Clara stepped off the train and drew the fresh cold, winter air into her lungs. Her mother was ahead of her, talking to her father incessantly about new opportunies and bright beginnings. Clara had stopped listening. She knew what her mother was doing. Mrs Tiltman needed to fill her head with thoughts about furnishings, wallpaper and house decor to keep out the horror of a second corpse found in Aysgarth House.
Clara had spent every available minute since that day writing about the curious incidents of Aysgarth House, but it was too long for an article and it was such an extraordinary and unbelievable tale that no newspaper or journal would publish it as fact. This didn’t matter to Clara. She was no longer working on an article. The only way to do justice to the incredible truth she had learnt was to turn it into a form which welcomed such flights of fancy. The only way to make it believable was to transform it into fiction. Clara finally understood what she was writing. It was going to be a novel.
The train pulled away and Mr Tiltman busied himself by organising the team of porters that had been waiting to greet them. Clara looked up at the bridge. As the steam from the train drifted away it revealed a boy with mournful eyes. She smiled at him and raised a hand.
Sam Toop smiled and waved back.
The End