Chapter 15: Fifteen - A London Haunting: A Christmas Ghost Story

Lottie hadn’t managed to get to Mabel’s for a new book in days. Either Lottie was busy or Mabel was entertaining guests from abroad, and so the days at Reggie’s had passed without anything for her to read. Lottie hoped a change was as good as a rest, giving her – and him, no matter how unwittingly – time to prepare for the next tome. The one that might make a difference, whatever that difference proved to be.

The morning after meeting Cam’s Aunt Dot, Lottie smuggled the clock back into Reggie’s room, just as she’d smuggled it out, amazed and relieved that he hadn’t seemed to notice its disappearance. As he headed off to the bathroom, she dug it out of her bag and returned it to the mantelpiece, examining it as closely as Dot had, the hands that were stuck at four forty-five, morning or night.

There was no other clock in the house that she knew of, and Reggie didn’t wear a watch. Yet he’d known she was ten minutes late on her first day. Despite his mobile looking like a relic, it must still have a time display, as he clearly had a good enough handle on it. But this particular moment…what was the scoop on that?

Dot had described Reggie as a closed book – shut down, broken – and Lottie knew he hid, not only in his room but within himself. And no one did that without reason. Life had to have been cruel to them somewhere along the line – people unkind, events devastating. You could be hurt so deeply that you simply couldn’t bear it. Oh, you could breathe still; your heart could beat – you existed – but you weren’t really living. That had been the case with Alice, the old lady she’d helped at Silver Birches. And there were countless others like her, like Reggie – survivors who’d endured into old age no matter how excruciating each day might be.

She sighed. Maybe she shouldn’t empathise so deeply with people like that, take on their darkness as Dot had warned. But the irony was, her gift seemed made for exactly that. Even so, there was a balance to be kept – a tightrope to walk. She was still young, she had decades ahead of her if she was lucky. A special life, perhaps, if it was spent helping others – but she had to remember to help herself too.

The darkness…

Perhaps Reggie’s life had begun in a burst of brightness. Certainly, when he’d murmured about meeting someone in the rain, it had sounded like the start of something hopeful, a dream, a life being built together.

And then…had it become a nightmare?

Again, Dot’s words echoed. If so, would his nightmare become hers? How much danger was she truly in here? Because despite everything, she didn’t feel in danger. When the photo frame was hurled across the room, it had missed her.

She wasn’t the target.

Reggie Lord was.

Reggie, who’d finished in the bathroom and was shuffling back towards his room, Lottie quickly moving away from the mantelpiece to pick up the Chicken Cottage bag so she could throw it out. But something was different this time. It wasn’t empty.

She frowned as she peered inside. None of the food looked touched.

A one-off, maybe? Had he simply not been hungry last night? But if so, that meant he wouldn’t eat again until this evening, having sipped only water in between.

God, if her mum knew he’d gone twenty-four hours without food, she’d be banging on the door, barging her way in, and force-feeding him one of her stews. That was something she was still going on about: cooking meals for him. Feeling guilty, she said, every time the family sat down to theirs.

“It’s not right,” she’d mutter. “It’s far from right. I’m not saying old people’s eating habits should be supervised, but…”

“They should be supervised,” Tony would finish for her with a shrug. “Some of them, at least. People like Reggie.”

Jenny’s rueful smile always followed. “If he was in a care home––”

“Mum, he doesn’t want to go into a care home,” Lottie reminded her.

“So he pays for a companion instead,” Jenny countered. “You. It must cost a fortune! What about weekends? You’re not there then. Is someone else?”

“No,” Lottie told her. “But he manages.”

Jenny shook her head. “Social Services should be involved.”

“Mum! He’s all right for now. He’s being looked after in a way that works for him. He’s a grown man, not a child. You can’t force the issue. You just can’t.”

Standing in his room now, though – knowing he hadn’t eaten, and that he wasn’t truly living, not since four forty-five on a certain day, just biding his time, with or without a companion – well…Lottie wanted to force the issue too.

Before her visit to Dot, she might have felt more despair about how to go about it, at a total loss even, short of levering open the doors to the locked rooms, seeing what belongings of his remained inside, what records of existence, what clues.

But after Dot…

Dot had given them the way forward.

Her thoughts swung from Dot back to Mabel. Her guests would surely be heading off soon, and when they did, Lottie could return A Tale of Two Cities – though she felt a pang of regret at not having finished it. Even so, she’d slide it back onto the shelf and then she’d choose another.

Or rather…fate would.

“Oh, love, you’ve not finished it?”

“It’s just…it didn’t suit Reggie, Mabel. But if it’s okay, could I choose another?”

“Of course! But keep the Dickens anyway, read it at bedtime or something.”

“Really? If you’re sure? I don’t want to push my luck, though. You’ve been so kind lending me your books, and they’re such lovely volumes too.”

