The Attic Room: A psychological thriller (2 page)

Nina realised the implications as soon as the words were out
of her mouth. Somehow or other, John Moore must have been her uncle. And it
must mean too that he had no other family to leave his fortune to, so she and
Naomi were still alone in the world. For a moment the disappointment was
crushing; she hadn’t realised how much she’d been hoping to find more relatives
here, distant ones, maybe, but family was family. Two tears escaped and Nina
wiped them away before Sam noticed, forcing herself to concentrate on what he
was saying.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find out who he was. I suggest we go by
the hospice now – I said we’d collect John’s belongings – and then on to the
house. We might find some papers there to explain the mystery. I guess you’re
staying overnight? Do you want to stay in the house itself?’

The thought of sleeping alone in a dead man’s house was unnerving.
Nina hesitated, wishing she knew more about the Moore side of the family – she
should have asked Claire before it was too late. But neither of them had known ‘too
late’ would come so soon.

‘I’ll have a look and then decide,’ she said, turning back to
the admission form. John Moore’s date of birth was the 15th of October. Her
father had been born in October too, but in the stress of the moment she couldn’t
remember the date. How shameful, her own father – and unnerving to realise how
little she knew about him.

Nina thought about this during the short drive to Bedford.
Why had Claire spoken so little about her husband? Was there some kind of
family secret about Robert Moore? Of course Claire been in other relationships
over the years; she had moved on. But even so, that was no excuse for her own
ignorance now. She’d never been interested enough to probe into her father’s
family, and the thought didn’t make her feel proud today.

On the other hand, if this John Moore had left her all his
money, it was difficult to see why
he
hadn’t been in
touch with
them
before. And surely if Claire’d had a
bust-up with a rich relation in the past she would at least have mentioned it
at some point? Think as she might, Nina could find no explanation.

Friday14th July

The smell in the hospice took Nina straight back to the day
of Claire’s death, and she bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to banish
the dizziness swirling round her head. After the accident both Claire and the
motorcyclist were helicoptered to Glasgow, leaving Nina to make the agonisingly
slow ferry-crossing and then drive to the hospital, well over an hour away.
That day she’d felt as if she was standing outside her own body, watching the
terrible events unfold. Claire’s poor battered face… and her pitiful attempts
to talk that first hour, and then the slide into coma from which she had never
awakened. The memory still took Nina’s breath away.

Pushing the thoughts aside, she followed Sam into the
hospice reception area. The building was an unattractive seventies concrete
cube on the outside but quite homey and cheerful inside, with blue-uniformed
nurses rustling along the corridor, and floral prints on the walls. John Moore
had suffered and died here, and she – apparently his only relative – had never
met him and didn’t know who he was. Poor John Moore. But it was preferable to
dying the way Claire had. Nobody knows their future, thought Nina soberly.
Carpe Diem; how true that was.

A middle-aged nurse handed over John Moore’s suitcase and a
black plastic bag of soiled clothing and Nina, feeling more and more like an
imposter, signed for them.

‘I gather you didn’t know John,’ the nurse said. ‘But we put
him in the chapel in case you wanted to see him anyway.’

Nina blinked at the woman, consciously preventing her mouth
from falling open. The thought would never have crossed her mind. Apart from
Claire’s she had never seen a dead body, but that had been enough for her to
know there was nothing frightening about a corpse. Like the cliché said, the body
was a shell, and when life had gone there was nothing of the person left
inside. That hadn’t stopped Nina shedding horrified, disbelieving tears over
dead Claire on her hospital bed, but she wouldn’t do that for John Moore.

‘I won’t recognise him, but I guess to make sure I should
see him,’ she said, noticing the look of respect Sam gave her.

The nurse led her to a dim little chapel, where a vase of
red roses on the altar perfumed otherwise musty air and provided the only real
colour. A solitary coffin was set on a wrought iron stand, and Nina followed
the nurse across the room. In spite of the brave words apprehension wormed its
way through her gut as the older woman slid back a wooden panel to reveal the
face of John Moore and his right hand, resting below his neck.

