The Darkest Hour (59 page)

Hannah scowled. ‘My father says God doesn’t exist.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ Juliette put in. ‘And does he allow you to think for yourself?’

‘Of course he does.’ Hannah looked defensive.

‘I think that is obvious or you wouldn’t have gone looking for the ghost,’ said Maggie gently. ‘That took a lot of courage.’

‘But I did it all wrong. Tab said I could banish him but I needed to see him first.’ Hannah bit her lip hard, obviously finding it hard to talk about it. ‘I was so stupid. I thought it would be easy. I thought he would go away when I asked and Dad would be impressed, because he was frightened and I wasn’t.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

‘You were courageous, Hannah,’ Maggie repeated. ‘If anyone is to blame it is your friend who does not understand fully what she is talking about, and the books you read which didn’t warn you that what you were doing could be dangerous.’

Juliette stood up. ‘Come on, let’s find something to eat. I think brunch would be a good idea. Nice and grounding. Hannah, let me show you where the dining room is and perhaps you could lay the table for us.’

She led the way to the dining room door and opened it. ‘OK? The cutlery is in the dresser drawer there.’

Hannah didn’t move. There was a short pause. ‘Hannah?’ Juliette realised suddenly that Hannah was staring at a picture on the wall on the far side of the room, her eyes rounded in horror, her face white.

‘That’s him!’ Hannah cried. ‘Oh my God, that’s him. The ghost. It’s him!’ Pushing between the two women she ran back into the drawing room and dropped onto the sofa sobbing.

Juliette was looking at the picture. She too had gone white. ‘That’s Johnny’s father,’ she whispered. ‘That’s Eddie Marston.’

‘Hannah? We’re back. Are you feeling better, darling?’ On returning home the day before, Frances had stopped on the landing and stared at the dropped basket and its scattered contents for several seconds before knocking on her daughter’s bedroom door. There was no reply. ‘Hannah?’ Frances opened it and looked inside. The room was empty. She stared round with her usual feeling of helpless dismay at the mess in which Hannah lived. Automatically she stooped to pick up various garments and put them on the bed. She sighed. There was no sign of Hannah downstairs. Unlikely as it seemed, perhaps she had gone out for a walk. Closing the door behind her Frances went back down to the kitchen. Minutes later Ollie appeared. ‘Any sign of her?’ He looked worried.

Frances shook her head.

‘Did you see the stuff on the landing?’

Frances nodded towards the kitchen island. The basket stood there with its strange contents, gathered from the carpet upstairs. ‘I can’t think what that was all about.’

Ollie bit his lip. Hannah didn’t know he had sussed her interest in ghosts. For a while he had quite fancied Tabitha when she had come to stay last summer and he kept a quiet but constant watch on Tab’s activities on Facebook. He knew enough to be suspicious of the contents of the basket he had stepped over on his way to his own room, and after his mother had gone downstairs he had rummaged under his sister’s mattress and withdrawn the books she had hidden there. Her bookmarks were still in place.

He wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Christopher walked in to the kitchen. ‘Any sign of Hannah?’

Frances and Ollie both shook their heads.

He threw the newspaper he had been carrying under his arm onto the table. ‘She must be feeling better.’

Frances gave a tight little smile. ‘Good. She hasn’t been looking very well for several days.’

‘Did you look in the attic?’ Ollie blurted out suddenly.

Both his parents looked at him in puzzlement. ‘What on earth would she be doing there?’

‘She, she, she …’ He paused, stammering slightly.

‘Well, boy, spit it out.’ Christopher glared at him.

‘She was talking about the ghost you saw.’

Christopher went white. ‘What did you say?’

‘She was intrigued. She said she had never seen one and –’ Again Ollie fell silent. Hannah would kill him for this. ‘I think she may have stayed at home to get the chance to be on her own.’ His glance shifted towards the basket on the table. ‘Those are things people use to get rid of ghosts.’

‘I did not see a ghost!’ Christopher said abruptly through gritted teeth. ‘Do you hear me?’ He glared at Frances. ‘Who said I did?’

‘I said nothing,’ Frances said quickly.

Christopher shook his head in exasperation. ‘Go upstairs, Ollie. Check if she’s up there.’

