The House on Cold Hill

10

‘It’s your birthday soon,’ Caro said, during a commercial break in the TV programme. ‘You’re going to be an old man!’

‘Yep, tell me about it,’ Ollie replied.

‘Forty! Still, you’re wearing pretty well.’

He smiled.

‘We haven’t discussed how to celebrate.’

‘I think we just do something low key until we’re sorted here. Then we could think about a big party — if we can afford it. Maybe dinner with a few friends? Martin and Judith? The Hodges? Iain and Georgie?’

They were lying naked in bed, with the Sunday papers spread across the duvet and on the floor either side of them. Downton Abbey, which they’d recorded earlier, was playing on the television on the wall. Caro had not missed an episode. Ollie kept an occasional eye on it while he worked his way through the Sunday Times sections. The windows were wide open. It was a warm, balmy night. Almost too hot for the duvet.

‘You seemed very distracted today,’ she said.

‘Sorry, darling, a lot on my mind.’ He was looking up at the large brown water stain on the ceiling. At the old, faded wallpaper, not yet stripped, at the walls not yet ready for the new paint colours Caro and he had chosen, and the bare floorboards that they had decided to have sanded and varnished, and cover with rugs. At the huge old-fashioned radiators which the plumber reckoned he could get a decent price for at an architectural salvage place. At the cracked marble fireplace. At the rusty old lock on the door. The brand-new cream curtains only accentuated the poor state of decoration of the rest of the room.

The house was warm at the moment, but in another month, with the October gales coming in, all that would change. The temperature could drop within a week or so. The heating barely worked at the moment, but to replace the system, they would have to be without heat totally for a week, the plumber had estimated. They’d given him the go-ahead to get the new boiler and replace all the piping and they’d been assured the work would be completed by the end of September. It had to be or the place would start feeling pretty miserable.

‘You mean the website? Charles Cholmondley? How do you pronounce it?’

‘Chumley.’ Ollie nodded. ‘Partly that.’

‘I think it looks great.’

‘I think the client likes it.’

‘Of course he does, you’ve done a great job — particularly considering everything else you’ve had to deal with this week! I meant to ask, did you remember to put the sign for a cleaning lady up on the village shop noticeboard?’

‘Yes — Ron, who runs the shop with his wife, Madge, said there were a couple of people they thought might be interested.’

‘On first-name terms with the locals after just a week?’ she said with a grin.

‘They’re a lovely couple. He’s a retired accountant and she was a teacher. The shop’s a labour of love — they do it for pin money.’

‘Nice there are people like that in the world,’ she said. ‘And I like that you’re getting to know the place a bit. We ought to go in the pub sometime. Perhaps see if they do Sunday lunch? We need to try to be a bit involved in the community — and there might be some other girls here around Jade’s age she could become friends with.’

‘Yes, absolutely. Maybe you could join the local jam-making class?’ he joked.

‘There is one?’

‘There was an ad in the store!’ He fell silent. He’d still not told Caro about the old lady. Fortunately, it seemed to have slipped from his father-in-law’s mind and he had not mentioned her again at lunch. But at some point soon, Ollie knew, he would have to say something to Caro. Hopefully in the coming days he’d find the strange old man again and pump him for more about the background of the apparition. If both his in-laws had seen her, and he’d seen something too, then others must have seen her as well. Presumably it was someone who had lived here in the past. Did the estate agent know about her? Was there any legal obligation for it to have been disclosed?

And if it had been disclosed, would that have made a difference? Would they have still bought the house if they’d known it had a ghost?

Whatever ghosts were...

He wasn’t so much frightened by the idea of the house having a ghost, as intrigued. But Caro wouldn’t have agreed to buying this place in a million years if she’d known.

He stared at the paper, at the headline of the article in the ‘News Review’ section. As if it had been planted there by an unseen hand.

He grinned at the coincidence. Then, before he had a chance to start reading, he felt Caro’s fingers trace softly down his navel, then further down still, and she turned and nuzzled his ear. ‘We’ve been here over a week,’ she said. ‘We haven’t had a date night and we haven’t done anything naughty in all that time. That’s far too long.’

‘Far too long,’ he echoed, feeling suddenly deeply aroused. They’d promised each other when they had got engaged that they would not become like some couples and let the romance in their relationship ever fade. As part of that resolve they had a date night once a week and had rarely missed one, except in the period around Jade’s birth. That had been a terrible time in which Caro had nearly died, and she had been left unable to conceive again.

With her free hand she switched off the television, placed the remote on her bedside table and began lifting sections of the paper and magazines off the bed and chucking them on the floor. Then her left hand moved lower still, and he winced in pleasure, then gasped as she closed her fingers around him.

He leaned away from her, for an instant, to turn off the overhead light, leaving just his bedside table lamp on. Then he turned back to face her. ‘I love you,’ he said.

She stared at him, as if examining his face, with a quizzical look. As her reply she kissed him.

Minutes later, lying on top of her and deep inside her, Ollie had the sudden sensation of being watched. Distracted, he turned his head, suddenly and sharply, towards the door. But it was closed. There was no one there.

‘What is it?’ she murmured.

‘Sorry — I thought — I thought I heard Jade come in.’ He kissed her and held her tightly, his arms round her, pressing their cheeks tightly together. ‘I love you so much,’ he said.

‘You too.’

Afterwards, Ollie fell asleep within minutes. He awoke a while later from a bad dream, drenched in perspiration, confused, unsure for some moments where he was. A hotel room? Their old house in Brighton? The green glow of his clock radio was the only light in the room. He saw the time flip from 2.47 to 2.48. Outside, an owl hooted. Moments later it hooted again.

Fragments of the dream remained. The old woman in a blue dress chasing him down the corridors of the house, then appearing in front of him, making him turn back. Then running into a tiny room and realizing he was trapped, turning round and seeing the old man with the briar pipe glaring at him, malevolently.

He wriggled up the bed a little to try to shake the dream away, and reached out in the darkness for the tumbler of water he kept by the bed. Caro slept deeply beside him, on her stomach, her arms round her pillow as if it were a life raft. She always slept soundly; she was capable of sleeping through a thunderstorm, and he envied her that. He envied her untroubled sleep right now, as he listened to the sound of her rhythmic breathing and the occasional little put-put sound of air bubbles through her lips.

He sipped the water and replaced the glass then, suddenly, a deep, paralysing chill gripped his body. He heard the click of the door opening. Then someone — or something — entered the room. He held his breath. He could just make out the dark shape moving, then stopping and standing right in front of the bed, staring at him. It was motionless. Goose pimples rippled down his skin and the hair rose up on the back of his neck. Was it a burglar? What weapon could he grab? The glass? The bedside lamp? His phone? His phone had a flashlight — he could flip it on.

Slowly, as silently as he could, he moved his hand towards the phone.

Then he heard Jade say urgently, from the foot of the bed, ‘There’s someone in my room!’