My best friend stood in my bedroom doorway looking like a lost orphan. Her hair had grown longer since I last saw her and it hung loose around her shoulders, framing her delicate face. She wore black trousers and a tight black vest top. Frankie always wore black, and I always liked the way it made her look like the tortured artist she was.
‘What are you doing here?’ I blurted out.
‘Suzy!’ Aunt Meredith gasped. She was standing behind Frankie in the hallway, her flannel dressing gown tied at the waist and her hair a mess. ‘That’s no way to speak to your friend.’
‘Does your mum know you’re here?’ I asked Frankie. ‘Does Seb know?’
She nodded her head slightly. Frankie has always been a bad liar, it’s one of the reasons I always liked her. I can always rely on her to tell the truth. I lifted my eyebrow sceptically. ‘Really?’
Frankie jerked her head, no.
‘Sweetheart.’ My aunt put her hand on Frankie’s shoulder and Frankie turned around to look up at her, her large brown eyes pleading with a woman she didn’t know. ‘You need to tell your mum where you are. I’ll get the phone, you need to call her.’
Aunt Meredith left us and hurried away to retrieve the phone.
‘I tried to call you,’ Frankie said timidly, coming further into my room. ‘And you never replied to any of my emails or Facebook messages.’
‘I …’ I didn’t want to apologise. I still didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. ‘I just needed space, Frankie.’
‘And I just needed to get away from home,’ she said. She walked up to my bed and paused by my bedside table. Her eyes went straight to the Victorian shadow puppet resting on the nightstand. She picked it up and twiddled it between her fingers thoughtfully. Trust Frankie to gravitate towards the one thing in the room I didn’t want to speak about. She was always way too perceptive for her own good. ‘Please, Suzy.’ She turned to look at me, her eyes wide and afraid. I hated seeing Frankie look that way. She was meant to be the strong one. ‘I really need a friend right now.’
‘Frankie!’ my aunt called from downstairs.
‘You need to call your mum,’ I said, standing up and walking towards Frankie. ‘Do that and then we’ll talk, I promise.’ Frankie nodded in resignation.
Before I led Frankie out of my room I quickly grabbed my notebook and the pages I’d written The Ghost of Dudley Hall on. With my notebook in hand I led Frankie down the stairs and into the kitchen. Aunt Meredith was standing by the oven with the telephone in her hand.
‘How did she know my mum’s number?’ Frankie whispered to me.
‘You gave it to her, remember? When you wanted me to call you back.’
Aunt Meredith passed Frankie the phone and I heard Frankie’s mum start to shout down the other end of the line. ‘Suzy, come with me.’ Aunt Meredith pulled me into the back garden. She closed the kitchen door so that Frankie could have some privacy, and I found myself standing outside for the second time that morning. ‘Leave her to speak to her mum for a moment. I’ve told her Frankie can stay the night. She’s going to pick her up tomorrow.’ Aunt Meredith watched as I took a long deep breath and tried to contain my frustration. ‘It’ll be good for you to have a friend stay for the evening. Here.’ She opened up her purse, which I hadn’t realised she’d been holding, and handed me a wodge of notes. ‘For you. Think of it as payment for all the brilliant murder victims you’ve played. Go into the village today with Frankie and have some fun.’
‘I’m not sure they take twenties at the duck pond,’ I said dryly. I suddenly felt ashamed for being ungrateful, so as I took the money from my aunt I tried to give her an appreciative smile and say gratefully, ‘Thank you. Aunt Meredith,’ I added tentatively, ‘you said if I worked on The Ghost of Dudley Hall then you’d look at it.’ She gave me a warm smile and nodded. I pressed my notebook into her hands, feeling suddenly nervous at the thought of her reading my story. ‘Here it is. I’ve written up the story as though it was a murder mystery, and written descriptions of all the main characters. Maybe you could use it at some point?’
‘I’ll use it this weekend,’ she said, without even glancing at the pages. ‘It’ll be perfect. I’ll give the party your characters when they arrive and we’ll use the story you’ve written. I’ll take a look at it today and type it up so we can use it this weekend.’
‘I’m going to stay here tonight,’ came Frankie’s voice from the kitchen door. ‘Mum’s picking me up tomorrow.’ Aunt Meredith smiled at me and walked back into the house, The Ghost of Dudley Hall in her hands.
‘My aunt’s going to use a story I wrote for the murder mystery party this weekend,’ I told Frankie. She smiled at me, and I noticed that her eyes were full of tears. I felt horrible for not noticing before – Frankie must have thought I only ever cared about myself. ‘Is everything okay?’ I added.
She shook her head. ‘No, not really. Mum’s so mad at me for running away. But I couldn’t stay there a minute longer. I had to see you.’
I nodded. ‘Come on, I need to get dressed then we can walk into the village. I’ll buy you lunch.’ I flashed the money my aunt had just given me at her and winked playfully.
‘I’ve missed you.’ She lunged at me and threw her skinny arms around my neck. Before I could stop myself I hugged her back, squeezing her bony ribs and burying my face into her hair. In that moment I never wanted to let her go. Every tiny emotion I’d bottled up inside me threatened to crash out into the world like a tidal wave, destroying everything in its path.
