Sarah Painter - The Secrets Of Ghosts

Inside her flat, Katie kicked off her shoes and stripped off her tights with relief. She’d been planning to get into the shower, but the headache was pulsing behind her eyes now. She took a couple of paracetamol and stumbled to the bedroom. When she lay down, the room seemed to be spinning, which reminded her uncomfortably of the one and only time she’d got drunk. It wasn’t a good memory, but at least it pushed away the events of the evening. Katie closed her eyes and felt the adrenaline still running through her body, making her limbs tingle and her mind jump from one image to another. It was going to be a long night.

Chapter 3

Katie kept on seeing Oliver Cole’s rigid face so, when she was finally dreaming and she found herself back in the upstairs corridor of The Grange, her hand reaching out to push open the door to The Yellow Room, she wasn’t particularly surprised. I can’t be entirely asleep. I’m dreaming, but I know I’m dreaming. Weird.

She moved into the room, knowing that she was going to see the body lying on the floor, half on the thick wool rug and half on the polished boards. But she didn’t. He wasn’t there. She turned, very slowly it felt, and looked around at the room. Everything looked normal. There was a suitcase open on the bed and she moved towards it. Men’s stuff. Smart-looking trousers and neatly folded shirts. There was a book on the bedside table and a glasses case, a smudged water glass and a crumpled tissue. The toilet flushed and Katie looked towards the en-suite, suddenly feeling alarmed. Instinctively she wanted to hide; she felt guilty for being in this man’s room. Even though it wasn’t her fault. Even though it was a dream.

She stepped to the wall, next to the en-suite door so that when it opened it swung close to her face. Oliver Cole, alive and well, walked towards the bed. He was a bulky man and taller than she remembered. Of course, she’d only really seen him lying down. He started to undo his shirt and Katie panicked. She didn’t want to watch this man get undressed. She willed the dream to change, but it didn’t, so she stepped out from behind the door, heading for the exit as fast as her dream-slow legs could carry her.

Oliver turned in surprise, his expression transforming into horror as he caught sight of her. Then his hands were going to his throat, he was gasping, his eyes bulging and filling with blood as the vessels burst. She knew that expression; she remembered seeing it. He was terrified. His mouth was open as if he was screaming but Katie couldn’t hear anything. Her own throat was hurting as if in sympathy and, suddenly, she was awake. In her flat. In her bed. Her hands clenched into fists and her breathing ragged as if she’d been running.

The sun was streaming through her curtains and it was already well past nine.

*

After several cups of coffee, Katie dragged herself up the hill to work. The Grange was Pendleford’s nicest hotel. It was set on the outskirts, high above the town as if looking down on it. As it was a seventeenth-century manor house, it probably was. It looked just the same as always in the bright sunlight; there was no sign that anything untoward had happened the night before. Katie went around the back of the hotel and found Anna propping open the kitchen door with a catering-sized tub of cooking oil.

‘Oh, my God, I heard about last night.’ Anna hugged Katie quickly. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine. I’m fine,’ Katie said.

‘Everyone’s talking about it,’ Anna said. ‘Although watch out for Patrick. He doesn’t want word getting out.’

Katie nodded and tried to step around Anna. She was staring into her eyes, as if waiting for something.

‘You sure you’re okay? I mean, finding Mr Cole like that—’

‘Course,’ Katie said, hating how stiff and formal she sounded.

Anna hesitated as if she was going to say something else, then she touched Katie’s arm briefly and turned back inside.

The shift went quickly enough. Chatter from the staff was that Mr Cole had definitely died of a heart attack, although Katie wasn’t sure if that was just gossip or whether it had been officially confirmed.

She marched through the downstairs rooms of the hotel, collecting stray glasses, straightening rugs and making sure all the flower arrangements had water. She loved how working at The Grange made her feel purposeful and efficient. She didn’t want to do it for ever, but she liked being good at something.

At a momentary loss, Katie decided to check the library. MOPs were forever leaving the complimentary newspapers in an untidy pile or taking them away. She pushed the door to the small library open and found her boss sitting on the gold brocade sofa with his head in his hands.

He had a laptop open on the coffee table and was obviously busy but Katie was too far into the room to back out again. He looked up, embarrassed, and straightened his spine. ‘Hello there. What can I do you for?’

‘Nothing, I was just—’

He stood up, running his hand over his head. ‘Just checking the accounts. Beth is due on Thursday but... You know.’

Katie did know. Her father ran his own business and accounting was the bane of his life. That or invoicing for work. Or getting paid. The money side, anyway. And her aunt Gwen was self-employed, too. She’d run a market stall, Curious Notions, for years, but was successful enough now that she sold her work through galleries and took the occasional commission. It had taught Katie one thing: she wanted to be employed. Or be instantly so successful that she had a team of accounts and admin people to deal with all of that stuff. She gave Patrick a sympathetic smile and backed out of the room.

‘Is the restaurant busy?’ Patrick asked suddenly. ‘I know occupancy rates are down but are we still getting drop-ins?’

‘Not bad. Fairly full.’ Katie didn’t want to say that she and other waiting staff had noticed that it was nowhere near as busy at lunchtimes as this time last year.

‘Good. Good.’ Patrick looked distracted so Katie continued for the door. She was almost at safety when he said, ‘Go and see Jo for me, will you? Check that the special offer menu is finalised for after the Greg Barton show.’

‘Okay,’ Katie said, not wanting to think about Greg Barton and his ridiculous stage act. She still couldn’t believe Patrick Allen had booked something so tacky for his beloved hotel.

‘I should’ve booked your aunt in.’ Patrick was still talking. ‘Would’ve been a damn sight cheaper, I bet.’

Katie didn’t answer. The idea of Gwen doing a psychic stage show was too ridiculous to contemplate and didn’t deserve a response.

Patrick closed the laptop and gathered the pile of papers next to it. ‘Actually, I think I’ll go and speak to Jo.’ He gave Katie another look. ‘Are you due a break?’

‘Not sure,’ Katie said. She was distracted by the feeling that an insect had just landed on her arm. She brushed it away.

Patrick was looking at her critically. ‘You should take five minutes. I don’t want people thinking I overwork my staff.’

Katie looked down. The hairs were standing up along her forearm but there wasn’t anything there.

Patrick left the room, still muttering something about the lunch menu. The light slanting through the small panes of glass in the bottom of the window was cold and hard, which was peculiar when Katie thought of the searing heat outside. Her head was still sore from her fainting fit the day before and she felt stupid, too.

She wanted to be a wise and capable woman, like Gwen. A healer. A maker of spells. A fixer. Not a victim. And definitely not a delicate Victorian flower, requiring smelling salts and the loosening of her corsets at the sight of a dead body.

Katie gazed at the oak panelling and wondered how many fainting fits, corsets and the like they had seen. Maybe none, Katie thought, looking at the tall bookcases. Perhaps women hadn’t been welcome in the library in those days. They used to think too much learning was bad for women, after all, and that novels rotted the mushy female brain. Katie wondered what the oak panelling would say about her shelves of giant books on herbalism and local history and then she caught herself wondering it and, instead, began to think that she had hit her head when she collapsed after all.