Greyglass, Tanith Lee [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

into Dun-Captain-Kirk Street, the park and Tower Road.

She was bracing herself then, in Constance Street, for the place where the flats had been removed. Bracing herself more for not caring now, than for astonishment or affront. And then they were walking by the open lunch-time off-licence and Susan saw the two women she remembered from the cats, coming out of the shop, with a pack of coke in cans and a bulging carrier bag. A man followed them on to the sunny pavement.

Both women seemed the same as before, they hadn’t changed. Jackie was still slender and boyish in her sleeveless T-shirt that showed pinkly-tanned, rounded arms and neck. Her eyes were jewel-blue, bright. The grey-haired woman had put her long hair into a ponytail but she looked bad tempered still, frowning over her change and a box of Kit-Kats. The man was about thirty, balding and gangly, with an amused face.

“Excuse me,” said Susan. She felt self-consciously and fakingly adult, something that had not happened much for two or three years. “It’s Jackie, isn’t it?”

“That’s me,” said Jackie.

“And who are you?” barked the other woman, frowning worse.

“Oh, you won’t remember me – I was at the house once, and you let me go round, because my grandmother was the one who owned it before. Susan. I’m Susan Wilde.”

“No, I don’t remember you,” said the woman.

But Jackie said, “Hi, Susan.”

“This is Patrick,” Susan said, feeling she must, at this point.

They looked at Patrick, and Jackie said, “Hi, Patrick.”

Then the amused balding man said, “We ought to get a move on, Jackie. Or we’ll miss our train.”

“You make it sound like the royal train,” said the bad-tempered woman.

“We’re going to Devon,” said Jackie. “Have to get into London first.”

“Ten bloody hour journey by the look of things,” said the other woman. “Bloody murder.”

“It isn’t ten hours,” said the balding man.

“Yes all right, Clive.”

Susan said, “Is someone else looking after the cats?”

“Oh, the cats are already down there. That was quite a do, I can tell you, six vanloads of the beasts. But worth it. They love the new place.” Jackie delved into the carrier bag, took out a chocolate orange and sniffed it like a connoisseur.

Susan said, “But what about –”

The bad-tempered woman said, “We got a better offer than that house. The Devon deal is a bloody mansion, with seven acres attached. We’d hardly say no.”

“Cat Sams in style,” said Jackie, putting the orange back in the bag. “The old house here is up for sale. But we’ll get most of the proceeds from that too, so we’ve done really well.”

Something meowed stridently and Susan saw the man called Clive carried two huge wire-fronted cat-cages, which seemed to contain two or three cats a-piece. His arms were very long; years of transporting such burdens had no doubt lengthened them.

“These are ours,” he said to Susan. “They travel with us.”

Patrick spoke for the first time. “So, Susan’s gran’s house is standing empty?”

“Oh, yes. We were actually all cleared out by last week. Some couple seem to want it, the agents said. They’re prepared to do it up, and it will take some doing, I can tell you, after our lot.” Jackie laughed, proud of their legacy.

The bad-tempered woman glared at Susan. “And it’s haunted you know. Did you know that?”

Susan stood there.

Jackie said, “Mill, why say that?”

Something had changed, nearly indefinable. It was like the first premonition of nausea, or flu. But – up in the air.

“I’m not superstitious, you know that, Jack. But I also know that house was full of something. And the cats knew it too.”

“Mildred,” said Jackie.

Bad-tempered Mildred said, “Those windows that always opened by themselves. And the noises. You and Bill didn’t mind them, but you two sleep like logs. I don’t. And things being moved – hidden –”

Patrick said, “You’re saying there was a ghost?”

“There was and is psychic activity. We’ve left, but that has not.”

Jackie looked at Susan. “There may have been some odd things sometimes. But none of it that couldn’t have a normal explanation. Mildred isn’t saying it was old Mrs Wilde.”

“She didn’t die in the house,” Susan heard herself blurt. “They found her on a park bench. She had hypothermia, probably. She was covered in frost. Her heart failed.”

Mildred’s intolerant face softened as if a blow had spread it.

Susan wished Patrick would say something, but he didn’t, merely stood there, looking at all their faces, Mildred’s in particular, almost certainly because he thought hers the most drawable face, with all those cracks and fissures of inclement temper sculpted into it.

But Mildred looked at Susan and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s nearly quarter to two,” said Clive, who still appeared amused, but now with a type of smiley embarrassment.

“Come on,” said Jackie.

“Good luck,” Susan said.

“Thanks. You too.” They turned, moved off, a single entity, garlanded by raucous meows.

“Where are you going?” Patrick asked Susan.

“I want a drink.”

“Right. Sure. Then we can get on.”

“No we can’t. The house will be shut up. We won’t be able to see anything now, or get in or stay.”

“There’s always some way in. We can get over the wall or something. I’m not giving up now.”

He stood in the shop and waited while Susan paid for her diet coke. Then he selected a chocolate bar for himself and bought it.

Susan felt a stab of irritation. Why did they always have to pay for everything separately – okay, meals or alcohol perhaps, but a coke – a Marathon – bus fares?

“I don’t want to go there now, Patrick.”

“Because of what they said?”

“No. I’m not sure.”

“She had a marvellously crazy face, that older woman. I suppose she was marvellously crazy. Anyway, it’d only be your gran.”

“She had to be called Grandmother, and her name was Catherine Greyglass. It isn’t that. I don’t want to go scrambling over walls and getting tetanus and arrested.”

Astounded, Patrick stared at her. Then they stood there on the street under the high afternoon sun. Neither of them made a move either