The Lost Child (18 page)

I follow him upstairs, where we emerge into a long dark corridor full of shadows. Lots of rooms leading off, rows of dark doors all tightly shut.

Your parents moved here from Finsbury Square in London with nine small children. Ellen, the baby, was born here. Was she born in one of these rooms? The yowl of a newborn zinging through this thick dark air. Quick footsteps on the wooden stairs. The sigh of a door opening and closing and the crying stops. A startled gulp. The hypnotic relief of a child sucking. What can it be like, giving birth for the tenth time?

I take a couple of steps. The floorboards creak. I step back. They creak again.

They're all meeting rooms now, says Jeremy. But I suppose they were bedrooms or whatever back then.

Do you know how many there are?

He hesitates.

Well, there's fourteen meeting rooms that we use. But it's not just us who use them. We hire them out to other companies too, you see.

And which one's the room you were telling me about?

He smiles.

We'll come to that.

It's fifteenth-century, then, is it, this place? I ask him.

Some of it's older. Some of it dates back to I I -something, I think.

He smiles.

Oh no, not at all.

In one room, I walk over to a window and put my hands on the rough stone sill and look out. Down on the lawn, in what feels like another world, two foxes are playing on the lawn in the sunshine. Grappling, cuffing, rolling over and over.

Hey, now you see that door over there in the corner, says Jeremy, indicating the one to my right. Go and open it, and then look down.

I do as he says. The door opens on to a small dark space, with a steep, twisty stone staircase leading straight downwards. A fairy-tale staircase. A thick tasselled rope hangs across it, indicating it's out of bounds.

Oh, I say, where does it go?

Just down. Downstairs, I mean.

What was it for?

No one to go up the best stairs whilst cleaning.

He shrugs.

Just another staircase, I suppose. Now open the next door and I think we can go through. You can get to this next room via two different doors.

I try the door but it won't give.

Oh, sorry, it must be locked, says Jeremy, and he leads me back on to the dark landing and along the corridor, so we can enter the next room by a narrow door which is at the very end of the corridor.

This is it, he says.

The haunted one?

He nods. The Prioress's bedroom.

And who was she, the Prioress?

I don't really know.

We're standing in a long low room - larger than the other bedrooms - with another large stone fireplace. A long table in the centre, surrounded by chairs - and yet more sachets of sugar and milk. I walk across to the window, conscious of Jeremy behind me, staying by the door. I look out. The lawn's empty now, almost in shadow. The foxes have gone.

So was it just about where you're standing? I ask him.

What?

The ghost.

He glances behind him.

I suppose so, yes.

And did he say anything about what she was like?

I don't know. Dark clothes, I remember that. And that she pushed past quite rudely. That was about it, I think.

And so - I mean, are people scared to go in here?

Jeremy smiles.

I don't know. Yeah, I suppose people do tend to avoid going in on their own. I know the cleaners will only go in in the morning.

And he takes me up another smaller and much shabbier flight of stairs - unused, dirty, paint peeling - and unlocks a small door at the top. We find ourselves in a huge, derelict attic, seven or eight large rooms, wallpaper from the 1950s or '60s falling off the walls. Lemon yellow and mauve. Flowers. Patterns.

What an amazing space, I say, looking around me. It's a whole flat - big enough for someone to live here.

Someone did, Jeremy says. I think one of the last Colman ladies lived here till she died.

I think about this. I'd completely forgotten for a moment that this place belonged to the Colmans. Colman's Mustard. The Colmans lived here after you all left for Woodton.

I think there were several of them, Jeremy says, several sisters. The last of them didn't die that long ago.

Really? I try to imagine how it would have felt to live entirely alone at the top of this ancient building. And no one's going to do anything with it now?

We walk from room to room, our footsteps and our voices echoing oddly. It feels like a space that's grown unused to life. Disturbed and set on edge by our presence.

Too expensive, Jeremy says. Because of it being listed and so on. You have to use exactly the right kind of wallpaper and all that rubbish. It just wouldn't pay, I suppose.

He locks the little door behind us again and we go back down the narrow stairs. Back to the dark corridor leading to the Prioress's bedroom.

Jeremy glances at his watch.

I don't know what you want to do now, but you're more than welcome to have a little wander round on your own for a bit - if you want to soak up the atmosphere. I can leave you to it if you'd like to do that.

I hesitate. In my original polite, pleading email to the Robinson's PR people, this is exactly what I asked for. To have a look around, preferably on my own.

I'd seen myself wandering through placid sun-filled rooms, thinking about you, sensing your long-ago presence. If they'd said I would have to be accompanied at all times, I would have been disappointed.

I glance down the corridor. The sun's gone in completely. Every scrap of light has been sucked away, turned to shadow. The blackness beckons.

You know, I say, that's really nice of you but I think I've seen enough. You've given me such a lovely tour and I've certainly got a sense of the place. I think I've got exactly what I came for.

