The Grey Girl (2 page)

She turned and disappeared from the room, closing the creaking door behind her. I put my rucksack and bag from the chemist on the bed and walked towards the large window at the back of the room. I could see the garden – a beautiful lawn, smart hedges. But best of all I could see a winding stream that ran through the grounds, and further along the stream I could see what looked like a boathouse. If nothing else Dudley Hall was going to provide me with perfect scenery in which to sit and write my screenplay.

I closed my eyes and tried to steady my nerves. I reminded myself that I'd waited five long weeks to finally have my freedom back. My life was mine once again, and this was where I needed to be. I needed time and space to breathe, to write and to recover from everything that had happened to me at school. And that's what I would get at Dudley Hall.

Opening my eyes, I stared blankly into the bare, white room. Alone, in between the white walls and the echoing silence, I felt so small and fragile. As if I might lose myself, like I'd done before. Memories of everything that had happened came flooding back … The Blue Lady who had haunted my school, the smell of her rotting flesh burning my nose when she crept into my room at night. The soft padding of her muddy footprints and the feel of her ice-cold hands as she gripped me like a vice. And for as long as I live I'll never forget her face, her dark eyes pleading for release. Her fear and her restlessness at being trapped in a world she should have left long ago. The doctors at Warren House had tried to convince me that I was crazy. That what I'd seen had all been in my head. For a while I had almost believed them. But stepping foot in Dudley Hall, I suddenly felt stupid for ever doubting myself. My mind wasn't playing tricks on me. I know what I saw. I saw her come back.

In that moment I knew that everything I had spent weeks trying to bury deep down inside of me was on the brink of resurfacing. The ghosts, the visions, the terror, it all began to creep up inside me and I wanted nothing more than to run away from that old house and never look back. There was something about Dudley Hall that wasn't right. I knew what it felt like to stand in a room that had a sinister story to tell. And standing in that room I knew, as instinctively as a dog knows to hide from a storm, that something in Dudley Hall wasn't at rest.

Closing my eyes and once again shutting out the world around me, I tried to push my dark thoughts to the back of my mind. It isn't the house, I tried to reassure myself, it's me.
It's all in my head
, I repeated like a mantra. All in my head. She's dead and buried. She won't come back.

I woke up the next morning to bright light flooding painfully into my room. I could have sworn I'd drawn the curtains the night before, but they were pulled right back. Someone must have come into my room whilst I'd slept and opened them.

I looked at the small travel clock I'd put on my bedside table. It was gone nine o'clock. I smiled lazily; I'd never been allowed to sleep that late in Warren House. The bottle of blue pills the doctor had given me sat next to the travel clock. I reached over, pulled out the bedside-table drawer, and placed the pills inside it. Out of sight, out of mind. I didn't care what the doctors said; I didn't need to take them. They fuzzed up my head and made it difficult to think, and I needed my mind to be as sharp as a razor if I wanted to spend my days writing.

As I pulled back the duvet and swung my feet out of the bed my stomach grumbled loudly. I'd hardly eaten anything the night before. I'd spent dinnertime quietly pushing a few potatoes around my plate whilst Aunt Meredith jabbered on about the Victorian-themed murder mystery party she was hosting that weekend. My cousin Toby was excited because he got to wear his Sherlock Holmes costume. He'd grown loads since I last saw him; he was eight years old now. Toby hadn't stopped talking the whole evening, which was good because it meant I didn't have to. I had too much going on inside my head to hold a conversation with someone. I was busy convincing myself that there was nothing strange about Dudley Hall, that my feeling of unease was all in my head.

Despite the fact that I was famished, I had something important to do before I went downstairs for breakfast. I should have done it the night before but I'd been too tired. The bag from the chemist in the village lay in the middle of my bedroom floor. I picked it up, along with a fresh towel, and headed for the bathroom. Forty-five minutes later I was ready to face the world again, looking like the old me.

‘Why is your hair that colour?' Toby asked as I sauntered into the ginormous old kitchen with my head held high. ‘It wasn't like that last night.'

I headed for the kettle, filled it up and flicked it on. ‘I dyed it this morning. I actually prefer my hair this colour.'

Toby sniggered. ‘You look like one of those Goth people.'

I threw up my hands in horror. ‘
Angels, and minsters of grace, defend us!
'

‘What does that mean?' Toby laughed at me.

‘It's a line from
Hamlet
, by William Shakespeare.' I smiled down at him. ‘Don't tell me you haven't heard of Shakespeare?'

‘Good lord, Dudley Hall has its own resident firecracker,' came a deep voice from the doorway before Toby could reply. I turned around to see a middle-aged woman with a bright orange scarf tied around her head. She was wearing a long purple skirt and a loose fitting red top that clashed with everything else she had on. I knew who the woman was without her introducing herself. Aunt Meredith had told me about her over dinner last night. She was once an actress but now lived in the village and helped out at Dudley Hall with the cooking and cleaning. She also worked at the murder mystery parties and pretended to be a psychic.

