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Maisie nodded miserably. ‘Yep.’
‘So your stepmother, what’s she like?’
‘Caitlin’s not too bad, I s’pose.’
‘Does she treat you all right?’
Maisie had a sudden flashback to Caitlin bending over her in the dead of night while lightning flashed and thunder shook her London bedroom. Maisie had been frightened of the storm. Her dad had slept through it but Caitlin had got out of bed and come to comfort her.
‘Yeah.’ Maisie nodded. ‘But I’m not her real daughter and now she’s not with Dad any more she doesn’t have to look after me. We’ve not been getting on that well. They sent me to a school that’s horrible and I’m a big disappointment to both of them. She’ll be off as soon as she can dump me on someone else – my grandparents, probably, who won’t want me either.’
Maisie felt tears prickle her eyes and she bit down hard on her lip. Connie watched from the gloom of her armchair as the silence was broken by the screech of an animal outside.
‘Life’s tough,’ said Connie, glancing at the window when rain began to hit against the glass. The frayed curtains were open and outside everything was black. Someone could be looking in right now and they’d never know. Maisie shivered and sank further back into the sofa. She yawned, feeling exhausted.
‘You need to get some sleep.’ Connie pushed herself up from the chair with a groan. ‘Tomorrow you need to go back to your stepmother, but you can’t go out in this weather so you can sleep down here. I’ll get you some blankets. And you need to let people know where you are so they don’t think I’ve abducted you. Have you got a phone? I don’t have a landline.’
When Maisie nodded, she went out of the room and returned a few minutes later with a pile of blankets.
‘There you go. I’m off back to bed and you’d best make yourself comfy.’
Once she’d gone, Maisie gave the blankets a sniff. They were old and threadbare but they smelled fairly clean. She took out her mobile. Should she tell Caitlin and Isla where she was? She could text them, maybe. But when she looked at her phone, she had no coverage. Decision made, then. She stuffed the mobile back into her pocket and tried to settle down on the sofa.
But the darkness outside, the creaks and groans of the old house, and the memory of what she’d done made sleep impossible. She remembered snatching the letter and throwing it towards the flames.
Why had she done that? She hadn’t really wanted to destroy the letter. It meant a lot to Isla in particular, and Isla had been kind to her. But she’d felt so furious about everything – about her dad’s betrayal and losing her home, about dreading going back to school, about nobody really loving her.
Being ninety-seven must be the pits. What was there to look forward to other than death? But being fifteen was no walk in the park either. Maisie stifled a sob and rolled over in her scratchy blankets.
* * *
Maisie was dreaming of school, a fevered nightmare of trying to stop the yellow goop from falling onto the teacher’s head. Only the goop had turned into acid and the door was banging back and forth with the deadly mixture balanced above it. She had to stop it from falling, but someone was distracting her by waving a letter in her face. Edith was waving it and shouting. She’d come back from the grave to punish her.
Maisie stirred in her sleep, as the banging grew louder, and gradually came to, sneezing when the blankets tickled her nose. She was lying in Connie’s dark house and a loud banging was echoing through the building. What the hell?
She pulled the blankets higher around her chin. Her heart was hammering so hard, she felt sick. But then the banging stopped and an eerie silence settled on the house.
The curtainless windows were blank and dark, and Maisie let out a scream when a white face loomed up against the glass. She should never have come to this place that was full of ghosts. Maisie wished with all her heart that she was tucked up in bed at Rose Cottage, with Caitlin and Isla nearby. Safe in Heaven’s Cove.
The ghost at the window began to knock on the glass and call her name.
‘Maisie! Maisie! Is that you? Thank goodness! Stop being such a complete prat and open the door.’
Surely, the spirit of Edith Anstey would never call her a prat. Maisie peered closely at the face pressed up against the glass. It was Caitlin, and she did not look happy.
Maisie stumbled out from under her blankets and fumbled her way into the hall where she found the light switch on the wall. Blinking in the light, she pulled the front door open.
‘Maisie!’ Caitlin almost fell over the threshold and pulled her into a tight bear hug. ‘Why did you run off like that? You scared the life out of us.’
‘Us?’ mumbled Maisie.
She looked over Caitlin’s shoulder at her aunt’s car, which was parked outside. Her aunt was leaning against it and gave her a half-hearted wave.
‘How did you know I was here?’ Maisie asked, extricating herself from the hug.
‘We didn’t at first and were about to call in the police—’
‘Police?’ interrupted Maisie, her knees wobbly. She hadn’t realised that running off might cause so much trouble.