Ollie turned towards the doorway and for a moment he hesitated. One glance at his father’s face made up his mind for him and he headed out into the hall towards the staircase.

The attic landing was dark, the doors to the two rooms closed. Nervously he stood there for a moment at the top of the stairs plucking up the courage to let go of the banister. The two way switch at the foot of the stairs had failed to turn on the light. He took two paces forward and reached out for the switch up here. It had no effect. The light was broken. He swallowed hard. ‘Hannah?’ he whispered. ‘Are you up here?’

There was no reply.

‘Hannah?’ He took a deep breath and headed for the door on his left. Grabbing the handle he pushed it, expecting it to be locked. It swung open with a slight squeak of the hinge. For a moment he stood without moving, then he managed to force himself to take a step forward. He groped inside the door for the light switch. This light did not work either. Clicking it up and down he cursed under his breath. There must have been a fuse. Stupid. He should have brought a torch. He stood irresolutely in the doorway. He could see there was no one in there. Enough light was percolating through the window to illuminate the shadowed corners and the areas behind the piled furniture and old suitcases. He scanned the room carefully and then backed out, pulling the door closed behind him.

Leave it. This is not your business, boy.

The voice in his ear was a harsh whisper. Ollie let out a yelp of fright. ‘Hannah?’ he gasped. ‘Stop it. Where are you?’ His eyes were like saucers as he stared down the narrow landing. It wasn’t his sister’s voice he had heard; it was a man’s voice, deep and rasping. He focused on the other door. Cautiously taking a couple of steps forward he reached out towards the door knob. He turned it and pushed. The door was locked. He shook it. ‘Hannah? Are you in there?’

‘Well, is she up here?’ His father’s voice from the landing below made him jump. Christopher took the stairs two at a time. ‘Why are you up here in the dark you stupid boy?’ He put his hand out towards the light switch. The light came on at once.

Ollie stared indignantly. ‘But it wouldn’t work –’

‘Of course it works. Is she in there?’ Christopher stretched past Ollie and turned the door knob. Silently, almost obediently the door swung open. Ollie watched as his father stepped into the room and turned on this light as well. There was no sign of Hannah. Christopher looked round carefully scanning the piled boxes then turned out the light and closed the door. ‘Where the hell is she? Wretched girl.’ He turned and ran back downstairs leaving Ollie standing where he was. Ollie glanced back at the door.

‘Hannah?’ he called softly. ‘Where are you?’

There was no answer.

There was to be a service in the church and then in the evening a party in the village hall. People had been putting up red, white and blue bunting all over the village. Rachel and Dudley and Evie went to church with Johnny sitting proudly beside them in the pew, then they went back to the farmhouse. There was no sign of Eddie. Outside it was drizzling, the blossom on the trees hanging wet and disconsolate, some of it being torn down and scattered on the ground. The actual day was almost an anti-climax after it had been predicted for so long, and it seemed wrong to celebrate when the war was still going on in the Far East, but Hitler’s death had been announced on 1st May and that in itself was reason to celebrate. Evie helped with the refreshments in the village hall and danced once or twice with the old men from the village. The Civil Defence and the Home Guard had already been disbanded and there were some young men around, mostly those who had been invalided out of the Army or the Air Force, so there were plenty of partners for her to choose from, but everyone there was conscious of the heartbreaking gaps which would never be filled, boys like Ralph and the son of the village baker.

And, of course, there was still no sign of Eddie. Was he with Lavinia, she wondered. If he was she found she didn’t care. Good luck to the poor woman.

That night she wrote it all down in her diary, complete with some sketches of the dance. The entry made cheerier reading than many she had written lately.

Mike had been back at the cottage for only a few minutes when a car drew up outside, parking in the narrow lane with two wheels on the bank by his front steps. Christopher climbed out and ran up to the front door. Mike answered the aggressive knock at once. One glance told him something was wrong as he stepped back to allow his cousin into the hall.

‘Is Hannah here?’ Christopher burst out.

Mike shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen Hannah for years. Why would you think she might be here?’

‘Because of this Evie business.’ Christopher pushed past him into the sitting room and stood there looking round. ‘She’s disappeared. We can’t find her; wherever she is, she’s not got her mobile with her, which is unheard of. There is no trace of her anywhere in the house at home. She has been missing for hours.’