‘You must be Old Nell,' I said, looking her up and down. She had a necklace of gold coins jingling around her neck, and large gold earrings dangling from several holes in each ear. She was shorter than me, and quite squat. Old Nell was obviously someone who dressed to get attention; either that or she inhabited the character of Dudley Hall's psychic in residence even when the guests weren't around to see her. Either way, my first impression of Old Nell was that she was someone who wasn't afraid to stand apart from the crowd. I instantly respected her for that, and it made me want to like her.

‘Less of the old, please,' Nell said, walking into the room. ‘That's only what the guests call me. And I'll have a cup of tea, seeing as you've got the kettle on. Unless you're running the water so you can put out the fire raging on top of your head.' She nodded at my head of freshly dyed red hair.

A scowl clouded my face. Maybe I'd been wrong about Nell. She wasn't someone who appreciated individuality, she ridiculed it.

‘My hair is an expression of who I am,' I mumbled, as the kettle boiled and I reached for some mugs.

‘Nell's taking me into the village to the joke shop today,' Toby announced. ‘We're going to find a pipe to go with my Sherlock Holmes costume. Sherlock Holmes is always sucking on a pipe. But I don't want a real one – smoking stinks. Are you going to come with us?'

‘No.' I shook my head as I handed Nell a cup of tea. I would have loved to have a brother or sister. I thought it was cruel that my parents cursed me with being an only child, so I've always liked Toby. But still, there was no way I wanted to spend the day with him trawling around Dudley-on-Water's lame excuse for shops. I had better things to do. ‘I need to do some work on my screenplay today.'

Toby looked mildly disappointed and Nell gave me a patronising smile. I turned my back on her with a loud exhale of air and made my way towards the impressive-looking coffee machine on the kitchen counter. I'd never used a coffee machine like that before. In fact, I'd never really made a habit of drinking coffee, but as every writer seemed to drink coffee, it was time for me to start drinking it too. I flicked the coffee machine on at the wall and started to fiddle with the buttons and switches, trying in vain to make the contraption work.

Nell made a snorting sound. ‘Need some help with that?'

‘No,' I replied, making a mental note to practise making coffee once Nell had left the house so I didn't have the same debacle the next morning. ‘I actually prefer instant coffee anyway.'

‘Cupboard on the right,' she said. I stopped wrestling with the machine and reached inside the cupboard for the instant coffee.

‘Aunt Meredith says you used to be an actress,' I said steadily to Nell, as I poured hot water over the coffee granules in the cup. ‘But now you just stay here and help out with the murder mystery parties.'

‘Nell is a psychic too,' Toby informed me before Nell could speak. ‘And sometimes she helps out with the cooking and cleaning. But she only cleans downstairs, she won't go upstairs.'

‘That's me,' she nodded, her gold earrings jangling. ‘Jack of all trades and a mistress of many.'

‘Was it you who came into my room this morning and opened the curtains whilst I was still sleeping?' I asked pointedly. ‘Because I prefer to sleep late in the holidays. And the doctor did say I need my rest.'

Nell raised her painted eyebrows and they disappeared into her orange turban. ‘I've not been anywhere near your room, my dear. Toby is many things but he's not a liar. I don't go upstairs in this house.' A stony expression fell across her face. ‘I dare say no one has been near your room this morning. Your aunt left early, had to drive into the city to pick up some costume bits for this evening. That reminds me, the guests will be arriving from four so can you please be in your costume by then?'

Who did this washed-up old fortune-teller wannabe think she was? ‘I'm going to sit this party out,' I told her indignantly. ‘I actually have other things I need to do this weekend.'

‘Suzy's writing a screenplay,' Toby reminded Nell.

Nell's eyes narrowed and she smiled like a cat. ‘So she says.' I hated her already. ‘Well, we'll get out of your red hair and leave you to it. Come on, Mister Toby, let's get you to the joke shop.'

Nell slurped up her tea like some kind of common washerwoman and yanked my small cousin's arm, pulling him out of the kitchen. ‘Bye, Suzy, see you later!' Toby called.

I turned around and leant my elbows on the kitchen counter so I could gaze out of the window. The kitchen's large sash windows at the back of the house looked onto Dudley Hall's sprawling grounds. It was a similar view from my bedroom window, which sat directly above. I brought my cooling coffee to my lips and grimaced at the taste of it. I forced myself to swallow the bitter black liquid as my eyes glazed over and I started to daydream. The grounds really were beautiful, the perfect place to sit and write. I imagined myself in a film, where a montage of shots would capture me outside in the hazy sunshine, writing my screenplay. I pictured the camera panning in on me as I sat beneath the old weeping willow on the riverbank, bare feet kicking at the cool water as I wrote with a notepad on my lap, my pen working furiously against the paper.