“Ah, the leather-bound book is a thing of wonder, I quite agree. Dear Jonathan loved them––”

“God rest his soul.”

Mabel looked at her askance, and Lottie wondered why – until she realised. Normally, she only echoed Mabel in her mind. This time, though, she’d said it out loud. Her throat tightened. What on earth had possessed her?

“Oh, Mabel, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to––”

“Take his name in vain?”

Lottie froze, mortified, until Mabel burst out laughing.

“Mabel?” Lottie said. “Are you…all right?”

Mabel waved a hand. “Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. And I do tend to repeat myself, don’t I? At least where Jonathan’s concerned. It’s become a habit, silly old bird that I am.”

Lottie rushed to reassure her she wasn’t silly at all, but Mabel only gave a shrug.

“It’s just…I hope he’s at peace, you know? I pray that he is, that he’s as happy there as he was here. Because, you know, we were happy – so very happy together. Ours was a blessed life. Nothing outlandish about it, most people would call it simple instead. We just…got on. Hardly a cross word between us. And there’s beauty in that, isn’t there? Simplicity. I appreciate that more than ever now.”

“There is,” Lottie said, returning Mabel’s smile while pushing down a sudden stab of envy – not for what Mabel and Jonathan had shared, though it was enviable, but because Mabel’s life could be simple, when her own was far from it.

She agreed to keep the Dickens and promised to read it soon, Mabel insisting she must, because before long it would be the perfect time for A Christmas Carol.

“But meanwhile, peruse the shelves at your leisure. I’ve some washing up to do, but if you need a hand, holler. Hopefully, something will…jump out at you.”

Lottie frowned as the older woman wandered off. Dot had used the same expression. Coincidence, of course – nothing more.

Turning back to the shelves, she suddenly felt overwhelmed. What would Reggie like? She had to choose something – had to read to him again. Not just because Dot advised it, but because she couldn’t keep sitting with him in silence every afternoon, even if he seemed to prefer it, absorbed as he was in his newspaper and crossword.

She was – and she hated to admit it – growing bored. Sometimes it felt as though her own watch had stopped along with the clock, the hours barely passing. She could nap, for real or pretend, and sometimes she did just that, she feigned it, but there were no more murmurings from Reggie, and certainly no naps from him. Yet, by the time she left, he always looked beyond tired, more diminished than ever.

Worse, the food from Chicken Cottage was still going untouched. She’d told Cam, who was equally concerned.

“Do you know what?” he’d said.

“What?”

“Things may come to a head soon.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lottie sighed.

“No, I mean sooner rather than later. Really soon. I’ve just…I’ve got a feeling.”

The seed he’d planted lodged in her mind. She half-expected something to happen at Halloween – that time when the veil between worlds was said to be at its thinnest. She hadn’t stayed at his overnight, of course, but it was Halloween all day as well as all night, and she wondered if something might break through.

But nothing did.

There might have been ghosts and ghouls in the streets when she’d made her way home, children trick-or-treating, though she prayed none would come to Reggie’s door – especially not those two scallies who’d once mocked the Christmas tree. But inside No.142, it remained as silent as the broken clock itself.

Halloween had come and gone. It was now November – deep into autumn, the days grey and the night skies black.

The air inside the house where she spent her days was getting harder to breathe – which might account for the scratchy throat she was suffering from at the moment. It was as though something truly was straining towards breaking point, just as Cam had said. Maybe, in the run-up to Christmas, something might finally…explode.

After all, it was Christmas – not Halloween – that marked the darkest time of year.

Books. Books. Books.

Standing in Mabel’s living room, she faced a sea of them. So many authors, so many titles. Several by Jane Austen, proudly bunched together, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, which her gaze lingered on. She’d heard of that one, how famously long it was, over a thousand pages. That would certainly keep her and Reggie busy.

She decided against it. Too daunting. If she wasn’t going to sleep – and Reggie wasn’t either – then perhaps something more modern would suit. Something faster, more thrilling. A rollercoaster ride to quicken the pulse. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Wasn’t that supposed to be good? Or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Just what adventures had Huck gone on, and how exciting did they get?

In truth, they all looked tempting, and they’d all stood the test of time – classics for a reason, taught in schools across the United Kingdom and the world over.

Mabel had offered to help her choose. All Lottie had to do was call out.

She cleared her throat and opened her mouth. She even stepped closer to the door so she wouldn’t have to shout and make her throat feel worse.

“Ma––”

She didn’t get any further. A sudden thud from behind stopped her in her tracks.

Turning, her eyes widened.

See what jumps out at you.

Both Dot and Mabel had said it, a figure of speech, a common enough one. A coincidence, she’d told herself.

But something had done exactly that: leapt from the shelves.

Another leather-bound treasure – perhaps the key.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.