I woke with a start. It was the middle of the night still, the moon shining in through the window. Gracie was asleep beside me. Nothing looked amiss. Yet dread grew in the pit of my stomach. I pulled the covers right up to my chin.
Someone else was here in the room.
‘Kit?’ I whispered. ‘Is that you?’
No one answered.
And yet the bedroom door began to open. My heart gave a painful thud. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and wondering if this was still a dream. From the landing came the sound of footsteps. They were light and quick; I knew them at once. The spirit was back.
Hands shaking, I reached for our candle. Once it was lit, I felt braver but still hadn’t the guts to get out of bed. The footsteps got louder. Gracie groaned like she was about to wake. Then, right close by, I heard whispering and with it, that dreadful smell of honey. Terrified, I leapt straight out of bed.
The footsteps on the landing stopped.
I crept to the door and looked back to check Gracie – she slept on. My heart beat hard as I went out onto the landing. It was empty. Then, deep within the stairwell, something moved. A shuffling noise echoed off the walls.
‘Who’s there?’ I whispered.
The spirit had come for me. I sensed it, all right. And though I was sick with fear, I needed to know what it wanted.
I took the stairs slowly. Halfway down, the shuffling stopped. I hesitated. What the flip was I doing, wandering about in the middle of the night? If Mrs Jessop caught me, I’d be for it.
Something brushed against my face. My hands flew up.
‘Who’s there? What do you want?’
Silence.
All around was pitch black. I almost glad, so fearful was I of what I might see. Close to my right ear, someone drew breath. I froze. Then the speaking started, quick, hissing, rambling words that meant nothing to me but turned my blood cold. In horror, I realised the spirit had hold of my wrist. I tried desperately to pull free. The fingers gripped tighter, dragging me forwards. Before I knew it, I’d reached the bottom of the stairs.
There, the fingers let go. Now the footsteps started up again, this time heading off down the passage towards the green baize door. I wanted so badly just to turn and run back to bed. Yet a queer feeling seized me that I had to follow, that the spirit was demanding it. And it wouldn’t let me rest until I did.
The door swung open before I’d reached it. I stepped out into the empty hall. Moonlight poured in through the windows so the paintings, the furniture, the carpets all seemed touched with silver. The house was still as the grave. I knew where the spirit was taking me. It set me shivering all over. Yet my feet moved as if by themselves, taking the stairs two at a time, going up and up into the shadows.
It was dark inside Kit’s bedchamber. My eyes took a moment to get used to it. Someone had pulled the drapes tight shut, though the fire still glowed in the grate.
‘Kit? Are you here?’
Nothing moved.
‘Answer me, will you?’
My ears strained for the slightest sound. There was none. But something had shifted in me, too. The fear had gone and now I felt quite irked.
‘You got me out of bed, so what do you want?’ I whispered, hearing the rising frustration in my voice. ‘If it in’t you doing all this, Kit, then who is?’
Nothing replied. I was very definitely alone.
I turned for the door. This was pointless. There was nothing here. The spirit had gone. And I’d be in more trouble than ever if I got caught here now. But I couldn’t leave, not yet. Not until I knew why I’d been brought here.
My candle was fading fast so I parted the curtains to let the moonlight in and looked around me. Nothing had changed since this morning.
Why would it? It hadn’t changed for ten whole years.
At the sight of Kit’s things, my heart jolted. I’d never get used to them, not if I had to clean this room every day for ever. And there were so many books here, all about fancy things I didn’t understand like poetry and history. This was the Kit I didn’t know, and it made me sad in a different way. So much of him was still a stranger to me. Once upon a time he’d been a living, breathing boy, who’d rumpled his bed sheets and muddied his boots. It was proper hard to imagine. The Kit I knew was the boy in the lake. A boy as fine as the stars.
One book lay open. Its pages seemed to glow in the moonlight, and before I could stop myself, I’d picked it up off the table.
It was a sketchbook, filled with little pencil drawings of wings: wings in flight, wings folded, wings outstretched like an angel’s. The very final page was all fancy letters in lots of different styles; curly ones, bold ones, like he was practising writing something out: ‘To my . . .’, then ‘dear . . .’ and even a ‘dearest . . .’ It made my heart stir. For I supposed, writing those words, he’d been thinking of his mother, and that there had been a time when the two of them had been proper close. I could so easily imagine Kit sat right here, making something so beautiful. This was the boy I knew.
As I put the book back in its place, a shiver passed through me. For Kit wasn’t here, was he? The room was empty.
Dead.
Even the spirit hadn’t followed me inside. It struck me then there was a reason for it. That I was meant to feel this emptiness. Meant to know that Kit’s ghost wasn’t here. For it certainly had settled lead-heavy inside me. The fire burned on, the books lay open and the bed was turned back ready, and yet all of it was mocking me, saying this won’t bring him back. Nothing will. He’s gone for ever.
And this was the terrible truth that Lady Barrington just couldn’t see. Nothing would ever bring Kit back; I doubted even a séance could manage it. Lady Barrington would have to live with her loss. And here I was, with my own father gone and my sister too, beginning to know what that felt like.