Chapter 12: Twelve - A London Haunting: A Christmas Ghost Story

Maybe it was Dickens that wasn’t working for Reggie, the reason he refused to engage. It was a shame if so, because Lottie had enjoyed David Copperfield every bit as much as Great Expectations. She loved characters like Mr Micawber, optimistic despite his hopeless financial state, always believing ‘something would turn up’ to dig him out of debt. He’d shown such kindness to David too, when Mr Creakle, the headmaster at the boarding school, had done nothing but punish him.

Lottie had also warmed to Agnes. Calm, wise, gentle Agnes, always there for David, even when he was too blind to see her, dazzled instead by the charms of Dora Spenlow. Innocent, childlike Dora, who proved, in time, to be too childlike when David needed a woman. Needed Agnes. And slowly, slowly, he came to realise it.

They were flawed characters, all of them, rarely doing the right thing, mostly just muddling through. And that, she supposed, was what she loved most about them – how real Dickens made them. Relatable. She’d give him one more try before moving on to another author, Mabel having suggested A Tale of Two Cities next.

“Definitely one of my favourites,” Mabel had said, sliding one book neatly back onto a shelf before handing Lottie another. “If I had to choose – which I’m glad I don’t – but if I did…ah, Sydney Carton breaks my heart every time. His journey, Lottie, it’s so powerful. I hope you both enjoy it. Truly I do. Reggie’s very lucky to have you.”

Have us, Lottie had thought, because Reggie had two of them now, this man who seemed to have no one else at all. Cam was on the case, his shifts giving him a bit more time to visit the library, to dig, dig, dig, since talking to Reggie revealed nothing.

Questions like ‘How long have you lived here, Reggie?’ or ‘What job did you used to do?’ were always met with nothing more than an irritated grunt, Reggie then burying himself once again in his freshly delivered newspaper, losing himself – forever, it seemed – in an article or the crossword.

She got it. She did. His past was his own. And it could have stayed that way if he wasn’t in such obvious torment. If he wasn’t haunted by it.

Sometimes you had to go further than a client thought they wanted.

It had only been a few days since she’d met Cam, and already they were texting, arranging to meet again. She hadn’t fallen asleep in Reggie’s house since either – though she sometimes pretended to. But faking it wasn’t working. There’d been no more mutterings from Reggie, no more murmurings to that unseen someone. She’d willed him to drift again, letting A Tale of Two Cities slip from her hands, then closing her eyes and regulating her breathing – even throwing in a small snore – but nothing. It was as if Reggie had cottoned on to her ruse, no matter how convincing she thought she was being. And so he simply sat there, awake. Always awake.

As sympathetic as she was – or empathetic, the word Bobby always used – she was also frustrated, increasingly so. The atmosphere in the house, already oppressive, especially in his bedroom, seemed to grow more so by the day. Normally, she felt it the moment she opened the door, that weight, that otherworldliness clinging to the place. Now she sensed it even on the approach. And sometimes – just sometimes – she carried it home with her. Her mum clearly noticing as Lottie caught the sideways glances, the lip-chewing, the small frowns.

Lottie didn’t blame her for worrying, not after the depression she’d suffered following Matt’s death. She’d struggled so hard to shake it off – a darkness, an emptiness that had threatened to swallow her whole. The same darkness and emptiness she associated with Reggie’s photo frame. Perhaps that was why she hated it so much, why it unsettled her. She’d even asked Reggie if she could take it down, move it elsewhere, better still, tuck it away in a drawer. He’d been amenable to parting with most things, but not that. He’d shaken his head, refused.

If it triggered something in her, what did it stir in him?

Was it his reminder? His penance?

A shiver ran through her at that – at the possibility she could be right.

They were into October now. She’d been coming to No.142 Long Mere Road since mid-July. Three months – three whole months – and Reggie still an enigma.

That morning at Reggie’s, the chores were done. She’d eaten lunch, once again trying to tempt him with a sandwich and a cup of tea.

“No man can exist on chicken alone,” she’d said. Not even Chicken Cottage, the odd can of Coke being slipped in nowadays too. But Reggie ignored her.

It was time to settle down and delve further into other people’s lives again – this latest Dickens set in the late 1700s, against the backdrop of an England steeped in corruption, crime, and social inequality, and a France on the brink of Revolution, its starving peasantry fed up to the back teeth with an arrogant aristocracy.

She opened the book knowing Cam was at the library. He’d Googled how to trace someone’s history and was planning on checking birth records, marriage records, and something called the census, which could reveal occupations and other family members. She was itching to text him, ask how it was going, but she and Reggie had a routine now, one that made the day bearable for them both. Best not to break it.

Two hours of reading, then she’d do another tidy-up while Reggie spent time in the bathroom again. She’d lay his pyjamas out on the bed for later – though sometimes he changed into them, sometimes not. More than once, the bed had been left unruffled, proof he’d spent the night sitting in his chair instead. Still, they were freshly laundered pyjamas, on freshly laundered sheets, because he allowed that now, her taking his clothes and bedding home to run through the washing machine. Small victories, she supposed.

“Now, where were we?” she asked, settling opposite him. “Do you remember?”

“Chapter Six,” Reggie said, bored on purpose.

“That’s it. Lucie’s about to meet her father again after he’s spent eighteen years in the Bastille. He’s in a pretty bad state, isn’t he? Will only identify himself as ‘One Hundred and Five, North Tower’. Do you remember why?”

She tried to sound gentle, not patronising. All she wanted was to know whether he was listening to anything she read.

