Eleven New Ghost Stories (13 page)

“Crazy Rose – her there with the
umbrella. You gave her a lift?”

“What’s crazy about her? She
seemed ok.” But pretty odd.

“Don’t ask me. That’s just what
they call her. I’ve heard the ladies talk about her. They stay well
clear.”

“She didn’t seem that
crazy.”

“Well you’d be the expert. But
the women around here, they don’t like to go near her.”

I dropped Joyce off at her
mysterious cottage. Apparently she shared it with another lady
called Francesca, oft mentioned but as yet unseen by any of the
volunteers. Tongues were starting to wag. Gossip spreads like wild
fire in isolated places like ______. But frankly, who cares?

Yes, village life could be
pretty insular. I wondered whether I could ever really get used to
it. I was enjoying the slower pace, but could I ever get used to a
life where the biggest news story was whether a Jamaican woman was
a lesbian or whether a woman who liked to walk in the rain was a
nutcase?

Honestly, if they thought she
was crazy… they’d never seen crazy – real crazy. I wondered whether
I could really go back to that life. So few ever seemed to get
better; you knew which ones you’d see again. I felt like I’d done
enough for the betterment of mankind. And that’s if they’d have me
back anyway.

There were still no answerphone
messages. I wondered if that was a good thing, but I certainly felt
that no news was better.

Nothing much happened for a few
days. In between my shifts at the shop, I read some so-so
chick-lit, did a bit of driving, took a long walk when the weather
wasn’t so bad. I think I may have even done a jigsaw; the days were
so empty. So meaningless.

Then one evening – it wasn’t
very late – I was driving to the Co-op for my weekly shop when I
saw “Crazy Rose” walking along the street, weighed down by heavy
shopping bags. It was a crowded residential street. I passed her,
on the opposite side of the road, and then pulled in between parked
cars to let another car go by in the opposite direction.

It took a few moments for me to
realise something was wrong. The car was full of kids, teenagers –
they didn’t look old enough to be driving. I saw them all turn
towards Rose as they approached her very slowly. One was opening
the sun roof.

The car passed me, but I didn’t
move – I watched. I saw one boy rise from the sun roof and the
others lean out of the car windows. They threw eggs at Rose. They
threw the eggs, then screamed, shouted and laughed at her.

After the first hit, she rose
her arm to cover her face – dropping one of her shopping bags. She
was hit a couple of times. With the car moving on, she screamed at
them: “You bastards! You fucking bastards!” Then she stepped on the
shopping bag she had dropped – tripping and falling over it. The
kids cheered once more, then revved up and sped away.

I had to get involved – I
couldn’t just leave her. I stopped the engine and ran across the
road to her.

“Are you all right?” I
shouted.

“Those little bastards!” She
cried. “Fucking bastards!” There were tears in her eyes. There was
egg yolk on her coat – front and back – and on her neck and hair.
And to add to the misery, she’d crushed her own eggs – a squashed
carton lay on the street surrounded by spilled, bruising fruit and
a still-intact loaf.

I tried to help her repack her
bags, but one was torn. “The people around here. Bastards all of
them.”

“Let me help you.”

“It’s all right, it’s all…” She
broke into tears and slumped against a garden wall.

I tried to put part of my arm
around her but she shook it off. She reached into her pocket for a
tissue while I stood over her, awkwardly.

“I’ve got spare bags in the
car,” I said after a moment. “Let’s get you home.”

I remembered that she lived only
around the corner. I left the car barely parked and went with her.
As I walked with her there was a nagging feeling of doubt that I
was walking into something bad. But this was basic human kindness –
I wasn’t being a Florence Nightingale again. And yet I knew I was
heading towards trouble. Catch 22 – but I was doing the right
thing.

I understood why she had so many
locks on her door. She’d become the crazy old person in the
neighbourhood the kids talked about and tormented. And with a place
with so few things for young people to do… well, no wonder she felt
vulnerable.

