Hiding From the Light

‘Who was Liza?’

He was taken aback by the question. ‘I’ve no idea. Some old biddy who lived there, I suppose. The Simpsons might know. That’s the current owners.’ He glanced at his watch, torn between wanting to hang on to a potential customer and wanting to lock up and go home.

Emma smiled at him anxiously. ‘I’m prepared to put in an offer. Today. Now. You said no one else is interested? But I saw a woman up there watching me.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, still embroiled in her inner turmoil. Her hands were shaking. This was madness but she could feel waves of real panic constricting her chest.

Will Fortingale laughed. ‘Probably a nosy neighbour. To be honest no one has been up there to look for a couple of weeks. There was a flurry of interest after the ad in Country Life, but that fizzled out.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s got too much land for a weekend cottage and not enough for a viable business.’ Glancing at her, he raised an eyebrow. ‘I presume you want it for the former?’

‘No.’ Emma spoke without thinking. ‘I’d live there permanently –’ She stopped abruptly. That was nonsense. Complete nonsense. How could she live there? Of course it would be a weekend cottage. If that.

She found herself groping for one of the chairs in front of Will’s desk. Sitting down, she rubbed her face with her hands. Piers would never agree. She couldn’t do this. Not without talking to him. It was madness. Complete madness.

‘Are you all right?’ Will was watching her carefully. He had recognised some of her feelings at once; he’d seen it all before. The falling in love with a house, the longing, the day-dream-could-happen syndrome. Sitting there opposite him she was within seconds of making some fantasy come true. Usually people hesitated at this point, back-pedalled a bit, played for time. Either they would offer a sum so ludicrously low that there was no chance of it being accepted and their face would be saved, or they would disappear without trace – the dream confronted, acknowledged and rejected as impractical.

He walked round to the front of the desk. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ Her face was pasty and white.

She nodded, clenching her hands together and waited as he disappeared into the cupboard at the back of the office which served as a kitchenette and reappeared with a glass and some bottled water.

She drank it greedily and put the empty glass down on his desk. The voice in her head had returned, no longer seductive. This time it was insistent.

You’ve got to buy it, Emma. You’ve got to. We’ve waited too long for this chance. Buy it, Emma!

She took a deep breath. ‘I have to have it. I can’t explain it. It’s completely stupid.’ The anguish in her voice was real. What about her job? She loved her job. But did she really enjoy working in the City? Was that going to be her whole life, forever? Until she retired? Was that what she really wanted? Had that voice been her inner self speaking? An inner self who wanted to opt out, to return to that golden time when she was a child, before her father died, when life was full of certainty.

And what about Piers?

She looked near to tears and in spite of himself Will bit his lip in sympathy. ‘Why not sleep on it, Miss Dickson? No one else has made an offer.’ There he was again, telling her! What was the matter with him? ‘You could safely take a day or two to think about it. Maybe go and see it again? Maybe bring someone for a second opinion?’ He paused. He did quite badly want her out of the office, he realised suddenly. She was making him feel extremely uncomfortable. Anxiety – even fear – was coming off her in waves.

She was sitting with her eyes shut and for a moment he didn’t think she had heard him until he realised that she was staring at him again. ‘What sort of offer will they accept?’

He hesitated, toying with the idea of inflating the price, but something made him hold back. He shook his head remorsefully. ‘They’d accept fifty K under the asking price. To get rid of it quickly.’

‘All right.’ Her voice was tightly controlled. ‘I’ll go for it.’ She could afford it. She had her savings and her father’s trust money and he would have approved of this, she was sure of it. He had always been an enthusiast.

‘But you’ll want a survey?’ Will couldn’t cope with this spontaneity. It didn’t fit the norm.

‘No.’ Shaking her head she stood up. She went and stood by the window, gazing out into the street. The empty shop across the road where she had passed her unexpected coffee break that morning was deserted, the front door padlocked. She turned back to Will. ‘Ring them. Now. Check they’ll accept it.’ Her knuckles were white on the edge of his desk. ‘And a deposit. They’ll want a deposit –’

‘Not before Monday, Miss Dickson.’ Will found himself seriously worried now. ‘Honestly. If you want it, it’s yours.’ He reached into the file to find the phone number. Glancing up, he indicated the chair. ‘Please, sit down again while I phone them.’ He smiled at her. ‘Relax. I’m sure there won’t be a problem.’

8 (#ulink_d84a9a6d-333a-53a7-bc69-27ed58ea97dd)

Saturday lunchtime

‘I suggest we do the interviews upstairs.’ Colin, having taken the tray back to the coffee shop, was adjusting the lens on his camera. ‘The wall up there would be a good background. The herringbone brickwork or whatever it is.’