Nina winced, leaning on the coffin to steady herself. He
wasn’t an old man, but his face was deeply lined as well as being yellow and
emaciated, and his greying hair was sparse. The cancer had marked him. What a
horrible way to go. But not as horrible as…

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, her voice echoing round the bare
little room. ‘Was he – a nice person?’

The nurse closed the coffin, nodding. ‘He was very brave,’
she said, putting a hand on Nina’s shoulder as they left the chapel. ‘He had a
lot of pain, but we helped him with that and fortunately he didn’t linger long.
He’d only been here ten days when he died.’

Sam was waiting outside, and Nina went into the ladies’ to
recover. She hadn’t expected the sight of John Moore to shake her, but it had.
Dear God, this was all so impersonal. She pressed wet hands to her face,
feeling her cheeks hot under the coolness of her palms. She was this person’s
nearest relation, but she still felt – empty.

Sam took one look at her and guided her towards the car, his
right hand under her elbow. ‘Come on. The sooner we find out what relation John
Moore was to you, the better you’ll feel.’

Nina nodded. It was true. Everything would seem more
organised when she could file her newly-found deceased relative into a box in
her head labelled ‘42nd cousin John’. There was no reason for her to feel
guilty about this man; it wasn’t her fault she hadn’t known of his existence
until Wednesday.

John Moore’s house wasn’t far from the town centre. Nina
was silent as the car passed through the usual kind of urban sprawl; streets
lined by chain stores and supermarkets, anonymous in their normality. She was
beginning to regret her decision to come here; the thought of Naomi, who was
probably still on a pony, sent heavy waves of homesickness all the way through
her. But then, Naomi was so thrilled about her trekking weekend she would
barely notice her mother’s absence, and they could phone soon and have a long
chat. Even so, real life on the island felt very far away right now and it wasn’t
a good feeling.

Sam drove down a wide road where the shops were smaller,
their fronts making a colourful patchwork on both sides, then crossed a bridge
and turned into a narrower street beside the river. They were in a residential
area now, tall houses on the left facing a wide strip of grass stretching down
to the river on the right. Nina gazed out at well-kept flower beds, shady
trees, and people on benches enjoying the sunshine. It was nothing like Arran,
but it was nice here.

‘This is it,’ said Sam, negotiating a narrow iron gateway
and pulling up in front of a large, square house.

Nina craned her neck to get a better view, amazement robbing
her of speech. Had John Moore really lived alone in such a huge place? It was
detached, a well-proportioned building made of red brick, with generous – and
dirty – windows, and a lot of them, too; there were three storeys here. Dormer
windows on the top floor indicated that the attic space had been renovated at
some point. A wilderness of green ivy ran up the walls, almost obliterating the
downstairs half of the house and stretching up to the roof in places. The front
garden was a weed-infested patch of gravel, and high wooden fences separated
the plot from the properties on either side. It was obviously an expensive,
solid house, but the outside at least was in need of a huge makeover.

‘Is it flats?’ she asked as Sam pulled out the front door
key.

‘No, it’s all one house. Remember John Moore was wealthy. I
gather he was big in property but he sold his business when he was diagnosed
with cancer,’ he said, unlocking the door.

Nina pulled out her mobile to see the time. Hell, it was
nearly five o’clock. Unlikely now they’d uncover the secret of John Moore’s
identity today; Sam would want to go home soon.

‘Why don’t I leave you to search for documents while I have
a quick look round to see if I should stay here,’ she suggested, stepping over
a pile of newspapers jostling for place behind the front door.

Inside, the house looked exactly like what it was – the home
of a single man who was no longer young and who hadn’t cared enough to make it
a pleasant place to live. Nina’s heart sank. The hallway was dim in spite of
the glass door separating it from the entrance porch, and the maroon carpet
extending up the stairs and stretching towards the back of the house did
nothing to brighten the place up. A grandfather clock was tick-tocking in the
darkness further down the hallway, and Nina felt her shoulders creeping up.