Mike perched on the arm of the sofa. ‘Have you told the police?’

Christopher shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she must be somewhere. We have been ringing people up and down the country. Frances’s parents – Hannah loved being with them in the holidays. Her school friends –’ He paused abruptly, thinking of the awkward conversation he had had at Ollie’s instigation with the mother of Hannah’s schoolfriend Tab before she had passed the phone to her daughter. The girl’s superior laugh, her enigmatic pseudo, American spook-film-psychic speak. ‘I sense she has gone beyond the veil; you must seek her in the land of the dead …’ Christopher had frozen at her words, then dismissed them as he heard the manic laughter the other end. He wanted to wring her neck, to kill her, to demand her to give the phone back to her mother, but he hadn’t. He had frozen her out with a caustic reply and hung up.

‘Well done, Dad,’ Ollie had said. He had been listening in the doorway. ‘If she does know where Hanny is, you will never get her to talk now.’

Ollie had told him about her fascination with the ghost and the fact that Hannah had collected some books on the subject, that the basket of herbs was something to do with calling up the dead. How could he go to the police with a cock-and-bull story like that? He gave Mike a brief outline of events.

Mike shook his head slowly. ‘This ghost – did you actually see it yourself?’ He didn’t smile when Christopher glanced at him sharply.

‘I don’t know. I suppose for a moment …’

‘You saw it in the attic, you said?’

Christopher nodded.

‘Have you got any of Evie’s pictures stored up there?’ He saw the sudden suspicion and anger which flashed across Christopher’s face. ‘Why?’

‘Because there seems to be a bit of an issue with Evie’s paintings at the moment.’ Mike realised suddenly he didn’t want to tell Christopher that he had been right all along and that Lucy did have one of the pictures. ‘I have been hearing stories of some kind of ghostly interference going on with one or two of the pictures which are out there in private hands.’

His cousin looked at him sharply. ‘There aren’t any pictures out there.’

Mike shook his head. ‘You mean you have every single one?’

‘No. No, that’s not what I mean. It’s just that I have never heard of any in private hands.’

‘Well, there are a few.’

‘And I suppose Lucy Standish told you that?’

‘Yes, she did.’ No harm in admitting that much.

Christopher tightened his lips, but said nothing, so Mike went on, ‘There seems to be some kind of malign influence surrounding them.’

‘And you are suggesting, what exactly?’ Christopher’s antagonism seemed to have changed to fear. ‘That the ghost has kidnapped my daughter?’

‘No, I don’t know what I mean except that is it possible something happened to frighten her?’

The two men remained silent for a moment. ‘Have you ever thought that this house might be haunted?’ Christopher asked suddenly.

Mike shook his head. ‘Not for a moment. I suppose I get the feeling that Granny might be keeping an eye on things occasionally, but the atmosphere of this cottage is gentle and benign. I have never felt afraid here. After all, she loved the place. And,’ he couldn’t resist adding, ‘there are none of her pictures here.’

Christopher ignored the jibe. ‘You think I should go to the police?’

Mike nodded. ‘She’s only –’ He paused, realising that he didn’t even know how old Christopher’s children were.

‘Fourteen.’ For a moment Christopher looked haggard with worry, then he straightened his shoulders. ‘I’ll go back. If you hear anything …’

‘I’ll let you know at once.’ Mike stood up. ‘How is Frances coping?’

‘She’s beside herself.’

After he had gone Mike wandered into the kitchen and stood staring out of the window into the dark. If Hannah had seen anything like the ghost that Maggie and Huw had described the child would be terrified out of her wits. Fourteen. Too young to drive. Half child, half young woman. Probably full of wild certainties and unproved convictions about her own capabilities. He found himself wishing he and Christopher were on better terms so that he could have had the chance to get to know his – he was about to describe them to himself as niece and nephew, but of course they were cousins of some sort.

‘I will finish the painting when I am ready! I’m too tired to do it now,’ Evie shouted. It was weeks now since she had touched the canvas on her easel. She was exhausted and depressed, and Johnny, sensing the atmosphere at the farm, was playing up all the time.