Beware the Grey Lady. Ruth thinks about those words the next morning when she watches Zoe driving off to work, dressed in blue scrubs. She and Kate are on their own now, with only Flint for protection. Ruth waves from the window, remembering her parents’ next-door neighbour, Mrs Grantham, who was housebound by some mysterious illness. Mrs Grantham was always at the window when Ruth returned from school. ‘She likes to see you,’ Ruth’s mother used to say, and Ruth would always wave cheerfully before dismissing the lonely figure from her mind. After only a day of lockdown, Ruth is turning into Mrs Grantham.
Ruth is pathetically grateful when the postman knocks at the door with a delivery. It’s an Amazon parcel from Simon. Ruth usually tries to avoid ordering from the online retailer, preferring to shop at local bookshops, but there is something very comforting about being sent a book. It shows that her brother is thinking about her. Maybe it’s a crime novel, something by Ian Rankin or Val McDermid? Fictional murder is oddly soothing in troubled times. Ruth tears open the cardboard. Government Conspiracies and How to Spot Them. Hmmm.
Kate is having a Zoom lesson. Ruth admires the way that the Year 6 teacher, Mrs Obuya, manages to make grammar both interesting and entertaining. Ruth herself, despite having a PhD, has no idea what a ‘fronted adverbial phrase’ is. But online lessons mean that Kate needs the laptop, so Ruth can’t do any of her own work. Ruth’s scheduled lectures take priority, of course, but she doesn’t want Kate to miss any face-to-face teaching, especially when these sessions are so rare. Maybe she should buy another laptop but she doesn’t like the thought of Kate having her own computer. Besides, Ruth has already felt the disastrous pull of online shopping. PayPal doesn’t seem like real money, but she has to be careful. She is lucky to be in full-time employment and not furloughed but who knows what the future holds for unfashionable universities teaching unfashionable subjects?
Ruth doesn’t like using her phone for confidential university business, so her options seem to be reading Simon’s book about faked moon landings, doing some housework or continuing her research into the history of the house. She goes into the garden to call Janet.
‘I was just about to send you an email,’ says Janet. ‘This is all a bit scary, isn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t seem real,’ says Ruth. ‘Words like pandemic and lockdown belong in a science fiction novel.’
‘Or a history book,’ says Janet. ‘I keep thinking how it must have felt during the plague in Norwich. There were people called “keepers”, appointed to make sure residents stayed in their houses. They used to carry red wands, about a metre long, to encourage others to keep their distance. There were “watchers” too.’
‘Social distancing,’ says Ruth. She wants to stop Janet before she goes any deeper into the fourteenth century. ‘I’ve been thinking of doing some research into my house. That’s why I sent you the email.’
‘What’s brought this on?’ says Janet.
‘I found a picture of the cottages in the sixties,’ says Ruth. ‘It made me think.’
‘Pictures are very important artefacts,’ says Janet. ‘You live on New Road, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got a great picture of those cottages from the nineteen hundreds. I’ll email it. Otherwise it’s best to work backwards in time. Look at street directories and electoral registers. The 1939 register is particularly good because there wasn’t one during the war. Also try searching via address in newspaper archives. I’ll send a link.’
‘Thanks so much,’ says Ruth.
‘No problem. I’m at a bit of a loose end. There’s no teaching work and all the tourist attractions have closed. And, to cap it all, I’m having to move house.’
‘Are you?’ says Ruth. ‘That sounds very stressful.’
‘My lease is up,’ says Janet. ‘And my landlord is being rather intransigent. But I’m sure I’ll find somewhere.’
Ruth thinks that her friend is being very resilient. She’d hate to move house in the middle of a pandemic. It makes her feel very grateful for her four walls, whatever mysteries they are hiding.
Before she rings off, she tells Janet about the Grey Lady email.
‘“Beware the Grey Lady”,’ says Janet. ‘Who could have sent that?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘It gave me a bit of a jolt, remembering the story you told me. The bricked-up house and the girl eating her parents’ flesh. All that.’ She shivers although the garden is sunny and the birds are singing from the apple tree.
‘Don’t worry, Ruth,’ says Janet. ‘The Grey Lady can’t hurt you.’
