Chapter 1: One - A London Haunting: A Christmas Ghost Story

“Hey! You two. What are you doing? Go on, scram. Get out of here.”

The boys – twelve, maybe – stared back at her. Young, but impish. Definitely impish. One had dark hair; the other a mop of copper curls.

For all her bark, they didn’t shift an inch from outside No.142 Long Mere Road.

Lottie swore under her breath. Just kids, but there was something in their defiance that set her teeth on edge. That’s what they were like nowadays, the youth, as the residents at the care home she’d once worked in used to call them, spitting out the phrase as if it tasted bad. A breed apart. Not like we were, back in the day.

People changed, though. Generations did. Maybe in their day, the youth were different. With the war not far behind them, they’d have had more of a work ethic, perhaps, a hunger to make something of themselves, to live life more fully when so many hadn’t been able to. Who knew? Lottie was young herself, only twenty, her experience of the world so far not exactly extensive. But it seemed, even to her, that teenagers – the pre-teens, like these two – were becoming more…feral. Just so…unafraid. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if they weren’t so arrogant about it.

If an adult had told her to clear off when she was twelve, she might’ve laughed, but she’d have gone. No question.

These two stood their ground.

“I’ve told you – clear off.”

“You can’t tell us nothing,” the dark-haired boy shot back, dark eyes glinting.

“Yeah,” Copper Curls chimed in – beautiful curls. “So why don’t you do one?”

It was a sweltering day in mid-July, London thick with heat. Lottie had showered that morning but already felt she needed another, not only to cool her blood but also her rising temper. Because it wasn’t as if she could just ignore these boys. Roll her eyes and move on. No.142 Long Mere Road was where her day was meant to be.

Damn!

The place was a bus ride from the home she shared with her mum, Jenny, and Tony – of Tony’s Taxis – who’d moved his business down from the north-east two years ago after meeting her mum. Met her because of Lottie, actually. A spark flaring between him and Jenny that had grown into love, something Lottie couldn’t have been more pleased about. Tony was a good man, who she liked having around.

How she’d met him before her mum, though…well, that was another story.

What mattered was the here and now, and the situation with these boys. They were, essentially, trespassing, on the grounds of No.142 – a two-storey Victorian terrace in the East End. Most of the houses along this street were nice, she noticed, well cared for, but this one…this wasn’t. It was grubby and unkempt: the windows, the brickwork, the garden leading up to the front door. Ramshackle. Crumbling. She bet the other residents would call it a disgrace, tutting each time they passed by.

In front of the bay window, the two boys were making fun of something, shoving at each other and snorting with laughter, holding their sides and doubling over because they found it oh so amusing. Exactly what it was, Lottie couldn’t quite see – they obscured it – but she’d have them away soon enough.

On a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders, and lifted her chin. Formidable – that was the vibe she was going for. Lips pressed into a thin white line, fire in her eyes, and nostrils flared for good measure. Surely – surely – that would do the trick?

Reggie Lord was the man she’d come to see. Eighty-four and housebound, apparently, plagued by a series of ailments – chronic back pain, type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation, and mild cognitive impairment. The usual suspects at his age, though none of them fazed Lottie. She’d been working in the care industry since eighteen, first at Silver Birches, now via an agency, travelling house to house.

This client – as the care world insisted on calling them – was different. He could afford to request continual care from one person. The agency had encouraged her to apply for the role, and she’d been selected.

She liked the elderly; hated how today’s youth-obsessed society wrote them off as irrelevant – a nuisance even, a drain on resources. Not true. They carried knowledge and wisdom, stories that deserved to be heard if you had the time to sit and listen – exactly the opportunity she hoped continual care might offer both her and Mr Lord.

Still banking on looking like a force to be reckoned with, Lottie strode towards the boys to decide what to do when she reached them. Grab them by their arms and haul them off Mr Lord’s property, maybe? She frowned. Could you get away with that kind of thing these days? Probably not. She’d be the one in trouble, not them.

Anger rolled in the pit of her stomach, stoked by the injustice of it. She was a champion for the elderly – that’s how she liked to think of herself – a saviour in a navy-blue tunic with trousers to match, nylon, though, unfortunately.

Only a few feet separated the two warring factions now. A few feet. And still they weren’t backing off. Instead they grinned – not a flicker of fear evident; they didn’t even give her the courtesy of uncertainty. Lottie might not be particularly tall, and she might be slight of build, but she was still a fully-fledged adult.