The sound of a vehicle pulling up on the gravel driveway outside violently dragged me from my daydream. Through the glass panels of the kitchen's back door I could see a man pulling a motorbike to a halt. My stomach did a nervous flip as I tried to work out what to do. Aunt Meredith hadn't told me to expect a visitor this morning, and it was too early for any of the guests to arrive. My eyes anxiously flashed towards the telephone on the wall as I briefly considered calling the police. The man could have been anyone – a burglar, a murderer, a crazed kidnapper who'd been watching me and waiting to strike for years. A million and one scenarios flashed through my head, and I stood frozen to the spot as I watched the man swing his legs off the bike and onto the gravel, pulling off his helmet as he landed.

As soon as I had a clear view of his face I realised he was younger than I'd initially thought – not that much older than me. He was wearing worn jeans and a black biker jacket over a white T-shirt. His blond hair was cut short, but before I could take any more in I nearly dropped my cold, disgusting coffee all over the floor as I realised the boy was heading for the kitchen door.

My eyes flicked again to the telephone on the wall. I didn't have enough time to call the police. If the boy had come here to kill or kidnap me no one would ever get here in time to rescue me.

Horrified, I watched in slow motion as he walked right up to the back door, swung it open and waltzed straight into the kitchen. He nonchalantly placed his motorbike helmet on the kitchen table, along with what looked like a small, padded coolbag, without so much as a word or a look in my direction. ‘You must be Suzy,' he said, brushing past me and reaching for the kitchen cupboard.

‘What on earth are you doing?' I asked, my voice sounding more angry than scared.

‘Getting a glass of water,' he answered without looking at me.

‘You can't just walk into my house and pour yourself a glass of water.'

Still without looking at me the boy sauntered over to the sink, standing only inches away from me. His arm brushed against mine as he reached over to fill his glass with water from the tap. ‘This isn't your house,' he said.

‘It's my aunt's house,' I replied quickly.

He brought the glass of water up to his lips and took a long, slow drink. His light hazel eyes met mine. ‘I thought it was your aunt's husband's house.'

‘I have no idea who you are,' I shot back.

‘I'm Nate,' he responded, taking another sip of water.

‘Okay, Nate. Who are you and what are you doing here?' I looked him up and down. ‘Are you the gardener?'

Nate shook his head. ‘Digging about in mud's not really my thing. My aunt works here. I'm just here to drop off her crystal ball for the party tonight.' He nodded at the bag he'd put on the table before draining the last of his water and putting the empty glass in the sink. He didn't even bother to wash it up. ‘Meredith said you've been in hospital. You don't look sick to me.'

Brilliant, now complete strangers knew my mental health history. I reached up and touched my newly dyed hair, feeling suddenly self-conscious. ‘It's actually none of your business but I'm fine.'

‘Glad to hear it.' He smiled. ‘When I heard Meredith's niece was expelled from school, did a stretch in a head hospital and was now coming to town I couldn't help but be –'

‘Excuse me? A “head hospital”?' I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. ‘Just who do you think you are?'

‘Well, that's a complex question.' He grinned. ‘One I'm sure I'll have the chance to discuss with you at great length over the next few weeks, seeing as we'll be seeing quite a lot of each other.'

I let out a small splutter of outrage. ‘What makes you think that?'

The boy crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring my body language. He gave me a slow, cheeky grin and my eyes momentarily rested on the dimples in his cheeks. ‘Look around the place, Suzy. Nothing ever happens in Dudley-on-Water. Trust me, you'll be bored senseless soon enough and wanting someone to distract you. I thought –'

‘I don't care what you think,' I said quickly. ‘I'm not interested. I'm not here to entertain you, or make friends, or do anything else you might have in mind. I just want to keep my head down. Besides, I'm only here for a few weeks, I'll be gone before you know it. And by the way, I wasn't expelled from school. It just wasn't the right place for me.'

The grin slipped from Nate's face as he studied me for a long, awkward moment. I held his gaze, determined not to be the first to look away. ‘Suit yourself,' he said eventually, shrugging. He turned to go and I smiled to myself in triumph. ‘Let me know if you change your mind. Tell Nell I said hello, and make sure she gets that.' He pointed at the bag he'd left on the kitchen table. ‘Nice to meet you, Suzy.' And then he scooped up his helmet and just walked off. Out of the kitchen, onto the gravel driveway and away from me. My mouth hung open like a fly trap as I watched Nate climb back onto his bike, rev the engine and drive away without looking back.