“Reggie,” she tried again. “Do you remember––”

“Of course I bloody remember!”

His tone startled her, something in it beyond mere impatience. “Dr Manette calls himself that because it’s the number of his old prison cell. He can barely recognise who he used to be. His years in the Bastille…they hollowed him out. Destroyed him.”

Lottie froze, the hairs on her arms rising as his eyes seemed to glaze. Then, with eerie precision, he recited the opening paragraph of the book – words she herself had loved – his tone shifting, almost chanting.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing… “

His voice broke, then steadied again. “We had nothing,” he repeated. “Nothing. Because all there is in the end…is exactly that. Nothing.”

She had to move, couldn’t just sit there, force life back into her limbs.

On her feet, she quickly closed the gap between them.

“Reggie? Reggie! Are you okay?”

Being closer, she could see how glassy his eyes were, the despair clouding them.

“Reggie…it’s all right, I’m here. Who…who do you mean by we?”

She could reach out now, lay a hand over his as she’d wanted to so many times, break down the divide between them. He fought to be like granite, but he wasn’t. He was human. He’d just proved it. The walls crumbling at last.

“Reggie,” she said again, as his shoulders began to tremble, flesh and bone containing such emotion. “You can tell me – you can say anything. Anything.”

Her hand hovered close to his, and this time he didn’t bat her away. He wasn’t roaring at her to leave him be. He just sat there, broken. Absolutely broken.

“Oh, Reggie.”

And that was when she felt it, before she heard anything. The air drawing tight, constricting, as if pulled through a narrowed throat.

She turned, only slightly––

––and something whistled past her, close enough to lift her hair.

The photo frame.

It didn’t just fall; it pitched itself off the mantelpiece, and shot across the room with brutal force, striking the opposite wall so hard the plaster burst outward.

Still Reggie didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

He simply stared at the fallen frame the way someone might stare at a coffin.

Without touching his hand – too shocked by what had happened that she’d forgotten – she rose instead and scanned the room.

Who had done that? Thrown the frame with such ferocity?

An unseen hand again, just like with the ashtray and the cupboards downstairs, rattling and tugging at their handles. There was someone else in this house besides her and Reggie. Definitely. A haunting. No question of it now.

She went over to the wall and ran her hand over the damaged plaster, remembering how close the frame had come to her head.

If it had hit her…

The frame lay on the floor, face-up rather than face-down, as if deliberately placed that way to remind her, if not Reggie, of the black chasm waiting inside it.

She spun around.

“Reggie, what’s going on? You have to tell me. Something’s happening here.”

“Go,” he said. “I know it’s early, but you can leave now.”

“I can’t just leave! Not after what’s happened. The frame flew across the room, Reggie, and objects don’t do that, they don’t just move on their own. Who’s with us?”

The sight of him shaking his head dismayed her. It meant he was slipping back inside himself again – and once he was there, he’d be impossible to reach.

“Reggie, I’m not leaving,” she insisted. “That frame could have hit me. Done real damage. What if something flies at you? Hurts you? What then? You’re in danger!”

“I’m not,” he mumbled. “Not now. It…it won’t happen again. Not for a while. That’s how it tends to work. I’m safe. Up here, I’m safe. Usually.”

She should just do it – take him by the shoulders. Not to shake sense into him, but to connect, to see what he was so stubbornly hiding. Should she? Could she? Because the barriers were going back up, and no drawbridge was coming down. Any tears in his eyes had dried; any slump in his posture was gone.

“I’m safe up here,” he repeated, his voice firmer now, “and so I’d like you to leave for today. I’ll see you as normal tomorrow morning.”

Still she persisted. “Reggie, the way you live – the locked rooms, everything nailed shut, the bloody Christmas tree in the living room––”

“GO!”

The roar shook her, and for a second or two she could have sworn it shook the floor as well. But just as suddenly as he’d exploded, he went still again, the only sign of the storm still raging inside him a faint tick at the corner of his right eye.

“I want you to go,” he repeated. “How many times must I say it? I’m safe. I have food coming this evening, so I’ll eat, finish my newspaper, and go to bed, just as I do every night. And I’ll see you, as I’ve said, in the morning. For now, I’d like to be alone. As is my right.”

As was his right… That was the trouble. She wasn’t family. She was an employee. When it came to Reggie, she had no real rights at all.

She sighed, defeated. If she pushed him now, he’d only have her dismissed, and as she’d once told Sarah, if she didn’t do the job, who would?

She bent to pick up the frame, intending to dispose of it at last, when Reggie spoke again.

“Leave it.”

“The glass is fractured––”

“I know. But it’s all right. I’ll see to it.”

“Reggie, it’s fine. I can do––”

“Just leave it!”

Another raised voice. And this time, a shudder in the walls.

Reggie drew a deep breath, visibly forcing himself back under control. Needing to, she realised. Afraid of what might happen if he didn’t – if emotion spilled unchecked.

And then the thought came: when he got angry, so did they.

Whoever they were.

“Okay. Fine.” She reached for her coat, shrugging it on with stiff arms. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, Reggie.”

God forgive her, but now that she was actually leaving, she couldn’t wait to escape, to be back out in the fresh air, however nippy it had become. To return to normality, or as normal as the streets of London could ever be.

She was almost on the other side of the door when Reggie called after her.

“Your book.”

She turned. “What about it?” Normally she’d leave it on the table beside her chair, ready for the next day. Not this time.

“Take the blasted thing with you.”