‘I’ve missed you too,’ I whispered back. She pulled away from me and smiled brilliantly. She gently brushed away the tears rolling down my face. ‘How did you even get here?’ I asked, feeling stupid that I was crying.
‘Got the train from London and then walked from the nearest station. It took me nearly two hours with nothing but Google maps on my iPhone to find my way. And the reception is terrible around here. But then I guess you wouldn’t know that, seeing as you don’t have a phone …’
I smiled bashfully. Now that Frankie was standing in front of me, I felt stupid for not wanting to speak to her for so long. She was the best friend I’d ever had, the only person who wanted to see the world in the same way I did. And she was the one I’d shared that terrible time with at school, the only one who could possibly understand. ‘Come on, let’s go …’
I quickly showered and threw on some clothes. I had an old shirt of my dad’s that I’d made into a dress a couple of years ago. It still fitted me, and I teamed it with my DM boots and a quick fluff of my hair and a lick of eyeliner. Frankie smiled in approval as I pulled myself together and grabbed her hand to lead her downstairs and out of the house. We followed the gravel path away from the house and into the small village of Dudley-on-Water. We caught up as we walked. She didn’t ask me any questions about Warren House, thank God. I skipped over the whole period I spent there and instead told her about the few weeks I’d spent so far at Dudley Hall. I told her about my new-found passion for writing and how I dressed up and played the murder victims at my aunt’s parties. Frankie listened to every word I said as if it were the most interesting thing she’d ever heard. I secretly adored the way that Frankie always seemed so fascinated by me.
After I’d finished speaking Frankie told me about her mum’s marriage breaking down after she left school. ‘Now Mum’s got a new boyfriend,’ she explained. The new boyfriend was Scottish and her mum wanted to move Frankie to Edinburgh. ‘I can’t bear the thought of moving again. I’ve begged her to send me back to boarding school. Mum said she’d think about it,’ she said hopefully.
‘Sebastian rang me,’ I admitted, as we walked into the village. I steered Frankie towards a small tea shop. The bell chimed as we entered. I ordered us two cream teas and found a seat in the corner where we could talk without being listened to. ‘He’s worried about you,’ I said, as we sat down.
Frankie stared out of the window for a long moment. She smiled to herself as if remembering something. ‘Do you remember that time at school when you tried to convince me to run away with you?’ I nodded. ‘You said we could go to London and find our fortunes. Start new lives where no one would know who we’d been before. Part of me wishes I’d just said yes. I wish we’d run away together. I’d run away now if I could. Properly, not just to your aunt’s house. I asked Seb to run away with me.’
I stared at Frankie blankly. Something was definitely wrong with her. Of course I remembered asking her to run away with me. I was so desperate and unhinged at the time I would have done anything to get away from that school. But Frankie persuaded me to stay. She was always the sensible one, the one who thought about tomorrow and not just today. ‘Why would you want to run away?’
She shrugged. I noticed her eyes well up with tears and she looked away, embarrassed, as the waitress came and put our tea down in front of us. ‘I don’t know what I want, Suzy. I just know I want to stop feeling like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like it’s not over. Like any minute now I’m going to be dragged back into this dark, dark place where the ghosts of the dead swirl around me like smoke and choke me. And no one, no one believes me. Not even Seb. He doesn’t believe what happened to us, that we saw … ghosts … that they led us to the truth. He thinks I’m crazy. And I don’t want to lose him. But I’m worried I’m going to if I don’t just accept that maybe he’s right. That’s why I’ve wanted to speak to you so badly. Because you saw it too. You know ghosts are real, that they come back and haunt you.’
‘No, they’re not,’ I said, my voice breaking as I spoke. ‘They’re not real.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said with conviction. ‘I can see it in your eyes, you’re lying to me. You know that what happened to us was real. No amount of counselling or drugs or brainwashing can take it away. You can try to forget it, Suzy, but you can’t deny it ever happened.’
‘It doesn’t matter what happened, Frankie,’ I said, almost pleadingly. ‘We just need to let it fall behind into our past and try to move on.’
‘You haven’t moved on,’ she said. ‘I can see it in your eyes. You carry it around with you like a cross. Don’t do that to yourself, Suzy. You’re not mad. I’m not mad. Ghosts are real. They can’t be ignored.’
I moved forward to the edge of my seat and looked my best friend deep in the eyes. I wanted to trust her, more than anything. She and I had lived through unimaginable pain together. We had weathered the storm once before, we were survivors. If anyone would listen to me and really understand then it was her. All this time I’d been avoiding Frankie when she was the only one I could really talk to.
Neither of us even looked at the waitress as she came and put our scones and cream on the table. We studied each other carefully, and I was sure that Frankie knew without me saying anything that I had some dark secret to tell her. I felt the words swell up inside me, ready to burst out into the world. The threat of the release felt so good. I wanted to say them. I wanted her to know. Frankie would believe me. She would believe me and I wouldn’t be alone.
‘Suzy,’ she whispered, leaning towards me. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘It’s happening again.’