When Kate has finished her lesson, they go out for a brisk walk across the Saltmarsh. Kate is in a better mood today and happily gathers ‘interesting grasses’ to go in her Nature Book. It reminds Ruth of collecting samphire with Peter. Maybe she should contact him again? They always got on well and it’s time that Ruth stopped waiting for Nelson, consciously or not.
Back at the house, Kate embarks on some homework set by Mrs Obuya. Ruth opens her laptop to see the photograph sent by Janet. She has opened a new folder on her computer and has also allocated a yellow file marked ‘House’ which contains the original photograph plus several printed-out pages. Ruth is a born academic; nothing is real until it has a file.
Janet’s photograph shows the cottages, brick-fronted, with a horse-drawn cart in front. The sign on the cart says ‘Adnam’s Beer’ and this was clearly the focus of the picture. Ruth knows that the local ale – a favourite with her ex-partner Frank – was first brewed in the 1870s. Why was the dray standing outside her cottage? Were the owners big drinkers? Ruth prints out the picture and puts it next to her mother’s photograph, the pink houses, the boxy car. Peering closely she can see a name plaque on the middle house. Does it say ‘The Cabin’? She can’t be sure. The plaque isn’t there in the nineteenth-century photo. Who gave the house its cosy but slightly sinister name?
Ruth has discovered that the three houses on New Road were built in 1860 and were described, in the county records, as ‘farmworkers’ cottages’. Ruth purchased her house in 1998 from the estate of the late Alfred Barton. The 1939 census shows that the house was occupied by Alf Barton, described as ‘labourer’, his wife Dorothy ‘seamstress’ and two children – John, 16, and Matthew, 14. John and Matthew would be in their nineties if they were alive now. Ruth doesn’t discount this; people in Norfolk seem to live for ever. It’s also possible, of course, that one or both sons died in the war. The thought makes her sad. She senses a definite fellow feeling with the family who once lived in this tiny house. The question is, did Ruth’s mother also have a link with them? And, if so, what was it?
Who would have been living in the house in 1963? Alf, judging by the title deeds, but who else? Ruth logs into the archives of the local newspaper, as Janet had suggested. She puts her address into the search box and, immediately, an article from 1970 pops up.
Big-hearted Foster Mum Dies
Tributes have been paid to Dot Barton, of 2 New Road, Saltmarsh, who died of cancer at the age of 68. As well as being mother to two sons, John and Matthew, and grandmother of three, Dot also fostered more than a hundred children. ‘Our door was always open,’ says Dot’s husband, Alf (70). ‘Dot was so kind,’ says Alma McLaughlin (24), who was fostered as a teenager. ‘She really made a difference to my life.’ Dot’s funeral will be held at St Peter’s Church, Gaywood, on Wednesday 17th June.
Hundreds of children? Ruth realises that this is over a period of at least thirty years but she suddenly has a vision of small figures swarming over the tiny house, like an illustration from The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe.
‘Mum!’ says a commanding voice. Ruth turns to face her one and only child.
‘Yes, darling,’ she says, trying to channel the caring spirit of Dot Barton.
‘I’m bored,’ says Kate. ‘Can I watch TV?’
Judy is also working from home. It’s been decided that only a skeleton staff will remain at the police station. The boss goes in every day, of course, and the rest of the team will take it in turns. Today Tony is sitting alone in the shared area, deprived of any outlet for his relentless sociability. Nelson will be closeted in his office – doing God knows what – and Leah will be bringing him cups of coffee and answering the printer’s querulous demands for fresh paper. Judy has set up a workstation in her bedroom. It’s not ideal because the rooms in the cottage are small and hers and Cathbad’s is almost completely taken up by their antique brass double bed. Judy has managed to fit in a small table and chair, but she is now wedged beside the window and her Zoom background shows only a flowered curtain and a portrait of Thing, painted by Miranda, stuck on the yellow wall. It doesn’t exactly say ‘modern police professional’. But Cathbad has commandeered the kitchen for home-schooling and the spare room is now full of Maddie and her myriad possessions.