It was a tired looking place and
was long overdue for redecorating. The wallpaper was a nightmarish
display of faded chintz; once garish, now just dowdy. It was
starting to peel towards the top and at some places near the
skirting. The carpet was a dulling purple, darker around the
furniture and towards the walls where the sun nor feet could land
upon it.

She led me into the living room
with few words. It too looked unchanged from a past era, when what
seemed cheap and tacky now had once borne all the hallmarks of
fashionable suburban living. A television the size of a tea chest
lay on top of a chipboard cabinet wrapped in a plasticky wood
finish. A fold out table with a doyley and fake flowers (dusty) lay
in the window concave; the crowning touch was a hideous beige sofa,
the seats long since sunk in and pock-marked with cigarette
burns.

She was composed again now,
hard-faced once more. “I’ll stick my coat in the wash and clean
myself up. Then I’ll make us some tea,” she said. Tea – the
currency of British gratitude in the north as well as the
south.

The sofa didn’t look very
inviting. There were marks in the carpet where an armchair had once
been; four deep indents and a brighter square of carpet – no other
seating options. There was a coffee table in the middle with a
honeycomb of cup rings making its way from the wood surface onto a
pile of assorted letters, a mixture of junk mail and bills. I could
see the words ‘Final Demand’ several times.

I’d seen worse. It was grim but
mostly clean, if a bit dusty and a bit smelly. She went upstairs,
presumably to the bathroom. I paced around a little – all I wanted
to do was leave. I’d probably just leave as soon as she came
downstairs.

The walls were largely bare. A
mirror with rusted edges hung at a slight angle. There had once
been a picture behind the sofa, but that was long gone. There was a
small sideboard, probably bought at a later date than the other
furniture – it was darker and in better condition. There was a
series of four mismatched picture frames on its top. One was larger
than the others – it was silver; the real deal. It was tarnished,
but attempts had been made to clean it. It was a posed photograph,
a school photo.

It was that girl: the one I’d
seen in the alley by the shop. She looked positively luminous; a
big happy grin, perfect smile, adorable blonde pigtails. Hardly at
all like the sickly girl I’d seen before – but it was unmistakeably
her.

I heard the door move behind me.
Rose came back into the room, surprising me a little. On seeing me
looking at the photograph I saw her back stiffen.

“Is this your grand-daughter?” I
asked her.

“No,” she said very sternly.
“That’s my daughter.” Her nostrils flared, her lips curled in, her
eyes opened wide.

How was that possible? Rose was
pretty old to have a six or seven year old child. I know they can
do amazing things with IVF these days, but nothing about Rose’s
situation made me think that any of that was likely.

“She’s very beautiful,” I said.
All the pictures on the sideboard were of her. But the others were
all faded, old photographs. I wondered if she was delusional, but
I’d seen the girl, walking around hardly much older than in the
pictures. Something was very wrong here…

There was a moment of
silence.

“I’ll get you that tea,” Rose
said.

I could’ve left it at that, I
should’ve left it at that. But then I said – why did I say it? – I
said: “I think I saw her the other day.”

Rose stopped dead. She spun
around; with a desperate look on her face, she said: “You seen
her?”

“About a week ago, I think.”

Rose launched herself at me. She
grabbed me by the sides of my cardigan; “Where did you see her?”
She started to shake me; “Where did you see her!”

“She was by the charity shop, in
the alley – Rose, calm down!” I pushed her arms off me, but she
just grabbed me higher up.

“What was she doing coming to
you!” She was shaking me again. “Why’d she come to you!” She pushed
me away sharply. I tumbled over the arm of the sofa, landing on the
sunken seats before rolling off onto the floor. I was lucky not to
smack my head on the coffee table as I landed on the carpet.

“I’m her mum, she should be
coming to me. I’m her bloody mother!” She clumsily tried to kick
me, but I moved my legs in time. I’d been in situations like this
before, but never on my own. I was terrified.

“Rose, you need to calm down.
Stop shouting, Rose.”

She didn’t know what to say for
a moment; she backed away a little, as if she wasn’t sure what had
come over her. I think she knew she’d crossed a line.

“You get out,” she breathed.
“Get out of this house!”

