Our tea turned cold as I told my best friend everything that had happened to me since I first set foot in Dudley Hall. ‘I knew early on that something wasn’t right.’ My voice trembled as I told her about my curtains pulling themselves open each night. I told her about the strange scene I’d seen from my bedroom window. She listened, as still as stone, as I told her about the wet footprints on the stairs and the poetry book I’d found on my bed. ‘The book had the poem The Lady of Shalott in it, you know the one –’
‘Where the girl is locked up and cursed and then escapes on a boat and dies floating down the river,’ Frankie finished off my sentence. ‘There’s a portrait of The Lady of Shalott in the Tate gallery in London. I’ve seen it.’
‘Well, a line from the poem was scratched into the mirror in the attic room,’ I said.
‘What attic room?’
I told her about first hearing crying coming from the room, and about how I climbed up the side of the house to get into the room. Frankie shuddered as I told her about what had happened to me once I’d managed to get inside, how I’d seen the grey girl with my own eyes.
‘You should have called me, Suzy,’ she whispered. ‘You could have had someone to talk to.’
I told her about Nell, Nate and his mother Fiona. ‘I’m positive Nate doesn’t know anything, I think he’s convinced his mum’s ill – he’s so protective of her. But Nell and Fiona know way more than they’re letting on. The last time I saw Fiona she took one look at me and knew I’d seen her. She was the one who called her the grey girl. And Nell knows something too, but she’s not telling me. There’s a reason she won’t go upstairs in the house. Nell says I should let the dead lay sleeping.’
‘But the dead don’t sleep, Suzy,’ Frankie warned me. ‘Not if they still dream about their life. They have something unsettling them. You need to find out what happened to that girl, try to right some terrible wrong. Only then will she move on.’ She sat back in her seat and her eyes softened slightly as she regarded me. ‘I’ve missed you so much. And being here, talking about this kind of stuff in broad daylight makes it all seem manageable. It doesn’t seem so terrifying if you have someone to face it with.’ I smiled at her, she was right.
‘Maybe when we get back to the house we can go up to the attic room?’ I said. ‘I haven’t been able to go back up there since … but maybe together?’
Frankie nodded and smiled. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help you. And to prove to the rest of the world that we’re not crazy. Just because other people don’t see things, don’t believe, doesn’t mean that we don’t. Someone has to lay this spirit to rest, Suzy. It needs to be us … you … you’re the one she’s trying to reach. Everything you’ve seen and heard at the house, it all means something. We just need to work out what.’
‘Wow, you’ve changed.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘I remember when I met you and practically had to force you into doing a Ouija board with me. Now look at you, trying to convince me that ghosts are real.’
‘I don’t think you need convincing, Suzy. Look, what do you know so far?’
‘Well, I know the house once belonged to the Dudley family. Rich aristocrats who lost their money and had to sell off the house. After that the house was a school, a girls’ school.’ Frankie gave me a shudder and a knowing nod. ‘The school closed down years ago because it ran out of funding. After that the house fell into disrepair.’
‘So the girl was either a member of the Dudley family or one of their servants, or a girl at the school,’ Frankie said quickly.
‘I’d guess she was a schoolgirl. The clothes I saw her wearing looked old-fashioned but not ancient – my guess is she died in the last century.’
‘Okay, so we should find someone who went to the school and ask them if they know anything that might help. And ghost stories, legends, rumours …’
I nodded. ‘Nate’s grandmother, Nell and Fiona’s mum, was at the school.’
‘So let’s go talk to her.’
‘Can’t.’ I shook my head. ‘She’s dead.’
‘So we ask her daughters.’ Frankie shrugged. ‘Which leads us back to Nell and Fiona. Or we could ask Nate – he must have heard the story, even if he doesn’t believe it.’
‘Actually, Nate is really cute,’ I admitted, feeling the need to lighten the tone of conversation now we had a plan in place.
Frankie raised her eyebrows playfully. ‘Even more reason to talk to him then.’
I shook my head firmly. ‘The last thing I need at the moment is the distraction of a hot boy.’ I rolled my eyes dramatically and Frankie smiled.
‘Hmm,’ she teased, raising a teaspoon full of cream to her mouth and licking it off. ‘Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.’
‘Romeo and Juliet,’ I smiled. ‘God, it’s good to see you again, Frankie. You see what I mean … love … smoke … choking … distraction! I can’t have it. Nate might be cute but … oh my God, Frankie! Look over there!’ I pointed to the boy in jeans and a white T-shirt walking over the village green. ‘That’s him.’
‘He is cute.’ She winked at me. ‘And you have the perfect excuse to go over and talk to him.’
‘I really don’t think I’m ready, Frankie.’ I watched Nate disappear down the road and out of sight. ‘I’m not sure I want him to see the real me, scars and all. I’ll wait and ask his mother or Nell instead – much better idea.’
Frankie got to her feet, pushing the chair away as she rose. ‘So let’s go and ask them.’
‘Now?’
She nodded. ‘Now.’
‘Nell will be at Dudley Hall getting things ready for the murder mystery guests arriving tomorrow,’ I said, staying sat down in the hope that Frankie would sit back down too. ‘And I really don’t want to ask Nell anyway – she’s already warned me not to mess with this kind of stuff.’