But he was so angry with our mother that he found it hard to be friendly, even to us, his kids. From the first weekend we went to see him, he'd sit us down and talk to us about all the things our mother had done. He'd sit there and smoke and tell us about all the terrible things as If they were actually our fault. I was twelve and my sisters were ten and eight and we wanted to dress up or make a den or go out and play with our friends in the village, but for at least some of the weekend we had to sit and listen to everything that had gone wrong with his marriage and his life.

He told us how he'd been taken for a ride by our mother, how she'd stolen half his property and how the man she was living with, the man who later became our stepfather, was
a long streak
if
piss.
Our future stepfather had two sons about our age who we got on quite well with, but we had to promise our father that, if they came round, we would not speak to them or look at them. If they came in the room, he said, we must look away.

OK, we said.

There were so many rules. More and more rules - he was piling them up so hard my throat ached. And the more rules there were, the more things it was possible for us to do wrong if we stopped concentrating for even a second. And if we forgot the rules, it would really hurt him. If we called our house
home
by mistake, for instance, he shuddered visibly and shut his eyes. It felt bad, to give our daddy pain like that, especially when he had already been through so much, but sometimes it was just so hard to avoid.

He told us a lot of grown-up things, things I didn't really mind hearing but which I worried weren't quite suitable for my sisters. One time, he got out the affidavit for the divorce and made us read bits of it out loud. I don't remember what it said but I remember it felt odd to see my littlest sister, who was only eight, having solicitor's language explained to her like that, and some of it was about sex and I didn't think he should have been making her read it.

I'd always been an anxious child, but those weekends made me more and more jumpy and sad. I'd stand in the hall with my bag when it was nearly time for him to collect us, and have to take deep breaths. And as soon as we were in his car, I was alert to him - smiling and trying to laugh at his jokes and judge his mood. Sometimes he was fine, he was the old, friendly, lovely daddy. Other times, though, you could see that something had happened - may be Mum's solicitor had said something to his solicitor, or else he had discovered some new thing about our lives that upset him - and then I'd have to navigate his mood, taking a deep breath as we went over the bumps.

My son. The father.

She tells me her daughter is upset because our son hasn't been that nice to her recently. She needs to stay calm because she's really very hard to control when she's stressed out. So if you could just have a word with him and ask him to speak to her a bit more nicely, you know?

With a strong feeling that I somehow need to talk her down, keep her calm, I tell her I'll do that.

She can't have it, she goes on. She's got to do something about it. She's too young to have it. She's only sixteen years old, you see.

Oh yes, I say, I mean no. Oh my God, this is terrible - I am so sorry.

I'm trying hard to think, but the woman's stopping me. She's still talking. Her voice never stops.

Please talk to her. She won't listen to me.

Of course I want to help, I say. But I don't know her very well. Will she really listen to me?

Oh yes. She likes you. You're a nice lady. She's said that lots of times.

We make him sit down and talk to us properly. We try to make him understand what a very serious situation this is.

This isn't a game. A life has been started. We absolutely have to talk this girl into a pregnancy test and, if necessary, a termination. Dad and I are willing to pay so that it can be quick, but surely you see that we can only do it If we have her trust?

The boy looks unconcerned.

She just wants attention, he says. She doesn't even know what she's saying half the time. She's really warped, you know.

I'm not interested in her motives, I tell him. That's not relevant. Letting her have this baby is not an option.

He looks at me as if I'm mad.

But what am I supposed to do about it?

I stare at my boy - the boy we would support through anything, any accident, any problem, but who right now seems so totally unwilling to accept any responsibility whatsoever for his actions.

All we are asking you to do - the only thing! - is be nice to her. Be kind, be gentle. Don't say anything inflammatory. And if you can't stop yourself doing that, then stay away from her. We'll do the rest.

He looks at the floor, swallows.

I'm not putting myself out for that crazy person.

My heart bangs in my throat.

His father stands up.

For goodness' sake, this is your mess! You did this! Don't you at least see that?

You've simply got to start taking some responsibility here, I tell him.

That night the boy deliberately walks off with her mobile phone. We discover this because she rings us in the early morning, sobbing, threatening to send the police round.

I go up to his room and pull the duvet off him.

Why? Why did you do such a bloody stupid thing?

He blinks at me and it's clear he knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Because she bloody well pissed me off, that's why.

Where is it? Where's the phone?

She won't send the police round, says the boy. He pulls the blankets over his head.

His father is furious.

Are you completely bloody crazy? Your mother's about to go round there and try to do the supremely difficult thing of persuading this poor girl into a pregnancy test, so we can check she really is pregnant before we try to talk her into a termination, and you're busy stealing her phone because what? - because she
annoyed
you?

A dark look crosses the boy's face.

I don't know why you're bothering to get involved, he says. She may not even be pregnant. And even if she is, she's done so many drugs, isn't there a good chance she'd miscarry?

Have you brought her phone back? a yawning boy asks me.

No, but I'm working on it.

She's really fucking annoyed about it, you know.

I know. I'll get it back to her.

Someone goes off to fetch the girl as I stand there in the hall in my jeans and dark linen coat, clutching my car keys and feeling somehow sinister. The Angel of Death.