Page 22 of Between Us

‘Knock first, mate! Always knock! Simple as that!’ Dev was saying, in the kindly exasperated voice he’d used in emergency situations on the shop floor.

‘I know, I know. I’ll pay for any damage,’ Matt said, looking towards a door which Roisin could now see had splinters at its frame.

‘That’ll be her therapy bills,’ Anita said, and Dev gave his fiancée a hard look.

‘Hi. What’s happened?’ Roisin said.

They turned.

‘Gina’s had a haunting!’ Dev said. ‘She’s met the ghost.’

‘The Crying Lady?’ Roisin felt a bit foolish, asking as if it was a real person. Her heart started pounding, nonetheless. ‘Really?’

‘Yup.’ Dev said. ‘Or she thinks. She woke up and saw a woman standing at the foot of her bed.’

‘That’s why she screamed?’ Roisin said uncertainly. In the looming silhouettes of the old house, in the early hours ofthe morning, she felt many degrees less scornful than she had during Joe’s online trawl earlier.

‘Matt burst into her room when he heard her screaming. He was being a knight in shining … pants,’ Anita said, looking him up and down and giving a low whistle. Anita, Roisin was learning, could never sustain seriousness for very long.

Matt crossed his arms defensively across his lightly hairy chest. It wasn’t their first rodeo – more like second or third – seeing each other in less than full formal attire on holidays, yet Roisin was glad of her layer of outerwear.

Matt looked intensely miserable, and Roisin was definitely missing something here. Hadn’t he been helpful? He was somehow as guilty of upsetting Gina as soggy apparitions?

‘OK …?’ Roisin frowned. ‘Your intervention wasn’t welcome?’

‘Nope,’ Matt said.

‘Because you broke through the door?’

‘He kicked it off its hinges,’ Anita said to Roisin.

‘Right.’ Roisin frowned. That’d take some doing with these two-inch thick wooden doors. ‘And now she can’t lock her door in case the ghost comes back? It floated through walls anyway, so …’

‘No. The issue is Gina was …not dressed,’Anita added.

‘Oh,’ Roisin said. She’d found sleepwear disorientating enough.

Matt clapped a palm over his eyes, as if blaming his having sight. ‘I feel like such a creep. It’s not as if I was looking for a reason to barge in. I can only keep saying I’m sorry.’

‘Shall I go in and talk to her?’ Roisin said.

‘Yes, good idea,’ Dev said. ‘She’ll want to talk to you.’

Roisin gingerly cranked the handle of a door that had been propped back in place and swung straight open on its damaged hinges. Gina was a tiny, sweatshirt-clad figure wrapped in the sea of blankets in the middle of her four poster, lights low. Meredith was perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, with consoling arm around her.

At Roisin’s entrance, Meredith widened her eyes: a ‘Proceed With Caution’ look.

‘Are you OK, G?’ Roisin said, gently.

‘Shall I explain …?’ Meredith addressed Gina, who shook her head, wiped her nose and raised tear-filled eyes to meet Roisin’s. She sniffed, hard.

‘I was going to sleep, and I woke up, and I think I might have had that sleep paralysis thing and be still dreaming, you know,’ she said, in a tremulous voice. ‘I thought I saw someone at the end of the bed. When I turned the light on, it was the wardrobe, but I still screamed.’

Roisin knew it. Her fear evaporated instantly. No spectral floaters – power of suggestion, plus pissed.Bloody Joe. Joe ‘sleeping like a baby while the controversy raged’ Powell.The time to google whether the place was ‘haunted’ was on departure.

No one better than a teacher – or a submarine captain – to tell him that giving a bunch of people in an enclosed space a crazy idea, was a crazy idea.

‘Suddenly Matt was outside the door saying, “Gina, are you OK, what’s wrong,” and I’d locked the door, and it all happenedso fast … I jumped out of bed and then he was in the room … I was … I don’t sleep in clothes …’ She buried her face in her blanketed knees and made a whimpering noise.

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