Faraway girl, p.1
Faraway Girl, page 1
Etta is worried about her brother, Jamie. The doctors can find nothing wrong with him, but he is getting weaker by the day. At breakfast one morning, he seems to have lost it completely.
In a voice as pale as his face, he said, ‘I think I can see a ghost.’
However, when they all turn to look, sure enough, materialising on the window seat is a girl about Etta’s age, wearing a beautiful Victorian wedding dress. Etta has to get off to school, she has no time for this, but she is about to discover that time is to become very significant to her. She and her ghost companion have no choice but to work out what is going on before Jamie is lost forever.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
About the Author
Also by Fleur Beale
Follow Penguin Random House
1
When Etta woke up on the last day of the third term the eerie weirdness in her world was worse. She checked the time: 6.17, and the alarm was set for 6.45. She stared at the glowing numbers on her phone, willing the day to sort itself out. But still she couldn’t get rid of the sensation of another … dimension … pulling at her. It was like she was caught in an undertow she couldn’t escape.
Young ladies do not run.
Yet another random bit of dumbness sliding into her head like the one yesterday — Young ladies do not gossip with the servants.
WTF? Servants?
She covered her eyes even though the day was still darkly winter — maybe things would settle if she didn’t try to look. What did it mean, this sense that her world had a tear in it, a space where hell-knew-what could creep in?
Covering her eyes didn’t help. She switched on the bedside light. Everything looked normal, even the pile of clothes more or less on the chair under the window. Her battered teddy bear guarded her as usual from his spot on her bookshelf. ‘Make it all stop, Teds.’
Think of something else. Like when exactly did this dumb weirdness start?
But she already knew, though knowing something and facing it were two different propositions. No use putting it off, not now, with the spook stuff escalating.
She so didn’t want to think about this, but shouting lalalala-don’t-wanna-not-gunna wasn’t going to work any longer. Okay, she could do this. She pressed her hands over her heart. She would do this, because she wasn’t the only one weird stuff was happening to. If it was just her, she’d grit her teeth and ignore it as best she could, but something was up with her little brother too and both somethings had started on the same day two weeks ago.
It was funny that morning, when she’d assumed it was just about her — waking up with what she’d thought was a dream running in her head. I’ve come to dress you, Miss. She’d gone out to the kitchen ready to laugh about it with her mother, but she was busy with Jamie, who didn’t want breakfast for the first time in living memory. He was ten, he was a boy, he had energy coming out his ears, he loved his food, except on that morning he was refusing to eat.
As the days went on, the random snippets sneaking into her head got less and less funny and Jamie got sicker. Today was the worst, with the world feeling very unstable and that thing about young ladies not running sounding as if a real person standing beside her was saying it.
A terrifying idea had to be faced: if the haunting was worse for her, was Jamie sicker this morning than he’d been last night?
She shivered. There had to be a scientific, logical explanation for what was happening to her and for whatever was making Jamie into a limp lump of paleness. There was no escaping the fact that both kicked off on that same day two weeks ago.
She wouldn’t say anything to Mum and Geoff unless she had to. They weren’t into woowoo weird stuff and neither was she, except it seemed she was swimming in fecking weirdo shit that meant bad trouble for Jamie. She wished desperately she didn’t know that.
Although Jamie was her half-brother, right now she felt more tuned in to him than either her mother or Geoff was. She knew too that Geoff was more worried than her mother was, but being a paramedic meant he must have all sorts of medical info running through his head and none of it would help.
She pulled the duvet tight around her. How did she know his knowledge wouldn’t help? Another random mystery.
Should she tell them about her sense of an undertow in the world? About the tear in its fabric that was letting in fragments of another existence? Nah. Mum was a law professor, for heaven’s sake. She’d probably send her off to a shrink, all the time trying to be calm and reassuring, just like she was doing with Jamie. We’ll get to the bottom of this, Jamie dear. Don’t worry.
Geoff would shake his head, his scientific brain rejecting creepy, unprovable stuff.
‘But I’m a scientist too,’ she told Teds. Or she would be. Just a small matter of going to uni next year, doing a degree or two, then getting a job. ‘And I know there’s something very bad happening here that no science I’ve ever heard of can explain.’
Enough! She leapt out of bed, hoping a good, hot shower would restore things to normal, where Jamie bounced around doing handstands and she didn’t have to worry about losing her sanity. She took a step towards the bathroom — and stopped to check she wasn’t wearing the heavy long skirt she could feel tangling with her feet. No, just the usual T-shirt and boxers. This is bonkers. I’m losing it. Big time.
The stinging hot water didn’t wash away her terror.
Jamie appeared in the kitchen a second after she did. He looked ghastly pale, weakly dragging himself to the table as if he was a hundred and ten.
Her heart thumped. He was worse, and again she had that sense of her world spinning off its axis. She’d have to tell Mum and Geoff, although it’d up their worry: the son with some undiagnosable illness and the daughter losing her mind.