Come on, come on – just go, will you?

By her sides, her hands itched, fingers wanting to curl into fists. What kind of parents did these two have, she wondered? The indulgent sort, maybe, the ones who insisted little Tommy or little Sammy, or whatever their names were, should never be scolded but allowed to ‘express themselves’ without restraint. Either that, or they didn’t care where their kids were, as long as they weren’t bugging them.

No telling. They looked like any other kids on the street, dressed in trainers, joggers, and T-shirts. Not particularly grubby, not particularly clean.

Kids. Just kids.

Then one of them bent down, his hand closing around a stone. A big one.

Her stomach lurched.

He wasn’t going to throw that, was he?

At whom?

Was he aiming at her or the window?

“Don’t you––!”

She got her answer. The stone whipped through the air and struck her square on the forehead, just at the edge of her brow. Hurting – hurting loads.

She’d frozen the moment he bent – the boy with the beautiful copper curls. Now…now she felt like she was swaying, the world hazy, swimming in and out of focus. Her hand flew to the spot where the stone had struck. The skin there was wet and sticky, and not just with sweat. She pulled her fingers back and saw blood.

The little horror had drawn blood!

Nausea surged, not just from the pain, but from the shock of it. There she’d been, fretting over whether she could so much as grab them without landing herself in trouble, when they’d had no such hesitation.

Barbarians.

Shock, horror, nausea – they all subsided, if only for a short while. Anger returned, making a blistering comeback – rising to swamp her.

“You little shits!” she yelled, dashing towards them. And yes, she’d do it; she’d drag them off this property if she had to, threatening all kinds of dire retribution.

They would not mess with Mr Lord, and they would not mess with her.

At last, they did it. The boys scarpered, bolting from the front garden back onto the street, shrieking with laughter. Cackling like hyenas over scraps. That’s what they sounded like. She’d seen such behaviour once on a wildlife documentary.

The dark-haired one even congratulated the other.

“Well done, Ewan. Fucking well done! You played a blinder.”

A blinder? A frigging blinder? He could have blinded her.

They were running, and Lottie was running after them, shouting at them to come back, when all she’d wanted before was for them to be gone. The irony.

She bellowed, her voice cracking with fury. “You won’t get away with this!”

But they were. Because as young as she was, they were younger. As fast as she was, they were faster.

She came to a breathless stop, blinking back tears.

What a way to start not only a brand-new day, but a brand-new job. She’d have to check with the agency, but she didn’t think danger money was included in her pay.

Now at No.249, she turned back towards No.142. As she did, curtains twitched – a few neighbours wondering what all the racket was about, no doubt, then proceeding to glare at her. Embarrassed, she lowered her head and hurried on. Just how much more blood and sweat would this new position demand?

Back at Reggie Lord’s house, she retraced her steps up the garden path, eyeing the weeds that ran riot. What had attracted the kids to his house in the first place? What had made them laugh so hard, so mercilessly?

As they were no longer obscuring the bay window, she could finally see for herself – a sudden dread that it might be Mr Lord himself, sitting there.

So worse for wear, this house. So…unloved. Do it up and it’d be worth a small fortune, this type of London property. It wasn’t far from the much-loved multicultural hub of Brick Lane, a place she often went at weekends to eat from the food stands and hunt for vintage clothes and jewellery. Spitalfields Market close by too.

The paint had long since peeled away from window frames, leaving the wood splintered down to bone, with a dense lattice of spidery cobwebs replacing it. But it wasn’t them she dwelt on, it was what lay just beyond the grime-smeared glass.

Not Mr Lord, thankfully. He didn’t seem to be anywhere near.

No, it was what graced the window – what graced many windows up and down the country, though not at this time of year. High summer.

A Christmas tree.

Not real, of course. If it had been, the needles would have long since dropped, leaving nothing behind but spindly twigs. This one was plastic; its branches furred with dust. Layers and layers of dust. Baubles clung there too, their shine long gone. Between them, ragged twists of tinsel sagged, along with fairy lights that were the furthest thing from merry she could imagine – more like dead vines.

This was the sight that had set the boys off, what they had found so hilarious. A Christmas tree in someone’s living room at the wrong time of year.

It didn’t make Lottie laugh, though, as she stood in their place, hot and sticky, with blood still trickling from her forehead. Those tears she’d held back so determinedly earlier, not wanting to give the boys the satisfaction? One or two fell now.