11
‘Right, I think we’re there …’ Anita said, standing in front of the fireplace, examining them through her iPhone in its camo shockproof case. It had one of those PopSocket nodules on the back and looked like the serious professional tool kit that it was.
She’d found Dev a prop pint glass and shot glass and filled them with water. Joe was also required to hold a drink at the same level: everything had to be just so.
‘Says everything that I didn’t score a place on the sofa then and now never will, for continuity,’ Matt said, making air quote marks, holding his crouching pose.
‘Every Friends has a Gunther,’ Joe said, to much laughter.
‘He wasn’t one of the main six,’ Roisin said, and immediately regretted the lumpen stupidity of making Joe’s point.
‘Sorry, I weigh a bit more than I did when I was twenty-two,’ Gina said to Meredith, who replied, muffled, ‘Luckily my knees have got bulkier too.’
‘Hold your positions a little longer, please!’ Anita commanded, before prodding at her handset. ‘OK, I’ve taken loads, and you can argue over using the one where you look best,’ Anita said. ‘We’ll send copies of both on to all of you after the weekend!’
Dev snapped the overhead light off and the space was one plunged into atmospheric period gloom.
‘This is your engagement celebration, Dev – we should be making a fuss of you two, not us,’ Roisin said, getting up.
‘Nothing we’d rather be doing,’ Dev said, beaming, and Anita nodded.
‘It’s true. We were away with my sisters last weekend and Dev’s not recovered yet.’
Dev shuddered. ‘Chaos demons.’
‘Hey. Speaking of demons. This place has to have a ghost, right?’ Joe said, pulling his iPhone from his pocket and shaking it lightly, as if it was a deck of cards. ‘Who wants to find out if there’s a ghost story?’
‘Joe …’ Roisin said, in tone of warning. ‘Don’t shit us all up.’
‘Me, I do!’ Gina said.
‘Do you?’ Roisin said doubtfully.
‘If it’s not super scary,’ Gina said.
‘Joe, that is heavily qualified consent,’ Roisin said.
‘Given I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t care,’ Meredith said.
‘I’m agnostic,’ Dev said. ‘Anita?’
‘I believe,’ she said, sitting down and reclaiming her fishbowl G&T. ‘But bring it on.’
A split second after she spoke the words I believe, the candles on the mantelpiece guttered. Gina and Anita shrieked.
Gina said, ‘Matt, do you believe?’
‘No. But I keep an open mind,’ he said.
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Roisin said, laughing, and Matt said, ‘Oh chill, Miss Trunchbull,’ which made Roisin laugh harder. She’d forgot Matt’s comic theme that she was a joyless authoritarian.
‘Is that a full house “yes” vote for the story, then?’ Joe said impatiently. ‘Rosh, you’re a sceptic, it can’t seriously bother you. You can’t fear being haunted by something you don’t believe in.’
He had her there.
Joe scrolled his screen. ‘Ah, success! Here goes.’ Joe adopted the voice of a local TV newsreader. ‘Cumbria’s ghostly hotspots. The grand Benbarrow Hall is said to be visited by the spirit of a servant girl who drowned herself in the lake in the late 1800s.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! Why is it always tragic spurned women or angry men on horseback?’
Roisin realised she was still the bolshie twelve-year-old witnessing Queenie Mook’s phantasms. Nevertheless, looking at the candlelight flickering on the walls, she was glad she wasn’t going to bed alone.
‘They’re always “ladies”, too,’ Roisin said. ‘The Lady Of The Something. Tragic, sexy young Ophelias. Someone should do a thesis on the underlying social values exhibited in ghost stories, if they haven’t already.’
‘Cor, you can tell you’re a teacher,’ Dev said.
‘Forgive my girlfriend’s strident feminism,’ Joe said. ‘It’s said the girl was secretly engaged to the son of the family who lived here. When the scandalous liaison with a lowborn woman came to light, he denied her and branded her a liar.’
‘Wanker,’ Gina, said with feeling. ‘Sounds exactly like my ex.’
‘Distraught, she ran from her bed and drowned herself by moonlight,’ Joe continued. ‘Visitors to Benbarrow Hall have reported looking out of the windows and seeing a ghostly figure standing by the lake at night.’
