“It’s Mrs. Mins.”
Robbie was still white with terror as he whispered those words. A part of him was not convinced. It could yet be a ghost, and he wanted my reassurance.
I tried to hide the disappointment in my voice as I replied. The disappointment that it was not Daphne. “I think so, yes,” I said, and the door opened.
“What on earth are you doing up here?” It was Mrs. Mins, and yet on that morning she looked so different from when I had last seen her, I doubted I could have identified her in a lineup. Despite the frigid air, she wore a lace-trimmed dressing gown that she was holding together tightly, which only succeeded in making it more rather than less revealing as it clung to every curve and betrayed her nakedness underneath. Without makeup her face was pale, her features disappearing into nothing, her eyebrows and eyelashes almost completely gone. Her lips pursed in anger.
“Hello, Mrs. Mins. We thought you were a ghost.”
“Don’t hello me, Robbie. You know you’re not meant to be up here,” she said sharply, and Robbie looked taken aback. He wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, not by her.
She turned to me and brought the brunt of her anger. “You should know better. This area is out of bounds to the children. And to you.”
“I’m sorry. Robbie wanted to look for ghosts.” The excuse was weak and my judgement was poor, but her reaction seemed out of proportion. It was not the middle of the night, it was almost breakfast time, and although technically we were in the hotel, it was, after all, Robbie’s home. He had more right to be there than she did, as far as I could see.
“I’ll have to tell Max about this.”
It was the first time she had threatened me. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’ll tell Max that you went against his orders and brought the children into the guest rooms. Ghosts! It’s your job to be responsible, not encourage Robbie’s little obsessions.” She leaned over, and I saw the smooth skin of her chest, the swell of her ample bosom as she picked up the book. She didn’t give it back.
“Max bought him the book, not me.”
She ignored me and started to flick through it. Robbie gripped my hand tighter and looked at me pleadingly, clearly wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. “I thought you would have been sleeping in this morning, after your late night,” she said, keeping her eyes on the book. I could see she had already found the Barnsley House page, but it was hard to tell if she was actually reading it or holding it open to taunt us.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Sneaking about in the office. Using the staff computer. I wonder what Max would think about that? Don’t you? Wonder?”
“I wasn’t sneaking about. I was emailing my father.” I felt like I was a schoolgirl again, though I had never had a teacher so menacing as Mrs. Mins was that morning.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her eyes flashing. Her temper, suspected but unseen, had surfaced.
“Why are you here?” I countered. Attack was the best form of defense, and her lies about Italy were fresh in my mind.
Robbie, either by design or by accident, came to my rescue. The red light on his camera was still flashing. Mrs. Mins turned her attention towards him, her voice almost normal again. “Your father asked me to stay in the house to keep an eye on things while he is gone.” She smiled matter-of-factly.
“Max didn’t mention it to me.”
“I think you’ll find there’s a lot of things Max hasn’t mentioned to you.”
She was right. “We should be getting back to the girls now,” I started to say.
Mrs. Mins ignored me and began to read aloud from the book. “‘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.’” She snorted. “Running water! I imagine you must have been terrified when you heard me running a bath.”
“Oh. No . . . not really,” I stammered, although I’m sure our ashen faces must have demonstrated otherwise.
“I’ve heard people say”—she leaned in and gave Robbie back the book, making sure he was listening—“that old Mrs. Summer was running the bath to try and save herself. It’s not true. I was there. I saw it all. She was running that bath to drown—”
“That’s enough, Mrs. Mins.” I dragged Robbie out of the room, pulling him across the carpet so that his feet barely touched the ground.
“That’s my grandmother she was talking about,” Robbie whispered in awe as we got to the bottom of the staircase and I had finally let him walk on his own again.
Mine too, I wanted to say. Mine too.