‘So we ask her sister, Fiona,’ Frankie said impatiently, still waiting for me to stand up.
‘Okay,’ I said reluctantly, getting to my feet.
I paid for the food we hadn’t touched and we left the tea shop. I filled Frankie in on what little I knew about Fiona as we walked over to their cottage. ‘Fiona and Nate have been living with Nell since Fiona split from Nate’s dad. Nell has a cottage by the church. The Old Rectory.’
We walked through the village towards the church. I felt brave with Frankie by my side. For a moment I let myself get lost in a daydream that we were paranormal investigators. Kick-ass girls who fought demons and ghosts and nothing ever scared us or got in our way. I saw the Old Rectory as soon as we turned the corner by the church, with its thatched roof and crooked Tudor beams appearing to hold it up. Smoke was billowing from the chimney.
‘Who lights a fire this time of year? It’s nearly summer,’ Frankie commented. ‘Shall we knock on the door?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Let’s see who’s at home first.’
Staying out of sight from the windows, we snuck up to the house. We moved off the gravel garden path and onto the soft green grass that surrounded the house so our footsteps wouldn’t be heard as we approached. Practically crawling on the ground, I moved towards the house and peeked into the front window. The window looked into the kitchen. No one was in there. It looked immaculate – everything neatly stacked and the surfaces sparkling clean.
Frankie made a silent gesture with her hand and I followed her around the side of the house. Rose plants crept up the trellis on the cottage walls. The garden was well kept – a large, healthy green lawn and beautiful flower beds. We approached another window, almost slithering along the ground so we could stay hidden. Once we were underneath the windowsill we slowly raised our heads so we could look into the room. It was the sitting room I’d sat in with Nell and Nate the night I’d visited for dinner. There was a woman hunched over on the floor and crying. I recognised her straight away. It was Fiona. She was crouched on the floor, her shoulders shaking from sobbing as she looked ahead into the fire blazing in the grate.
Frankie and I turned to one another and exchanged a worried look.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ came Nate’s voice from behind me.
Frankie and I both jumped and turned around to find Nate standing right behind us.
I grabbed Frankie’s hand and without a word to one another we both leapt to our feet and began to bolt away from the house.
We ran and ran without once looking behind us, all the way back to Dudley Hall.
No one had seen Tilly since the incident where Lavinia locked her outside. No one had heard what had happened to her or even if she was alive. Lavinia had gone very quiet this last week, and I wondered if she felt bad for what she’d done, although she would never admit to it if she did. I wondered if she was secretly praying for Tilly in the Rituals, like I did every night.
But Tilly was back in class again today. It was such a relief to see her. Her skin still looks blotchy, like a healing burn, but she’s alive and that’s the main thing. I would have thought that Lavinia would be relieved that Tilly was alive, but instead she just seemed angry. I think she would have been happier if she had died and she’d never had to see her again. I don’t understand why she hates her so much.
‘Don’t even think of going up to see her,’ Lavinia said with malice when I told her my intentions after lights out.
‘But I promised I would,’ I argued.
‘Well, it was silly of you to make a promise you couldn’t keep, because that just makes you a liar. You know you have to stay here with us. We need to do the Rituals. That’s far more important than nursing some sick little freak.’
I didn’t speak a word to Lavinia or the others as we put on our winter cloaks, drew a chalk pentagram on our dormitory floor and lit candles at the five points of the star. We held hands and began to chant, like we do every night, ‘Goddess, we serve you, Goddess, hear our prayers.’
It was Margot who noticed her first. The rest of us hadn’t even heard the door open, hadn’t heard her slip into the room and shut the door silently behind her.
‘What are you doing here?’ Margot lisped, pulling us all from our trance and forcing us to look towards the door.
Tilly was standing there in her white nightgown, her back pressed against the door and her eyes wide with fear and excitement. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘It’s nothing, Tilly,’ I said in panic. ‘Go back upstairs, I’ll come and visit you later, I promise.’ Lavinia shot me an angry glare.
‘Is this witchcraft?’ Tilly asked, bravely taking a step further into the room. ‘Is this magic?’
‘It’s none of your business, that’s what it is,’ Lavinia warned her. ‘You’d leave now and forget what you saw if you knew what was good for you.’
But Tilly didn’t leave. She straightened her spine and looked Lavinia right in the eye. ‘If this is magic then I want to join in. No one needs a miracle more than me. And if you don’t let me join in, then I’ll tell Matron everything I saw this evening.’
That’s when Tilly turned around and left. The four of us looked at each other in horror. Our secret is out, the Rituals are no longer just ours. No one spoke about Tilly as we blew out the candles and rubbed the chalk from the floor. We each lay in bed in silence, the moonlight pouring through the window. I took the shadow puppet that Tilly and I had made from my bedside table and silently held it up in the darkness.
It felt like the moment in the poem when everything changes. When the Lady of Shalott knows that life will never be the same again. That Tilly discovering our secret tonight was somehow the beginning of the end. I’m not sure what will happen now. The words of the poem echoed in my head as I tried to make sense of what we should do …
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Until I write again,
Annabel