Chapter 3
By now Abigail was used to delivering this particular piece of information.
The reaction she received from recipients varied.
Some railed against her, many cried out in disbelief, while others clasped the words to them, repeating them over and over with a kind of relief.
Lara was different. She sat silent, her hands stilled.
Her whole body was completely motionless, apart from the two silent tears that rolled slowly down her pale cheeks.
Lara lifted her head and passed a hand across her eyes.
‘Lady Porter,’ she whispered. She looked up at Abigail with such pain in her expression that it was a struggle for Abigail to stop herself from leaning across the footstool and trying to clasp her hand.
‘How did you know?’ Lara eventually asked.
Abigail looked back at her for some moments. ‘I will tell you. But first, light the fire. I think a cheerful blaze always puts a different complexion upon a problem. And I suggest you pour yourself a glass of wine.’
Lara looked down at the bottle in her hands as if surprised to find it there and, sighing, did as she was told.
As she went about setting the fire, Abigail took a turn around the room.
The sitting room was spacious, taking up the whole length of the cottage.
The walls were painted a pale green and there was a low-beamed ceiling that reminded Abigail of driftwood.
Around a cream enamel stove that served as a wood burner stood two armchairs and a sofa.
These were sand coloured and were piled with cushions in a mix of soft green, cream and rich blackberry.
The cream and green colours were echoed in the painted furniture around the walls, although it was difficult to see much of this, as everywhere Abigail looked there were piles of books, clothes and floristry paraphernalia.
One end of the room was particularly cluttered and included what looked like half a wooden wheelbarrow propped up against a couple of large urns.
Despite the chaos, Abigail felt it was a room that she could be quite content in.
Although she also sensed it was a room that had known happier times.
As if mirroring her thoughts, Lara looked up from lighting the fire and said, ‘It can look a lot better than this.’ She turned back to her task, and as if talking to herself, added, ‘On a sunny day this room fills with a light that turns everything pale gold. It’s why I fell in love with it.
Although now…’ she left the sentence unfinished.
‘Is this your mother?’ Abigail asked from over by the dresser where she was peering at a photograph.
The picture was of Lara and a woman who had the same slim build and grey eyes as her, but who was somewhat shorter.
They were pictured in a garden standing by an old bench, laughing.
Lara had her hand up as if to shield her eyes from the sun and the woman was looking at her.
‘Yep, that’s Mum.’ There was a slight constraint in Lara’s reply, and Abigail left a not unhopeful silence that after a while Lara filled.
‘She doesn’t really approve of me and, well, how I’m living.
’ She waved her hand vaguely around the room.
‘I can’t seem to get anything right with her at the moment.
I sometimes wonder if she even likes me very much. ’
Abigail kept her own counsel, but it was clear to her from the look on Lara’s mother’s face that she did a lot more than like her daughter.
There was a second thing that Abigail noticed about the photograph.
She decided that this was something she would also keep to herself. For the time being at least.
‘Is this a dream?’ Lara suddenly asked, leaning back on her heels in front of the now glowing wood burner.
‘Does it feel like one?’ Abigail enquired.
‘Yes… No… I don’t know. Nothing seems quite real.
It’s just I have that light-headed feeling you get when you’ve been up all night, or if you’ve drunk way too much.
Which I suppose I have,’ Lara said ruefully, as she reached for the red wine that she had left on a table by the sofa.
‘So if this is a dream it sort of fits.’ She poured herself a glass of wine.
‘On the other hand, if this is really happening, I have a very annoying woman in my house—’
Abigail gave an audible sniff.
‘…who has stalked me, broken into my home, made me cry and knows things about me that I haven’t told anyone.’
‘Ah, that is interesting, and significant, I feel. You have not mentioned your thoughts about Lady Porter’s death to others?’ Abigail asked, picking up on the last thing Lara mentioned.
‘There aren’t many people around here I could talk to about it,’ Lara replied huffily.
Abigail ignored this, but shot her a look that reminded Lara of her old games teacher, who would not accept excuses for missing matches (unless you had lost a limb). Miss Potts certainly had no time for self-pity.
‘You have not contacted the police, for example, about your concerns?’ Abigail pressed her.
‘Hardly,’ Lara responded, feeling very much on the defensive.
‘What was I going to say? The inquest didn’t raise anything suspicious.
They kept referring to “a woman of her age”.
’ She paused, then added in a more hesitant voice, ‘About a month after Lady Porter died, I did stand outside the police station for what felt like hours, but I knew I had nothing concrete to tell them, so in the end I just walked away.’
‘Yes, I can appreciate your dilemma. That was quite understandable,’ Abigail nodded.
This small bit of empathy made Lara feel more hospitable to her uninvited visitor and she held out the bottle towards Abigail in mute enquiry, nodding at a second wine glass that stood on a cupboard nearby.
She continued more quietly, as if talking to herself – which she reflected, she might well be, ‘It’s strange that I’m not feeling particularly worried about you turning up here.
And what is really weird is that I don’t mind having you here.
I don’t like many people, you see, and I rarely let anyone into my cottage,’ she finished.
Glancing at the proffered bottle, Abigail decided to mix her metaphors and kill two birds with one stone while at the same time grabbing the bull by the horns. ‘I would love a glass of wine,’ she said in reply, ‘but sadly I can’t drink. It is one of the things I most regret about being a ghost.’
Lara stopped drinking and gazed at her in horror.
‘Now that really would be crap,’ she said and started to laugh. Once Lara started laughing she found she could not stop.
Abigail watched her appreciatively. ‘I do believe that my generation underestimated the curative power of laughter. Much more beneficial I believe than bloodletting. A thoroughly horrid practice.’
Lara looked back at her in disbelief. ‘You really are something else, you know that?’ she said. ‘Okay,’ Lara continued, ‘so you’re a ghost. Prove it. For example, can I touch you?’
Abigail moved over to the sofa where Lara was now sitting, unbuttoning her glove as she did so. ‘This is going to feel rather strange so please prepare yourself for it. Now reach out and try and take my hand.’
These words did much to sober Lara up. She put out her hand hesitantly towards Abigail’s, her eyes flicking between her hand and Abigail’s face.
Instead of meeting the smoothness of cool flesh as she had been sure she would do, Lara felt as if her hand had been dipped into lukewarm flowing water, until her fingers found the textured surface of the sofa cushion underneath.
The room was completely silent. Lara let out a long breath.
It occurred to her as she exhaled that she was beyond swearing or shouting. She literally had no words left.
Which was fortunate, for this was the moment that Abigail Rossmore (deceased) had been waiting for. And she had plenty.