophelia and Juliet came along. I thought he would be proud of me when I started to become successful, but that was when he first began to draw away from me. And then when everything happened, he seemed more upset than he should have been. He started to look at me as if he didn’t recognise me. Or worse: as if he did.
I started to type out a reply to him but the words wouldn’t fit together. They wouldn’t say what I meant without sounding insincere or hysterical. With every word I typed, the ghost of another word would appear.
Fraud, con artist, liar
Liar liar
Frustrated, I closed the email. I would have to come back to it later. I would have to work out a way to properly apologise to my father. Opening another tab, I started to type things directly into Google as they came to me.
Barnsley House. Max Summer. Daphne Summer. The Summer House. Daniel.
All of the searches produced reams of information, endless pages of stories about the famous women who had lived at Barnsley House, the scandalous past that seemed to echo through into the current day. More serious articles were scattered in between, reports of the countless significant structures Sarah Summer had rescued from ruin or reviews of Gertrude’s best-selling crime novels, all set, it seemed, in the local area, and some right here at Barnsley House.
I scanned numerous articles from Country Life. There was one from before Max’s time, about his father, and his modernization of the house. Max’s father had found it difficult to find staff after his wife died, it said, as rumours of a ghost persisted and scared many potential domestic helpers away. Eventually he closed down that section of the house and made do with less help.
There was another article outlining an auction that had taken place at Sotheby’s of much of the house’s paintings and valuables. A famous John Singer Sargent portrait of Max’s grandmother had brought in the most money and now hung in a gallery in Chicago. A silver salver as big as a small car had once held almost one hundred bottles of champagne, and the author of the article speculated that it would be melted down and repurposed.
A more recent article echoed the sentiment of the profile on Daphne. A love story, a derelict house transformed. “A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes,” it was titled, and was accompanied by a photo of Daphne and Max I had not seen before, posing on the steps at the entrance, both in Wellington boots, with a young Thomas perched obediently in front of them. Next to that photo was another photo of a bedroom. The caption read “The famous Yellow Room overlooking the lawn sloping down to the Cornish sea where Gertrude Summer wrote her books is now available to hotel guests.”
Something at the bottom corner of the screen caught my eye. A camera icon, the CCTV program. My heart started to race. Daphne was missing, and I was sure the answer could lie within the camera footage, despite Max’s avoidance of the possibility. Did I dare? My hands started to sweat on the mouse. There was no one around; the children were sleeping. Max was far, far away. I clicked before I could convince myself not to. Immediately a box popped up, requesting a password.
Of course. Max wasn’t that stupid. I wondered who had the password. Max, definitely. Mrs. Mins? Elizabeth? I didn’t know. There were so many possible passwords. I tried “Barnsley.” I tried “Daphne.” And then the connection dropped out. It was true, then, about the dodgy internet. I rested my head on the desk to think.
Just for a minute. And then fell asleep.
I dreamt someone was calling my name. A woman. I couldn’t see her face, but I recognised the voice. It seemed natural to me, in my half-conscious state, that the voice should be a mixture of my mother’s and Daphne’s, even though I could recall neither in waking hours. Death and humanity, nature and horror, seemed so closely linked in this house.
The door cracked open, then tiny footsteps. My name again, whispered now, in a child’s tentative voice. Not a woman at all. A small boy.
“Robbie, you frightened me,” I said carefully. “Can you please take that thing off?” I quickly shut the computer down.
He raised his hand towards the camera on his head. “What, this?”
“Yes. You need to ask people’s permission to film them,” I said, attempting to frame the situation as a moral dilemma and not a matter of deceitful conduct on my behalf.
“Why? Dad doesn’t.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s not. Elizabeth said. You’re meant to have signs up, at least.”
“What else did Elizabeth say?” I asked. What other conversations had Robbie heard? Had I said anything around him?
“She said there must be something on the videos. She was very cross.”
I bet she was. “When was this?”
“The day after the school concert.”
Of course it was. “What did your dad say?”
“He said he had checked, and there was nothing.”
It was too much. I felt like I had only been asleep for two minutes, and now my brain refused to catch up. “It’s early, Robbie.” Did no one in this house ever sleep?
“It’s not that early, really. Just dark.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He showed me his watch, a Christmas present. The numbers were initially fuzzy and shocking to my bleary eyes. I rubbed my eyes—they were less fuzzy but no less shocking. “Robbie!”
He grinned. “Come on, Miranda. It’s no fun when it’s light. Wouldn’t you like to see some real English ghosts?”
I groaned. “I’d just like some sleep.”
Robbie looked at me innocently. I sighed and stood up. This was not turning out to be a nine-to-five job. Perhaps Grant and Farmer would have been a better fit after all. “Can you turn that off?” I asked. The red light was still glowing. I didn’t need to be filmed at such an early hour, particularly after the little sleep I’d had the night before.
“Do I have to? I’m searching for ghosts. My new book says there is one in the east wing.” Max had given him the book after all. I suspected I would be the one dealing with the fallout from that particular parenting decision. If only I had taken the time to read it first, as I had planned.
“What does your book say?” I asked. Robbie was not the only one with ghosts on his mind. I didn’t want to validate his belief in ghosts, but I was starting to be less of a skeptic.