The parents came in, their worried frowns deepening the moment they saw how Jamie could barely keep himself upright in his chair. Her mother said, ‘Right, young man — this morning you are going to eat a decent breakfast before we see that specialist. It’s not surprising you’ve got no energy. You need fuel for your body.’
Etta gave her points for not telling Jamie again that the doctor had said he was perfectly healthy. No reason for you to be off your food, young man.
No reason that science could detect or explain, although her mother believed the right specialist would sort him out. Etta suspected that Geoff hoped rather than believed.
‘A smoothie full of vitamins, that’s the ticket,’ Geoff said, his hand on his son’s forehead. ‘Your temperature’s normal. You’ll be fine with some sustenance in you.’
Etta knew her brother wouldn’t be fine. Why weren’t their parents worried sick like she was? Why did they believe some specialist would say something dumb like Take out his tonsils and he’ll be right as rain? She knew in her bones no doctor would be able to fix him, and that scared her rigid. So too did knowing that telling them about her own weird shit wouldn’t do any good. Mum would be exasperated: Really, Etta? You’re worrying about dreams? Now of all times? Geoff would be amused and do the finger twirl at the side of his head to show he thought she was as crazy as she felt.
She took a couple of pieces of toast to the table and sat down opposite Jamie, who had his head propped on his hand and didn’t acknowledge her for the first time since before he even learned to talk.
In a voice as pale as his face, he said, ‘I think I can see a ghost.’
Etta, to cover the chill his words sent through her, said, ‘Looked in the mirror this morning, did you?’ Crap. That had hurt him, and she wanted to scrub the words from his memory, but more than that she wanted him to double up with laughter at how he’d made her think he was going crazy.
She watched him check with their parents — no help there. Geoff stopped shoving green stuff into the blender long enough to grin at him and tap the side of his head. Mum hadn’t even heard. She kept firing off emails from her phone.
Etta wanted to reassure him, tell him it was okay if he was nuts because she was too, except that then he looked at the window seat and asked, ‘Are you hungry?’
It was too much. Etta’s hold on her sanity and her temper loosened. She threw down her toast. It slid off the plate and skidded across the table. ‘Mum! Geoff! Do something! Your son and heir is losing it. Big time.’
They blinked. Miles away, thought Etta in despair. Why couldn’t they see how fecking serious all this was? She took a breath. ‘Mum. Geoff. Jamie just asked an empty space of nothing if it was hungry.’
‘Mmmm,’ said Mum.
Geoff said, ‘It’s healthy to be hungry.’
Etta snarled at him, ‘He’s your kid — do something!’
‘He’s your dad too,’ Jamie whispered.
Mum put the phone down. ‘What ghost?’
Etta heaved the most theatrical of sighs and flung out an arm. ‘That one over there, sitting on the … oh sheesh!’
All their heads swivelled to follow the direction of her pointing finger. A girl in an elaborate dress sat on the window seat, shimmering in the sun of the winter morning, and as they watched, frightened and disbelieving, her features became visible, first as a sort of pencil drawing with a wash of colour, and slowly, over perhaps a minute, she became real. As real as the rest of them in the room.
‘Who are you?’ Jamie whispered. ‘Why have you come here?’
2
The ghost shook her skirts. ‘Have you finished? I’m tired of sitting. I want to move around.’
The family stared with faces pale as the ghostly dress that wasn’t ghostly any longer. Etta examined the intricacies of that extravagant gown rather than look at the girl’s face. She wasn’t real, none of this was. It couldn’t be.
Jamie didn’t seem bothered now that they could all see her, or maybe he didn’t have the energy. He said, ‘You can move around.’
Etta sensed her world sliding back into normality. Really? Going back to normal right now when a ghost had materialised herself into their family room? But apparently so, because nothing tugged at her, no phantom skirt nagged at her legs and not one dumb rule popped into her head. Probably she should be scared witless, because a ghost turning up was the granddaddy of the recent weird shit and — yeah, she was scared, but she also felt normal again for the first time in two weeks.
The girl stood up, then she seemed to notice them all for the first time. She stared at them, at the room, then down at herself. ‘Who are you? Where is this?’
She sounded frightened. That would make five of us, Etta thought. She cleared her throat. If Jamie could talk to the ghost, then so could she. ‘You’re in our house. It’s in Wellington. New Zealand.’ She considered the girl and her clothing. ‘It’s the twenty-first century.’ Those clothes — they looked like they belonged in a world of servants, of maids who came to dress you. Why was she here? How was she here?
Etta glanced at her parents. No use expecting help from that direction — if ever she saw a pair of slam-dunked stuffed dummies it was them. She decided to keep to concrete, everyday things. ‘We’re having breakfast. Would you like some?’
The girl looked uncertain, worried even. ‘May I eat? I’m never allowed to immediately after a sitting.’
Etta and Jamie glanced at each other. Etta opened her mouth to speak, but her mother said, ‘If you’re hungry, you must eat. What would you like?’ Her voice shook.
Mum’s voice never shook. Geoff’s eyes had a narrow, strained look even though he was smiling at Jamie, aiming for reassurance. Again Etta had a sense of the order of things cracking.
