Free The History Room by Eliza Graham Page A

that mural means to us,’ my mother said.
    ‘I’m sorry.’ And I was. Not so much because I’d angered my mother and hurt her but because the painted woman I’d exposed had been so disturbing. I didn’t know
why. She was just a girl in a really cool dress, barely older-looking than the girls in the sixth form. But something about that expression on her face bothered me. I needed to go and have another
look at her.
    ‘Why did you do it?’ Mum was leaning against the wall of the little hall into our apartment now, hand on forehead.
    ‘We were playing a game.’ I explained how the scooter handle had hit the wall and left a mark, how we’d hoped to rub it off.
    ‘So it really was an accident. To start with?’ She looked relieved.
    I nodded. ‘But once I saw . . .’ Once I’d seen her , I meant, but something warned me not to mention that painted woman.
    Dad’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done, Meredith.’
    ‘Who is she?’ I was no longer able to hold back the question.
    ‘Nobody.’ He moved past me. ‘I’ll see you later.’ I heard the apartment door close behind him.
    ‘Mum?’ I thought she wasn’t going to answer.
    ‘I really don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘Probably someone he made up.’
    ‘Why don’t we ask Dad who she is?’
    ‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘He’s distracted enough as it is.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    She blinked, seeming to return from a place far away. Her eyes flashed again. ‘Don’t think you can distract me away from punishing you. You two can wait in your bedroom until your
father’s finished with the parents. Then we’ll decide what to do with you.’
    The girl was only a painted image but she’d changed everything.

 
Eleven
    Clara and I finished our telephone call. She seemed softer by the end of the conversation, as though talking about the mural had reminded her of how much the house meant to
us.
    ‘You took all the rap for that incident,’ she said, sounding sad. ‘Mum and Dad were so angry. They seemed to blame you more than me. I felt bad about that.’
    They’d come down harder on me. That’s how it had seemed, at least. Perhaps Clara had simply been a better-behaved child.
    ‘Don’t worry. I probably made your life hell for weeks after,’ I told her. After promising to call her again soon I hung up. I found the lead and fastened it to the dog’s
collar, my mind still on the woman beneath the mural. But as we walked I came alive again, the exercise shaking the past out of me. The air smelled of bonfires this morning and leaves dropped round
us as we approached the woods.
    Usually when I took Samson out I felt alone. This morning I felt eyes on my back. Once or twice I turned, seeing only oozing dank mist. The world looked as though it had been printed off on a
printer that was running out of coloured ink. I shivered. The dog felt the presence of someone, too. He stopped, whined briefly and wagged his tail before continuing his pursuit of rabbits.
    Pupils sometimes talked about ghosts at Letchford. I’d never seen any myself. For much of its four- or five-hundred-year history the house seemed to have lived under a blanket of
anonymity. The families who’d inherited the house over the centuries seemed to have kept their heads during times of tumult. Even the loyal Simon was finding it hard to dig up anything truly
sensational for his history of Letchford. And my mother herself, well, she’d never have wanted to make me feel jittery or uneasy either in life or afterlife. If she’d come back as a
ghost it would have been as a most considerate one, hanging around the gardens in full light and rustling a bush in gentle greeting. Thinking about that girl hidden under the paintwork in the front
hall had put me on edge, I decided.
    I hadn’t thought about her for years, that personification of my father’s lost life in Central Europe. He’d never told us who she was and my mother had stuck to her story about
not