“I’ll read it to you.” He was wearing a type of utility vest, like a fisherman, with dozens of pockets and mesh inserts. Out of a particularly large pocket on his left side he produced the book Max had bought at the bookshop in town. Even though it was only a day old, it already bore the signs of intensive study; pages were dog-eared, sections highlighted in coloured pen, and sticky notes flagged chapters of interest.
“You’ve been busy,” I commented.
“I don’t sleep well.”
“Perhaps you would sleep better if you read fewer ghost stories.”
Robbie looked at me quizzically and began to read. “‘Barnsley House, on the West Country’s rugged coastline, holds a spectacular position looking out across to the famous Minerva Island. Both are owned by the Summer family, and are said to be haunted by previous inhabitants. The ghost at Barnsley House is a relatively recent phenomenon, and unlike most of the other ghosts outlined in this book, did not emerge in the haunting hysteria that captivated early-nineteenth-century society. Instead, the ghost of Barnsley House was first sighted in the 1970s, and despite attempts by poltergeist experts to film it, has never been captured on film. Barnsley House is currently run as a boutique hotel, and guests report hearing shouting in corridors when there is no one present. In one particular room, the Yellow Room in the east wing, there have been numerous instances of the bath running in the night. The first appearance of the ghost was just after the death of Beatrice Summer, the mother of the current owner, Max Summer. Beatrice burnt to death in a house fire during a summer music festival.’”
Robbie stopped reading, his eyes wide and searching mine, waiting for me to make the connection. “Grandma,” he said in awe. “My grandmother is a ghost.”
Mine too, I wanted to say. But instead I said, “Don’t be ridiculous, ghosts aren’t real.” How was it possible that I was beginning to feel more fear than a small boy? “Give me that book.” I turned it over to see who had written it: Hugo Whittal, a likely-looking type with horn-rimmed glasses and his shirt buttoned up all the way. “Hugo Whittal has no idea what he’s talking about. I suspect he goes around old houses looking for people who have died and invents stories to match.”
“Hugo Whittal is a very well known ghost hunter.” Robbie snatched the book back. “Once Mum took me to see him talking at Exeter University. I’m going upstairs to see Grandma.”
“Robbie. Wait. Are you sure you want to go up there alone?”
“I don’t have a choice. I expect you’re too scared to come with me. Even though ghosts aren’t real.”
Even though I was slightly scared, I could barely let him proceed alone. Expecting the girls to sleep for a little bit longer yet, I agreed to go with Robbie, on the proviso he switched off the camera for now and showed me where the light switches were. After much muttering and protesting he agreed, making me promise he could switch the camera back on and the lights off if we heard anything suspicious.
Robbie led the way up the wide wooden staircase, which turned at right angles to itself, a stained-glass window at the landing. The walls were bare, and now I knew why: all gone in the sale and never replaced. “This is the east wing,” Robbie whispered.
Despite my refusal to believe in Hugo Whittal’s ramblings, there was a peculiar sense of occupation about this wing, even from where we were standing. Again. My senses were on high alert. Something didn’t feel right. “Is there a light?” I whispered back. For all my bravado, I couldn’t talk at a regular volume.
“I’ll see.”
Robbie edged his way down the hallway, running his hand up and down the paneling as he went, his footsteps silenced by the plush carpet underfoot.
“What’s that?” I asked. Music was playing. Classical. Low, but not so low it couldn’t be heard through the heavy doors.
Robbie shrugged. He moved quickly through a fire door—obviously installed rather too late for Beatrice—and there it was, on the right at the end of the passage.
The Yellow Room.
The music grew louder as we stopped outside the door. Robbie looked at me, a question on his face. I nodded, and he pressed the small button on the side of his camera. The red light came on. In the glow, I saw his breath make shapes in the air. I let out the breath I was holding, and mine did the same.
Robbie put his hand on the handle. I waited for him to press down, expecting it to resist him and for us to retreat, perhaps with plans to find the key another day, or perhaps forgetting about the mission entirely. Either option seemed preferable to gaining entry and finding out what lay beyond. To my great surprise, the handle dropped and the door released from the frame.
Robbie looked at me and pointed inside. I nodded. We were having whole conversations in sign language. Robbie pushed on ahead, and I didn’t stop him. The music was definitely coming from within. He stepped inside and froze, looked back at me in terror. I leaned forward, my feet stuck still, and heard it. Running water.
The door to the bathroom was closed, a small line of light underneath. The curtains had been pulled back to allow for dawn to creep in as it slowly approached. As far as I knew, no one had been in this part of the house since Daphne and I, days earlier. Had she been here the whole time?
Unsure what state she would be in, I grabbed Robbie’s hand to pull him from the room. He snatched it back, pointing at the bed. It was unmade, and seemed recently slept in. A Roberts radio on the bedside table was set to a station, the music humming. The air of the room smelled different from the hallway as well, the damp air overtaken in here by a warm perfumed humidity. There was someone in the bathroom, too human to be ghostly.
Robbie grabbed my hand, and we turned to run. In that moment, Hugo Whittal’s volume of nonsense slipped out of Robbie’s pocket. It fell on the chest at the end of the bed, making a bang as it landed. The running water stopped. There was a pause, and then a voice called out. “Max, is that you?”