Still, it is peaceful here. The window is open and the warm spring air floats in. It’s strange how this helps with the anxiety. At night, Judy lies awake worrying about work, school and Covid. Waking in the early hours she becomes convinced that she can’t smell anything (one of the symptoms of the virus) and goes into the bathroom to sniff the organic soap. Cathbad sleeps on, regardless, protected by The Goddess. But, when the morning sun streams in, it’s hard to stay pessimistic. Now she can hear her neighbour mowing his lawn and smell the freshly cut grass. Downstairs, the children and Cathbad are laughing as they listen to Horrible Histories on the radio. In her room, Maddie is tapping away on her laptop. A hen squawks from the garden.
Judy turns to her notes on the Avril Flowers case. There’s something she’s missing here, she’s sure of it. Some link between Avril’s death and Samantha Wilson’s. Maybe Karen Head too. Judy flicks through her trusty notebook. She has included a brief sketch of Avril’s bungalow: main bedroom, spare bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, sitting room. Judy thinks about touring the premises with Tanya, who’d been more concerned with its specifications and with her own BMI. What was it she had said in the bathroom?
Nice scales. Should I test them out? Check out my BMI?
Judy hadn’t answered at the time. The house was a crime scene and so the question could only have been rhetorical. Besides, Judy finds Tanya’s obsession with weight and fitness rather trying. But now those words are sounding warning bells.
What did Karen’s headteacher say? She even got us to have a sponsored slim last year. I lost two stone.
Karen Head had organised a sponsored slim for the teachers at her school. Avril Flowers possessed state-of-the-art weighing scales. Samantha Wilson had died with a Weight Watchers meal in the microwave.
Avril Flowers in a stripy dress on Cromer Pier. She thought that dress made her look fat.
She was as fit as a fiddle, always exercising. Not a couch potato like me.
Could slimming be the link between the dead women?
By the late afternoon, Ruth’s head is swimming from trying to read old-fashioned handwriting on electoral registers and birth certificates. Alfred Barton was born in 1900. Dorothy ‘Dot’ in 1902. Dot died in 1970 but Alfred lived on until 1997, when he had died in Ruth’s upstairs bedroom. In 1963, the house had presumably been home to Alf, Dot and numerous foster children. Where does that leave Ruth? Feeling slightly inadequate is the answer. She often complains about her life (usually to herself, it’s true) but she has a good job, a car and enough space for her and her daughter to have a bedroom each. She also has hot water, electric light and the internet. Yet there must be people facing the current crisis without any of these things. She really should start counting her blessings, but she’s had enough of maths for the day. She’s relieved when her phone buzzes. Nelson.
‘How are you finding lockdown?’
‘Has it only been two days?’ says Ruth. ‘It feels like years.’
Nelson laughs. ‘It’s very strange. The roads are empty, and it was just me and Tony at the station today.’
‘I would have thought you’d have liked the empty roads. You’re always complaining about other cars.’
‘I know but when they’re not there you miss them. It’s the same at work. The team drive me mad sometimes, but it doesn’t seem right to be in the office on my own listening to Tony’s constant chatter. Then, when I get home, there’s no one but Bruno to talk to.’
There’s a brief silence. Ruth digests the fact that Michelle is still away. The distance between them seems to contract. Ruth imagines Nelson in his stream-lined kitchen, opening the cupboards in search of fast food, Bruno watching from the hallway. Nelson’s house has always seemed exclusively Michelle’s but maybe that’s just because Ruth doesn’t like to think of the two of them choosing soft furnishings or deciding on paint colours.
‘How’s Katie?’ says Nelson.
‘She’s fine. I think she’ll find it quite boring after a while though. The school don’t send her much work to do although she did have a Zoom lesson today.’
‘She’s so bright. She’ll catch up.’
‘I’m not worried about her falling behind. I’m worried about her getting bored. I’m worried about me getting bored.’
‘What about your new next-door neighbour? The woman I saw the other week?’
‘Zoe? What about her?’
‘Is she company for you?’
‘Yes, she is but she’s a nurse. She works three days a week.’ Ruth has already seen Zoe come home, looking tired. Ruth had waved from the window, embracing her Mrs Grantham persona.
‘I wish . . .’ says Nelson and then he stops. What was he going to say? That he wishes that he was with her? Or that Michelle was back?
‘I wish none of this had happened,’ says Nelson.
‘We all think that, Nelson,’ says Ruth.
She knows this isn’t what he was going to say.