Joe Thomson, their sound man, had joined them at lunchtime with his daughter Alice who was going to act as production assistant. Joe at forty-two was balding, very tall and thin. His daughter had inherited his height and build. At eighteen she was already as tall as her father. With short cropped hair and studs in eyebrows and nose she appeared far more confident and outgoing than in fact she was. This was her first assignment – a gap job before going up to university. Half of her was determined she would not blow it. The other half was scared stiff.

Colin and Mark had been in Manningtree for two days now, staying at a bed and breakfast in Brook Street, and Joe and Alice had joined them after driving down from London. The first day had been wasted for Colin and Mark when the expected key had not been forthcoming and Stan Barker, the owner, had proved extraordinarily elusive. They had only run him to earth that first evening at the pub, so their first visit to the shop had been perhaps appropriately after dark. The atmosphere had been suitably sinister.

After the visit Mark had slept uneasily and woken early. The second night he had been shocked awake by the sound of someone screaming. Splashing his face in cold water he had stood for several minutes in the bathroom of the bed and breakfast, staring into the mirror before he had tiptoed back to his bedroom. The sound had been part of his dream, he knew that. And yet, somehow it had come from outside him. He climbed back into bed and sat there, with the table light on, huddled beneath the bedcovers fighting sleep. When at last he had dozed off he dreamed he was running down a dark road and there were people chasing him. He could hear them shouting, baying like hounds and growing closer all the time. He was still running, out of breath and drenched in sweat, when his alarm clock woke him.

Mark glanced up at the others from the clipboard. ‘I’m going to want the interviews in different settings. Perhaps some outside by the river, or some of the other places associated with Hopkins. Unless the ghosts appear there’s basically not much to see here. An empty shop. An empty upstairs. But I’d like to get some shots of that staircase if we can light it properly. I’ve got three interviews set up for this afternoon, Joe. Barker first. I’m easy where he goes, wherever he feels most comfortable, then we can fit the others round him.’

‘You don’t think he’ll back out at the last moment?’ Colin hefted the camera up onto the counter.

‘He seemed quite keen.’ Mark flipped over the page and made a quick pencil note on his schedule. ‘I had a moment of inspiration and told him programmes like this lead to dozens of people trying to buy a property after it’s appeared on TV.’

‘Not necessarily after a programme like this one!’ Colin commented dryly.

‘No, well you never know!’ Mark glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s go up and see where it would be best to put him.’

He led the way up the creaking staircase. At the top he stopped, looking into the large upper room. He frowned. Something in there had changed from when he had been in there earlier.

‘Problem?’ Colin was immediately behind him, Joe and Alice at the rear.

‘No.’ Mark walked into the room. The last person up here had been Emma. She had seen something. Felt the atmosphere. He stared round thoughtfully. ‘Feel anything?’

‘Apart from cold?’ The others had trooped in behind him. Colin shivered.

‘Cold is a start. This is August.’

Colin strode over to the window and glanced down into the street. The window sill was level with his knees and he had to stoop to see out of it. ‘We expected bad vibes. What would a haunted house be without them?’ Hunkering down he reached for the window latch and pushed the small casement open. ‘The room just needs a bit of fresh air. This place has horrendous rising damp and probably dry rot and death-watch beetle and every other scourge that old buildings are heir to. Any of that would be enough to put off a buyer, you know.’ He stood up and faced the others. ‘Mark?’

Mark was staring at the brick wall. ‘I saw something move. There. In front of the wall.’ His face had gone white.

They all followed the pointing finger and looked hard at the bricks. The temperature in the room had plummeted. For a moment they stood in total silence, no one daring to move. The traffic noise from the High Street had ceased and the quiet was unnaturally claustrophobic.

‘Can’t see anything. Shall I go down for the camera?’ Colin said quietly. He glanced at Alice. She was gazing at the wall with a slight frown on her face. If she was scared she was hiding it well.

‘No.’ Mark stepped over beside him. ‘No, it’s gone, whatever it was.’

Outside a car hooted.

‘Probably a spider,’ Joe put in firmly. He rearranged his lanky frame, folding his arms nonchalantly.

‘Probably.’ Turning, Mark stared out of the window, taking a deep breath of the air flooding into the room. A strong smell of traffic fumes rose from the street below, where cars paused to pass each other in the narrow thoroughfare. Suddenly the room felt marginally warmer.

The interview took only twenty minutes from beginning to end. They could tell it was going to be a disaster from the moment Stan Barker walked into the shop.

‘I’m not going upstairs.’ He stood, uncomfortable in his best suit, just inside the door.

Colin eyed the florid face, the too-tight collar, the jazzy tie, and glanced at Mark with a raised eyebrow.

Mark gave a barely perceptible shrug. ‘Perhaps you could stand there, at the bottom of the stairs? I just want to ask you a few questions then we’re going to do some shots of the shop itself.’

As interviewer-cum-presenter he was going to remain out of shot. If necessary he could get Colin to insert one or two angles of himself later. They always took a few interviewer shots in case.

‘So, Mr Barker, how long have your family owned number one Church Street?’