Matilda wasn’t really going to an exhibition at the Tate. She was meeting her friend Olivia, yes, but at a very different sort of event. It was a séance, and Olivia had suggested it.
Olivia had had a long and devoted interest in the supernatural. She had shelves full of books about ghosts, both fictional and real. She had seen all the films, the documentaries about ghost hunters, the podcasts about poltergeists, Danny Robins, everything. She had even joined the Spiritualist Church, attending regular meetings at her local branch in a shop premises in North Street, Clapham. Here she had met a medium, a Pole whose name was Zofia, who lived alone in Balham. Zofia regularly communicated with the dead, though she would never have used that word, as a spirit never died, it ‘passed’. On to another world. When Olivia had told her Matilda’s story, of her father’s supposed suicide and the subsequent visitation, Zofia hadn’t turned a hair. She had, rather excitedly, agreed to organise one of her Saturday afternoon séances.
So here they all were, ten of them, in Zofia’s front room, with the curtains drawn against the bright sunshine outside. They sat in the gloom around an oblong dining table, hands flat on the maroon tablecloth, fingers spread. The only other light came from a tasselled standard lamp, which was just behind Zofia, who sat at one end like the hostess of a spooky dinner party, with Matilda on one side and Olivia on the other. She was wearing a dark blue velvet dress with a low cleavage and what looked like a shopful of costume jewellery, her wrists jangling with silver bangles.
Now she was introducing Matilda, telling the group her story. Matilda had, she said, already been honoured with a visit by her father Adam. But since then, she had failed to get back in touch with him. Zofia, with her long experience of summoning spirits, was going to try again for her.
The group sat in respectful silence, ten solemn faces, not a trace of levity on any of them. From the street outside came the incongruous sound of a boy on a scooter, his mother running after him. ‘Scott, come back! Scott, stop that now!’ Her voice and footsteps faded away down the street.
‘Adam… Albury,’ Zofia called, her eyes on her notes in front of her. ‘Once of… Fallowfield. Wherever you are now, come and join us. Your daughter Matilda needs you.’ Slowly, she got to her feet and waved her hands over Matilda’s head. ‘Your daughter ne-e-e-eds you,’ she repeated, elongating the word dramatically.
From a corner of the room, Leo was watching. Had he allowed himself to materialise, you would have seen, between those ghoulish dimples, a wry smile. When he had been alive, he would have scoffed at an event such as this. Summoning the dead – ridiculous! Such things were for gullible fools. Now that he was dead himself, his objections were different. How dare these morbid freaks be so intrusive. Was Zofia really able to communicate across the mysterious divide between living and dead – or was she a charlatan? She was making a big deal of calling for his father, but she had got his address wrong and so far completely failed to notice him, a bona fide ghost, sitting there watching them all.
‘I feel him…’ Zofia was saying now. ‘I feel him coming. Come on, Adam, join us here… your daughter ne-e-e-eds you.’ The medium’s face was twisted into a grimace, but there was really no need for that, if what she was trying to do worked.
‘I fe-e-e-e-l him coming. Come on, Adam Alb-b-b-bury…’