She opened the nearest door and wandered into a
generously-proportioned room, furnished with old-fashioned and possibly
valuable pieces. A sombre air of genteel shabbiness hung over the place. Nina
sank down on a cracked leather sofa – bloody hell, what was she doing here? She
should be in the farmhouse, waiting for her girl to come home, not sitting in
semi-darkness – these were the windows with ivy growing over them – in a house
that had come straight out of the nineteen forties. On the other side of the
hallway she could see Sam searching through a desk in the study where the
lighting was even murkier. The dusty smell of old books wafted towards her.

Dismayed, Nina trailed further down the hallway. There was a
loo here, so the bathroom proper must be upstairs, and it was all so dingy.
They probably filmed the last Frankenstein movie in here, she thought, pushing
the kitchen door open and giggling nervously when it creaked. Sound effects and
everything, and the very smell seemed to come from the first half of the
previous century too. A hotel was beginning to sound like a very good idea.

The kitchen wasn’t bad, though, about the same vintage as
their own on Arran, with a big gas cooker and a microwave. Whatever his taste
in furniture had been, John Moore had liked his kitchen functional.

The last door was beside the kitchen, and Nina put her head
in, expecting to see a pantry, but found herself looking into a slip of a room
with a single bed, a wooden chair, and a small table. The old ‘kitchen maid’s
room’? The window faced the back garden, and she saw another patch of gravel.
John Moore hadn’t been a gardener, then.

She could hear Sam’s feet thudding on wooden floors upstairs
now. What a massive old place this was, and how unbelievable that it was hers.

‘Four big bedrooms, all chock-full of furniture,’ he said,
running down to join her in the hallway. ‘The attic room’s almost empty and
very dusty; I would leave it alone in the meantime. Nina, I have to go. What do
you want to do?’

Nina glanced back at the small bedroom and came to a
decision. ‘If I can find sheets etcetera for this bed I’ll stay here. Sam,
thanks a million. Was there anything helpful in the study?’

‘‘Fraid not. I found some documents and a couple of photos
in the desk; I left them on top for you to look through.’ He leaned against the
kitchen doorway, brown eyes fixed on hers. ‘I might still hear from the GRO
today, but I’ll come back in the morning anyway if that’s all right. Give you a
hand to search the rest of the place.’

‘Well – if you’re sure,’ said Nina, relieved. With a bit of luck
it wouldn’t take long to get things sorted out. A speedy return to the island
was the aim of the game here.

He rummaged in his briefcase and handed her a business card.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get this cleared up. Here are the keys for this place. I’ll
come back about ten tomorrow. Oh, and there’s a hotel with a good restaurant
about two hundred yards further along this road, in case you need it.’

Nina waved as he backed out of the driveway, then locked the
front door against the world. Apart from the clock, the house was deathly
silent. Her courage sagged briefly before she pulled herself together. This was
her house now and there was nothing scary about that. She had plenty to do, not
least of which was going to Sam’s hotel to see if they could provide dinner.
Nina pulled her case towards her new bedroom, chin in the air. Maybe by the
time Sam came back in the morning, she’d have solved the entire mystery.

Claire’s Story – Bedford

The flat door banged shut behind Robert, and Claire leapt
up, balling her fists in frustration as Nina’s small voice wailed from the
bedroom. Typical – she’d been sitting down for exactly five minutes after
spending an exhausting day with a teething toddler, and now Robert was off God
knows where with George Wright, leaving her babysitting like a good little
wife. Well, she wasn’t. She was trying her best to be a good mother, but the
good wife bit might be over.

‘Hush, baby. It’s all right. Go back to sleep,’ she
whispered, smoothing the sparse blonde hair from Nina’s forehead and kissing
the damp little brow. She hummed softly,
The Skye Boat Song
followed by
The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen
,
smiling in relief as Nina’s eyes closed again.