‘Argh!’ Gina squealed as Meredith jumped to her feet, scuttled to the window and cupped her hands round the glass.
‘Don’t LOOK, Meredith!’
‘What’s looking going to do?’ Meredith said.
‘When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back!’ Gina cried.
‘Wasn’t that a movie tagline?’ Dev said.
‘I think it’s Nietzsche?’ Matt said to Gina.
‘I saw it on a poster,’ Gina said.
Anita joined Meredith, while Gina performatively chattered her teeth.
‘Oh my God, there’s someone there!’ Meredith said, in a sepulchral hush as she turned to Gina, face stricken. ‘She’s … TWERKING?’
Gina flicked the Vs at Meredith.
‘… Other visitors report hearing footsteps on the staircases and seeing a young woman in a wet nightgown crossing the gardens at night. She is known in folk legend, due to her sodden hair and distressed appearance, as “The Crying Lady” …’ Joe said.
‘BINGO,’ Roisin said. ‘A Sad Lady. Told you.’
Joe carried on phone tapping. ‘There’s a blog here by a local historian, titled “The Curse of Benbarrow Hall” …’
‘Nooooo, what’s the curse?!’ Gina said, pulling the satin ribbons from the pussy bow at her neck up to cover her eyes, like bandages.
‘It relates specifically to courting couples,’ Joe read. ‘Every love match made under its roof will end in tragedy. The servant girl’s mother put a curse on the house. I bet the wedding venue organisers lobbied hard to keep that out of the official Wikipedia.’ He looked up, grinning.
‘Ugh, no,’ Anita said.
‘Wait. What was that?’ Joe said, slyly knocking a candle-less candlestick softly onto the rug with his elbow, pretending to startle. Everyone caught their breath, cackled, then heckled.
‘Fuck, what if Dev and I are cursed?!’ Anita said.
‘You’re betrothed, not courting. You’ll be fine. No courting. Whatever that is. Didn’t a frog do it?’ Roisin said, mock sternly to each of them.
‘You said bring it on!’ Joe said to Anita.
‘Anita’s very bad at predicting how she’ll feel a few minutes into the future,’ Dev said. ‘When we went to California I said, “Do you want to go on a hike through a canyon?” She said, “Yeah, sure,” and five minutes into it she says she hates walking, and heat, and heights, and CANYONS. She’s in tears. Like, what part were you expecting to enjoy?!’
‘I had a great denim playsuit for it. That’s where my mind goes. What will I wear?’ Anita said.
‘Can I borrow the denim romper to meet J.J.?’ Joe said.
‘Yes, sure. I will Febreze the gusset,’ Anita said, winking a flicky liquid-eyelinered eye, set in a sweep of copper dust. Her face looked like it was sculpted from precious metals, Roisin thought.
Dev roared. Anita sparkled. They were a good combination. Roisin realised she missed being a good combination.
‘Think any of it’s true?’ Meredith said, taking her seat again, also glancing at the deep shadows in the unoccupied end of the drawing room. ‘The servant girl killing herself part, not the ghost resurrection. Though also the ghost resurrection, if you want to make the case.’
‘No,’ Roisin said. ‘On the basis, as said, it sounds like all ghost stories ever.’
‘If we are due a haunting, you’re absolutely the one who’ll get it now,’ Matt said. ‘The vocal cynic always gets it. You’ve marked yourself, Rosh.’
‘This is true. I’ll take my chances,’ Roisin said. ‘Not least because I know the facetious pretty boy gets it straight after me. You’re no way alive at the end. You foolishly have a furtive assignation out by the chicken shed. Then …’ Roisin made a body thrusting and then a neck slashing gesture.
‘Who is alive at the end?!’ Gina squeaked, as if this was a real prospect she should plan for.
‘Resourceful, “main character energy” Meredith, brandishing a tiki torch, in her glitter Birkenstocks,’ Roisin said. ‘She possibly saves you and Dev, according to the worthy of rescue archetypes. Joe read the ghost story; I derided the ghost story; Matt’s, as stated, Matt; and Anita said she was frightened, so she’s a goner. We’re obvious fodder for the narrative arc.’
There was a pause.
‘Do you know, I think I’d have preferred charades,’ Matt said.