Jamie turned his head back to the girl. ‘Who are you? Why did you come here? Go away, we don’t want you!’
Geoff abandoned the smoothie-making to put both hands on Jamie’s shoulders. ‘Easy does it, mate.’ He spoke to the girl. ‘Come and sit down. There’s a lot we don’t understand — but first you must eat.’
Mum set down a bowl and spoon. She carried a spare chair to the table. ‘Sit here. Help yourself.’ She waved a hand at the three cereal boxes, the yoghurt and the bowl of fruit.
The girl sat down. Etta saw how straight she sat, how she positioned her hands in her lap, how her pavlova of a skirt folded under her butt when she sat. If it was me, she thought, I’d be into that food like there was no tomorrow. But then perhaps this girl had used up all her tomorrows. She reached for the muesli. ‘Use your head, Mum. She’s probably never seen stuff like this.’ Did ghosts even eat? Could they? One way to find out. She poured some out for the girl. ‘Flag the yoghurt, you’ll probably hate it. Have a banana or kiwifruit with it.’ The girl simply stared at the bowl and the banana. Etta peeled and sliced it for her, then poured milk onto the muesli. ‘Eat,’ she said.
The family watched as the girl picked up her spoon and took a mouthful.
Geoff said, ‘You’ve not had food like this before?’
The girl shook her head. ‘No. It is different.’ She didn’t say she liked it.
‘Would you rather have toast?’
She put the spoon down. ‘May I?’
Mum stood up. ‘I’ll make scrambled eggs. Would you like that?’
The girl’s face lightened. ‘Oh, thank you! I would like that so very much!’
Etta took the bowl away and Jamie, handling the knife as if it weighed ten kilograms, buttered two slices of toast for the girl. Etta wanted to weep. Jamie, struggling to hold a knife while that fecking ghost sat there expecting them to do everything for her. She wanted to tell the girl they weren’t her servants and she could just stop the Lady Muck attitude right now because if she thought they were going to spend the day running around after her, then she was so wrong she’d be amazed to know exactly how wrong. But the whole scenario was crazy. Who was this person — this ghost who couldn’t possibly be real but who the whole family could see? What was she doing here? Etta grabbed her phone. If she didn’t get a pic she’d forever wonder if they’d imagined Miss Ghost-in-a-frock.
Mum turned from where she stood stirring the eggs. ‘What’s your name, dear?’ Then she shook her head. ‘How rude of me! Let me introduce us first — I’m Nell Limstock, this is my husband Geoff Brady. These are our children — Etta Limstock, aged seventeen, and Jamie Brady, aged ten.’
The girl repeated the names. ‘Mrs Limstock, Mr Brady. Miss Limstock and Master Jamie Brady.’
She stood and dropped a slight curtsy to everybody except Jamie. She smiled at him. He smiled back — a small smile that died at the corners.
‘I am Miss Constance Williston,’ the girl said, ‘and I will have my seventeenth birthday on the twenty-first day of July. Of this month,’ she added softly as she sat down again. ‘Why do you have different names?’
Etta sighed. How could you begin to tell a ghost about mothers who kept their own names, about families who didn’t have the same surname? She decided not to try. ‘Where have you come from?’ she asked instead. ‘Who are you, Constance Williston?’
Mum put the eggs in front of Constance. ‘Eat first.’
A strange, strained silence rocketed around the room, unbroken except for the click of cutlery on china.
3
Jamie pushed at the food on his plate but put none of it in his mouth. It terrified Etta — better to keep her attention on Constance eating so daintily, so primly, so compactly. She would never drop gravy down her front, or spill salad from her plate onto that beautiful dress. Etta longed to take the fabric between her fingers, to examine the lace and the deep, gathered layers of the bouffy skirt. And those had to be real pearls around her ladyship’s white throat.
Mum poured cups of tea. Jamie pushed his full plate away. He asked for tea. ‘It’ll curdle your innards,’ Geoff said, and winked.
‘Now, young lady,’ Mum said, turning to the strange girl. ‘Start at the beginning.’
Miss Constance Williston ran a finger down the mug of tea. It was the ring finger of her left hand, adorned with a stonking great ruby set in a circle of diamonds.
An engagement ring? Etta shook her head. Couldn’t be. That girl would only turn seventeen on the last day of the holidays. Even seventeen was far too young to think about getting hitched.
The girl picked her drink up with her right hand and sipped. She handled the mug awkwardly, as if, thought Etta, she’d never used a mug before. And perhaps she hadn’t. She glanced at the china cabinet where the family dinner set was kept. Those cups were tiny; delicate and dainty. Well, tough. Her Lady Muckship would just have to learn to use what came to her and be grateful she got it.
Etta looked at her brother. That boy was managing to sit upright powered by strength of will alone. Miss Connie Williston turning up had made him sicker. Couldn’t the parents see that?
Constance set the mug on the table. ‘Where is the beginning?’ She sounded helpless, and Etta suppressed a wave of sympathy. This girl was going to be trouble. She didn’t know how she knew that, but know it she did.
