Out on the pavement, she takes hold of the rusty metal bars of the gates. She looks back up the drive. The sky is pink now. How sad Hill House looks, sitting all alone up on its hill. She would like to ask someone what it was like to live in that huge house when there was still glass in the windows, servants in the basement kitchen, horses in the stables, and someone in the bedroom with the big windows above the front door. But everyone that lived in Hill House is long dead and buried, some of them in the vault inside St Mary’s Church at the end of their garden.

Lou waves at the house in case any ghosts are watching and feel lonely. She’s not scared of ghosts. She was scared, after their dad went away, and she didn’t want to sleep in her own room because of the dead people in the graveyard.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ Mum had said, when she tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. ‘The dead can’t hurt you. It’s the living you have to worry about.’

1

1 December 2013

‘Hello …? Mum …? It’s me.’

‘Lou? Is that you, love? It’s a terrible line. Are you at the chip shop?’

‘I’m having a quick drink at The Arms with the girls from work.’

‘Oh. You won’t be back for tea then?’

‘I can’t hear you. I’ve got Christmas songs blasting in my ear. I’ll stop at the chippy on my way home. It’s my turn to get tea in.’

‘No, love. Stay and have a nice time with your friends. I’ll go. Dean’s been hassling me since four o’clock. I swear that boys got hollow legs.’

‘Oh – oh, well if you’re sure, I’ll have chicken pie and extra mushy peas. Keep it warm in the oven for me, would you?’

‘I was thinking we could put the tree up tomorrow and make some mince pies and—’

‘I’ve got to go. My drink’s coming.’

‘OK. See you later then. Love you.’

‘Yeah. See you later.’

Lou hung up, shoved her phone into her bag and watched Mel squeeze back through the payday scrum at the bar.

‘‘Scuse I, pardon I,’ Mel laughed, rubbing up against every man in her path, no hint of shame or subtlety. If an irate girlfriend or wife challenged her, she had the readymade excuse that she couldn’t help it; she was as wide as a small family hatchback and as short as a gingerbread man – her words, not Lou’s.

Mel plonked a pint on the table. She squeezed on to the bench seat beside Lou and wedged the straw from an odd-looking blue concoction into the corner of her mouth. ‘Was that Andy?’

‘No-o. We split up last week, I told you’

‘Oh yeah. Shame.’ Mel slurped her drink loudly.

Was it? Lou thought. Two months was good going by her standards but it hardly qualified as the romance of the century. A series of un-inspirational dates peppered with a few disappointing meals barely qualified as a romance at all.