Free The Haunting of Tabitha Grey by Vanessa Curtis Page A

somebody ordinary and do normal boyfriend/girlfriend stuff
like going shopping and seeing films.
    After a really bad night’s sleep I can hardly wait to run down the corridor to the front door of Weston Manor and burst out into the fresh air.
    Not sure I ever want to come back.
    I leave Mum and Dad arguing in the kitchen. I can’t quite make out what it’s about because they’re conducting the entire row in muttered voices under their breath so that I
can’t hear, but I catch Ben’s name and my own and Mum is pale with black circles under her eyes, which means that the migraines have come back.
    As I leave the flat I swear I hear Mum mention Dawn, but I’m not sure.
    She hasn’t arrived yet. It’s too early for her to be setting up her desk. There’s a cleaner polishing windows in the entrance hall and a man up a ladder fixing a light bulb but
other than that the manor feels kind of empty and calm.
    Not like it did the other day when I heard the steps on the stairs.
    ‘Weird old house,’ I mutter as I heave open the enormous front door. The cleaner hears me and thinks I’m speaking to her so I have to spend another five minutes making polite
conversation with the old lady in an apron holding a plastic bucket.
    ‘Expect you’ll be looking forward to this evening,’ she says.
    I’m halfway out of the door but I turn around, sneaking a quick look at my watch. The bus will be outside the manor in one and a half minutes and I’m going to have to run like stink
to make it.
    ‘This evening?’ I say. ‘Why? What’s happening?’
    The woman laughs, snapping off her rubber gloves and rolling them into a ball.
    ‘Can’t believe that your father hasn’t told you,’ she says. ‘We have a ghost hunt on the second Monday evening of every month. People pay a lot of money to get a
look around this house at night-time.’
    I fight an urge to burst out in uncontrollable fits of giggles.
    There’s not much point me telling her that all the action I’ve witnessed so far has taken place in the DAY.
    But then it’s like she reads my mind and she says: ‘Most people don’t see anything. Mind, there’s been one or two who can.’
    That’s got my interest. I can hear in the distance the sound of the bus engine whining by but I don’t care.
    ‘Who?’ I say. ‘Sid?’
    The cleaner laughs again.
    ‘He wouldn’t let on if he had,’ she says. ‘But some of the volunteers and guides who work here have had something happen to them. Doors slamming, voices. That kind of
thing.’
    I laugh in what’s supposed to be a scornful way.
    ‘But those things could be caused by real-life people,’ I say. ‘How do you know it’s anything to do with ghosts?’
    The woman leans her mop against the reception desk and gives me a considered look.
    ‘I don’t believe in it, myself,’ she says. ‘Nothing’s ever happened to me.’
    I notice she’s wearing a tiny gold cross around her neck. When she says this, it glints and sparkles in the sunlight coming through the windows.
    Then she turns away, shaking her head and smiling an annoying little smirk so I pelt down the steps and out across the gravel drive towards the entrance gates with their carved pineapples on
top. I wait for the next bus and spend the rest of the morning explaining to teachers why I was too late to make assembly.
    Jake comes up to me during break-time. Tie too short. Shirt un-tucked and crinkled. Trousers baggy and falling down around his skinny hips.
    Not fair. If I even so much as wear an ear hoop the teachers are down on me like a ton of bricks and all of the girls have to wear their hair in ponytails or hair-bands during the day. My
hair’s too fine to be worn in either of those ways but there’s no point arguing with the teachers or you just get shoved into detention after school.
    So I’m just sitting on a wall banging my heels against the brick and watching a couple of girls try to scratch each other’s eyes out when Jake comes up to me