‘JANE Austen.’ I breathed the name and tried to absorb the impossible.
‘Miss.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Miss Jane Austen.’ She stared down her elegant nose at me. ‘For I am certain we have never been introduced.’
I gazed at her in disbelief. Was I really awake and being given a lesson in manners by a woman who’d been dead for over two hundred years? It seemed far more likely that I’d finally lost my grip on reality. Given my traumatic bust-up with Julian and everything that had happened since coming to Queen’s Solar, it didn’t seem an unreasonable conclusion.
‘I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage,’ continued the apparition.
‘What?’ Confusion pummelled my brain.
‘You have the advantage of knowing my name, whereas I do not know yours.’
‘Oh. It… it’s Cassie – Cassandra.’
She stared at me. ‘Cassandra?’ she repeated in an odd voice.
‘Yes. Cassandra Austin.’
The strange substance of which she was made suddenly flared into bright incandescent silver light. ‘Cassandra Austen?’ she cried. ‘My own dear Cassandra! Here at last. Can it be true?’ She whooshed eagerly across the room and gazed down at me. The silver light faded. ‘But, no. You are not my beloved sister. Your eyes are blue and your hair is red and your chin is too small…’ She hesitated. ‘Are you perhaps a cousin I do not know? Or the scion of a more distant branch of the family?’ She looked at me critically, ‘But you do not have the Austen nose.’ She touched a translucent fingertip to her own fine, straight nose. ‘Are you indeed an Austen?’
‘Me? No. At least, not that kind of Austen—’ I looked at her apologetically. ‘It’s Austin with an “i”. I’m Cassandra Austin, not Austen. I’m awfully sorry.’
But she wasn’t listening. ‘Not my dear Cassandra!’ The silvery substance flared again. ‘It is too cruel.’ She sped towards the door, but it blazed violently red as soon as she drew near and she pulled back in alarm, muttering, ‘I have waited and waited and still they do not come.’
‘Who? Who doesn’t come?’
‘My family. I do not wish them untimely deaths, but surely Cassandra and my dear mother must soon join me. And what of my brothers? It is not so very long ago that Henry was unwell—’
‘Henry Austen? But Henry’s d—’ I stopped. This was now officially way too weird for me. Was I really about to tell Jane Austen’s ghost that her brother was dead? This had to be a nightmare. Which meant there was only one thing to do.
Go back to sleep.
I was about to pull the duvet over my head and hide from this impossible reality when she shot back across the room, all bright light and eagerness. ‘You know my brother!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, pray, do tell me, is he well? I think of him—indeed, I think of them all so often. How do they go on? What news of Chawton? Are mother and Cassandra and Martha Lloyd still at the cottage? Is Cassandra in health? And my brothers? What of dear Edward at Godmersham Park? By now I expect my niece Fanny is married and quite grown up.’ The words tumbled out, her voice eager and light and so full of love I could hardly bear it.
‘Okay, that’s it. This is freaking me out. I’m going back to sleep.’
‘But you have not told me about my family—’
But the question was too big. Too hard. ‘Please God,’ I begged, ‘let this be over. Let this be a dream or a rum-punch-inspired hallucination.’ I snapped out the light, dragged the duvet over my head and shut my eyes.
There was a brief silence before she said testily, ‘You are very much mistaken if you think I am the consequence of an hallucination or an excess of spirits, Miss Austin. I am neither a dream nor an invention of your imagination and, unless you aid me in my return to the cathedral, I am very much afraid that I shall still be here tomorrow.’
‘It’s already tomorrow,’ I grumbled. It’s my birthday! A pang of longing hit me. Aunty B and I had been going to celebrate. Instead, I was here with a… ghost! I pushed the duvet off my face to find her floating by my bed.
She stared down at me, her brow creasing in confusion. ‘Pray, will you tell me—what year is it?’
‘Twenty-nineteen,’ I said without thinking.
‘Twenty-nineteen?’ She looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
I sat up. How did she not know what year it was? I said gently, ‘I mean it’s the year two thousand and nineteen.’
She stared at me, her colour fading until she was almost completely transparent. ‘I do not believe you. I cannot have been in the cathedral for… for…’
‘Over two hundred years.’ I nodded.
Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Two hundred years. Then they are…’ She stopped and I knew she’d just realized that her family were long dead. Something small and silvery rolled down her cheek, hovered like a tiny puff of incandescent mist, and vanished.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words were inadequate, but I meant them. I knew what it was like to feel utterly lost and alone. It must have been awful to suddenly discover your entire family was gone.
Miss Austen’s ghost lifted her chin. ‘It is quite all right. Indeed, I am glad to know I need wait for them no longer.’ She glided across the room. ‘As I now have no reason to linger, I shall return to the cathedral and inform St Swithun that I wish to pass on to the Celestial Realm.’
‘Good plan.’ I was relieved she’d found a solution to an impossible situation. The truth was, I still couldn’t believe she was real. I mean, if this really was Jane Austen’s ghost, then what was she doing in my bedroom? After two hundred years stuck inside Winchester Cathedral, why would she be here when there must be hundreds of better places for her go? It made no sense at all.
‘Thank you for your help, Miss Austin. Goodbye.’ She glided forward, but the moment she touched the doorframe it flared again with that angry red light. She pulled back and the light instantly faded.
She spun round, her face anguished. ‘Oh, pray, can not you assist me? I must get out.’
I climbed out of bed and hurried across the room. ‘Follow me.’ I stepped towards the door but as soon as I drew near red streaks of blazing light like bars on a prison cell shot across the doorway, and a strange malicious heat prickled my skin. It reminded me of the huge fireball in the cathedral. I shrank back in alarm and stared at my ghostly companion. ‘It won’t let me out either. We’re trapped.’
‘Nonsense. We cannot be prisoners.’ The ghost pondered. ‘Perhaps if we pass through together.’
I shook my head and gazed fearfully at the door. ‘You’ve seen how it burns the moment either of us goes near it.’ I stepped back. ‘Maybe we should wait. It’s almost morning. It might… calm down in daylight.’ I knew I was clutching at straws but I was beyond logic by now.
‘I have waited too long already.’
I hesitated. ‘Maybe I should… call the Bishop.’
‘But I do not wish to wait.’ The ghost held out her hand. ‘Come, Miss Austin. We need naught but courage and resolution.’
I wanted to refuse but there was something in her gaze that compelled me. Slowly, nervously, I reached out and touched the ghostly fingers. Instantly the blazing red light went out – though I barely noticed it because my attention was entirely consumed by her touch. It was as though someone had switched on a light in my brain, making it bright and quick and fiercely alert. A hundred new ideas darted through my mind and I was acutely aware of the ghostly hand in mine, like an icy butterfly fluttering inside my skin. I thought of Julian and my father and saw them for the first time with astonishing clarity. I felt…
… I felt her let go.
It was like being woken from a particularly vivid dream, far better than the one I had feared I was experiencing minutes earlier; this was a dream I urgently wanted to remember but couldn’t. All that remained was a lingering sense of having discovered something vital, only to forget it. I came back to reality and was startled to find we were standing at the foot of the stairs with the front door wide open. The morning sun was already well above the horizon and somewhere a clock struck eight while Jane Austen’s ghost hovered uncertainly beside me.
This was real.
I opened my mouth to ask her a million questions, but she forestalled me. ‘Goodbye, Miss Austin, and thank you.’ She turned away.
‘Wait. Don’t go. I need—’
‘Cassie.’ Oliver’s voice sounded from above, making me jump. ‘Cassie.’
My heart skipped a beat. Oh God, Oliver! Had he stayed at Queen’s Solar? I hardly knew how to face him, but made myself look up. He was at the top of the stairs, his phone in his hand, his face taut.
‘Oliver? What’s the matter? Has something happened?’ Memory came flooding back and I remembered sitting anxiously by Aunt Butters’s bed before the hospital staff had sent us home. They’d assured me she’d soon be conscious and I’d believed them. But now … ‘Is Aunt Butters all right?’ I choked. ‘She’s not—’ this time, I couldn’t say the word ‘dead’.
‘No, she’s alive, but she still hasn’t woken up. They need us at the hospital.’