She turned around and went fast
into the kitchen. Petrified she might come out with a knife, I
pulled myself up and made a dash for the door. Thank God she hadn’t
done up all the locks – I undid the latch myself as I heard her
footsteps coming after me. As I ran out into the road I heard her
cry out to me:

“If you see her, you come get
me. You hear me! You bloody come and find me if you see her!”

I ran back to my car and locked
myself in and burst into tears. I don’t know how long I spent
there, slumped against the steering wheel, crying. I thought I was
passed all this, but obviously not. Just a prod and I was in pieces
again.

I’m being too hard on myself. I
was feeling pretty shaken up; that woman really was crazy. She
couldn’t possibly have a seven-year-old daughter. Perhaps she’d
died a long time ago and she never got over it. But then how could
I have seen the child in the alleyway? Maybe she was a different
child? Yet she looked so much like the child in the picture, those
old pictures…

My head was hurting. I wiped
away the tears with a tissue. I ought to be angry at her, but
losing your child was probably even more painful than losing your
husband. And that hurt badly enough. And then prophetically, as if
to make things worse, I got home and found a message on my
answerphone. The lawyers…

It was bad news. They weren’t
going to say much over the phone, but they implied that it might go
to court after all. That they had enough grounds to contest the
will.

I felt drained and slumped
against the wall. Bastards. Christ, I didn’t even really want the
money – I just didn’t want them to have it. They’d turned their
backs on him when he needed them and now they thought they had a
right to what he left behind? How low could people go?

They were going to make out I’d
taken advantage of him. Seduced him when he was at his most
vulnerable. We didn’t even start seeing each other until after he
was discharged. I was careful, damn careful about it. But they
weren’t going to see it that way, were they? My bosses didn’t see
it that way. Practically forced me to leave. I risked everything
because of him, and then he goes off and he bloody well kills
himself.

What did he think? He was saving
me heartache? Saving me pain? He could’ve fought it; it didn’t have
to end like that. And look what a mess he left. What a state he’d
left me in.

I opened a bottle of wine and
drank most of it in silence. I spent the evening lying on the floor
and staring at the ceiling. That mad bitch had hurt my shoulder. It
ached every time I lifted the glass or bottle to my lips. Christ,
Adrian, couldn’t you have held on that bit longer?

If only I’d been there. I never
thought that he could just give up like that. They can fight these
things; a prognosis is only an educated guess. He didn’t even leave
a note. He couldn’t face me in the end. He didn’t just want to save
me pain – he didn’t want to face me. Tell me he was throwing in the
towel. It was one tragedy too many. As if being schizophrenic
wasn’t enough for a man to take.

I stayed indoors for two days.
Cancelled an afternoon shift at the shop. Lied and said I had a
migraine. I just didn’t want to move. I wanted to find somewhere to
hide. I spent most of one day under the bed. Hiding in the
darkness. I didn’t eat. I drank very little.

I ran a bath on the second day.
Spent most of the day in it. Kept putting my head under the water
to see how long I could hold my breath. I don’t even know what I
was thinking. I just felt heavy. Simple tasks were too difficult.
Simple choices were too hard. Bubble bath or no bubble bath? Radio
on or radio off? I chose no in both cases, but only because I never
made a decision in the first place. Too much time just passed
by.

Strangely enough, it was a call
again from the lawyers that brought me out of my stupor. It was a
reminder that I couldn’t hide. And that there was still a vestige
of anger in me that wanted to take on those bastards. There was
still some fight left in me.

I called them back just before
they closed for the day. They were going to send me some papers,
which I would need to read and then go over with them
point-by-point to challenge which parts I felt were incorrect,
false, unfair, unjustified, etc.

Something to look forward
to…

I was back in the charity shop
on Wednesday. I didn’t mention anything about my relapse to Joyce,
but I had to tell her about Crazy Rose. I’d been outside to throw
some rubbish away, just after I’d got there in the morning, and I
knew someone was there in the alley. I just caught them shuffle
back around the corner when they saw me. I knew it was Rose; she
was searching where I said I’d seen the girl.