The House on Cold Hill

28

Shaking, Ollie and Caro stood, naked, beside the bed.

‘Are we going mad?’ she said.

He lifted each corner of the mattress in turn and stared down at the corroded nuts securing the frame to the legs. He tried to turn each one with his fingers but none of the four of them would budge.

‘It’s just not possible, Ollie,’ she said. ‘It’s not possible.’

He could hear the tremor of terror in her voice. He looked up at the ceiling, around at the walls, then up again, his brain a vortex of confused thoughts. ‘Are we sodding dreaming?’

‘No, no, we are very definitely not dreaming.’

The clock radio was on the floor, where he had left it last night. The dial said 6.42 a.m. Somehow it had reset itself. The room seemed to tilt sideways, suddenly, and he had to steady himself against the side of the bed to prevent himself from falling over. He looked at his wife, her eyes wide, her face pale with confusion and fear, then he pulled on his jeans and T-shirt.

‘I’ll be back in a sec.’

He opened the door.

‘I’m not staying in this room alone, wait for me.’ She tugged on her jeans and sweatshirt, and followed him as he padded, barefoot, down the narrow wooden treads of the steep staircase.

‘Go and make sure Jade’s awake, darling,’ he said, as they reached the first-floor landing.

She nodded and headed, as if in a trance, along towards Jade’s room.

Ollie went down into the atrium and hurried through the kitchen to the scullery, where he kept his toolbox. Then he lugged it back up to the attic, took out an adjustable spanner, lifted up a corner of the mattress, and tried to move the corroded nut with the tool. It would not budge.

He put all his strength into it and levered the spanner again. With a protesting groan, the nut moved a fraction of an inch.

‘Is this some kind of a joke?’ Caro asked, suddenly by his side again. ‘Is it?’

Ollie tried again. He tried with each of the four nuts in turn. ‘No. No, it’s not.’

‘A bed can’t rotate, Ollie. What’s going on, tell me? Is this some kind of a fucking joke? Tell me if it is because I’m really not finding it funny. Is this your idea of some stupid game to try to spook me out?’

He looked up at her. ‘Why the hell would I want to do that? Oh sure, I got up in the middle of the night, unscrewed our bed without waking you up and reassembled it in the opposite direction. You really think that, Caro?’

‘Do you have a better explanation?’

‘There has to be one.’ He looked up at the ceiling. Then at the walls, then down at the bed, trying to do the maths. The geometry.

Tears began trickling down Caro’s cheeks. He stood up and held her tightly in his arms. ‘Look, let’s think about this rationally.’

‘That’s what I’m doing, Ollie, I’m thinking about this rationally.’ She was breathing in deep, sobbing gulps. ‘I’m thinking fucking rationally. I’m thinking this whole fucking house is cursed.’

‘I don’t believe in curses.’

‘No? Well maybe you’d better start.’

He held her tightly again. ‘Come on, let’s get showered and have breakfast and we’ll try to think this through.’

‘It’s that bloody woman!’ she blurted.

‘What woman?’

She calmed down a little, and was silent for some moments. Then she said, ‘I think we have a ghost.’

‘A ghost?’

‘I didn’t want to say anything, in case you thought I was going nuts. But I’ve seen something.’

‘What have you seen?’

‘The morning after we moved in, you’d gone downstairs and I was sitting at my dressing table putting on my make-up. I saw a woman — a sort of old woman with a pinched face — standing right behind me. I turned round and there was nothing there. I thought it was my imagination. Then I saw her again a few days later. Then on Sunday I saw her in the atrium, sort of gliding across it.’

‘Can you describe her?’

Caro described the woman. Ollie realized it was exactly the same description her mother had given him.

‘I’ve seen her too, darling,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to say anything to you, because I didn’t want to spook you out.’

‘How fucking great is this? We’ve moved into our dream home and it has a sodding ghost.’

‘There was an article I read in the paper about ghosts, which said that sometimes, when people move into an old house, it activates something there. Some memory of a past resident. But it all settles down after a while.’

‘I don’t call turning our bed round in the middle of the night settling down, do you?’

‘There has to be a rational explanation for what happened last night,’ he said. ‘There has to be.’

‘Sure, so tell me. I’m all ears.’

Twenty minutes later, showered and shaved, Ollie went downstairs and collected the papers from the letter box in the front door, then he went into the kitchen. He turned on the radio, out of habit, and began to lay out breakfast on the table, trying to think clearly and rationally. There bloody well had to be an explanation for what had happened last night. Could they have imagined it all? Could the bed always have been that way round?

But he remembered the conversation they’d had in bed last night, how they were looking forward to waking in the morning and staring out through the window at the lake.

Was he going insane? Were they both?

He thought about the strange voices he’d heard in the night. Had he imagined them?

Bombay walked into the room and meowed at him. Moments later, Sapphire appeared, too.

‘Hungry? Want your breakfast?’

Bombay meowed again.

He poured dried food out for them, filled their water bowl, then went over to a cupboard, took out Jade’s Cheerios pack and put it on the table, along with a bowl and milk. He was craving a coffee, and as Jade hadn’t yet appeared, he switched on the Nespresso machine, popped a Ristretto capsule in it, placed a cup underneath it, waited for the green lights to stop winking and pressed the one for a long espresso. While it was hissing, he began preparing some fruit for himself and Caro.

‘Dad!’

He turned, hearing Jade’s reproachful voice.

‘Morning, lovely!’

She stood at the entrance to the kitchen in her school uniform, her face looking pale. ‘I wanted to make it, that’s my job — why didn’t you wait?’

‘I’m going to need at least two coffees this morning — you can make the second one.’

‘Whatever.’ She sat down sulkily at the refectory table and reached for the cereal pack.

Peeling a tangerine, Ollie asked, ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Actually, not very well.’

‘Oh?’

‘Look, don’t tell Mum, right?’ She raised a finger to her lips. ‘Special secret?’

Ollie raised his own index finger to his lips. ‘Special secret! OK! Don’t tell your mum what?’

‘Well, I think I saw a ghost.’