Back in the living room of their tiny Fulham flat, Claire
lifted the phone to call her mother. These early-evening chats with Lily in
Edinburgh had become her lifeline. Robert was so cold these days, so hurtful
when he spoke to her – it was unbelievably restful to talk to Lily, who loved
her. Claire punched out the number, blinking back tears. Yes, her mother loved
her, but that didn’t stop Lily constantly advocating ‘making a go of your
marriage’, like she and Dad had.

But Rob’s latest escapade was something that even Lily
couldn’t just smooth over.

‘He’s bought a house, Mum!’ Claire blurted it out before
Lily had finished saying hello. ‘I didn’t know a thing about it until he
announced it over dinner as if he was telling me he’d bought a new pullover!’

‘Oh my goodness. What kind of house?’

‘An old one, apparently. It’s in Bedford, by the river, and
we’re moving next month. Two reception rooms, four bedrooms plus an attic. And
I can only sound like a catalogue because I haven’t even bloody seen it!’

For once, Lily didn’t immediately launch into a variation of
‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’, and Claire was grateful for this much at
least. She knew the whirlwind courtship hadn’t been time for her to get to know
Robert properly, but he’d been the man of her dreams back then, all chat and
charm. Not to mention good-looking. He was a walking cliché – tall, dark and
handsome. Three years and a baby later, her feelings had changed and so had
his; he hardly spoke to her now. Face it, Claire, she thought, blinking
miserably. He’s not the man you thought you married.

‘Oh darling. But maybe it’ll be a chance to get yourselves
back on track? A fresh start in a new place? When do you move?’

Claire cast her eyes heavenwards. Lily was back on her ‘work
at your marriage’ pedestal, but maybe she was right. Giving up on the
relationship when she had a two-year-old daughter wasn’t something to be done
lightly.

Claire was astonished when she did see the house. Where had
Robert found the money to put down a deposit on a place this size? He barely
gave her enough to cover the housekeeping and Nina’s clothes. She wandered
round the upstairs rooms, planning in spite of herself. This largest one would
be a great master bedroom, and Nina could have the one opposite, a lovely big
room with a bay window. She sighed. If only she could turn the clock back to
the first weeks of her marriage, those heady days of being in love. Rob was
twelve years older and came across as worldly-wise and sophisticated. He’d made
her feel special, and although even then he’d been a little… reticent, it had
only added to the attraction. Claire squared her shoulders. In spite of their
recent problems, Robert was planning a shared future in this house. She would
do likewise.

‘Mummy’s,’ said Nina, holding up a handful of Jelly Tots.
Claire bent and allowed her daughter to feed her the hot, sticky mess. Nina
beamed, and Claire kissed her, licking the sugar from her lips afterwards. She
stood up to see Robert in the doorway, hands on hips and a sneer on his face.
As usual he looked immaculate, the crisp white shirt contrasting with the
blackness of his hair.

‘For God’s sake, look at you. Stuffing your face as usual.
No wonder your figure’s gone to pot. Where’s your self-respect – you can’t
blame having the baby after all this time.’

Claire didn’t reply, because hell, he was right. Before her
pregnancy she’d been a small size ten and now she struggled to get into a
fourteen. She allowed herself too many little treats these days because they
made her feel better, but Robert cared about her appearance. He’d loved her old
skinny-as-a-rake figure, and while he’d said nothing when she was pregnant,
this past year or so he’d been – rude. Distant. Putting her down, humiliating
her in front of other people. It was horrible.

Robert stamped downstairs to speak to the plumber, and
Claire took Nina’s hand and went up to the attic room. Wow, she thought,
staring round. A huge floor space, lovely sloping ceiling, cute little windows
– this would be a fantastic room for Nina in a few years. The little girl was
running up and down, her face one big beam, and Claire laughed too, pretending
to chase her. Nina shrieked, and Claire scooped her up and hugged her, looking
round with sudden determination. The way forward was clear in her mind now.

With a lick of paint and some nice modern furniture, this
house would be an amazing home for the three of them. It was time to do
something about her marriage. She had a child. A happy family life was worth
fighting for.