‘Ols, please be careful!’ Caro said, her voice irritating him now.

‘I am being sodding careful, OK?’

Placing his hands against the rough brick wall for balance, he slowly raised his body up, inches at a time, until he was able to grab the sill with its flaking white paint. But as his fingers gripped the wood it crumbled like papier mâché.

‘Jesus!’ he cried out, almost toppling over backwards.

‘Ollie!’ Caro screamed.

He just managed to grab the top of the ladder with one hand, and then leaned forward, steadying himself, gulping air.

‘Come down!’ she commanded. ‘Come down, we’ll get one of the builders to go up – this evening if we can.’

Ollie hesitated. But his head was swimming again, he realized. This was not smart. Slowly and very carefully, he descended. When he climbed off the last rung, relieved to have his feet back on terra firma, he was sweating heavily.

Caro looked at him, anxiously. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Yes,’ he fibbed. His heart was pounding and, strangely, he had toothache. The garden seemed to be swaying in front of his eyes, as if he had just stepped off a boat and hadn’t yet got back his equilibrium. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand; his T-shirt beneath his jumper felt sodden. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘You’ve gone a horrible colour.’

‘Really, I’m fine, darling. I’ll phone Bryan Barker and see if he can get someone over right now.’

With her help, he lowered the ladder then carried it back and laid it down with the other, shorter ladders. When he stood back up, he was again panting, his heart racing. He was coming down with a bug, he realized. Flu. But he had no time for that.

‘You don’t look right, Ols,’ Caro said.

‘Ley lines,’ he replied. ‘I’ll go and call Bryan and then check them out on my computer.’

‘I’ll come up and show you the sites I’ve been looking at,’ she said, still staring at him, concerned.

He climbed up the two flights of stairs to his office, hauling himself on the handrail much of the way, then had to stop for a moment when he entered the room to get his breath back.

‘You should go to bed,’ Caro said. ‘You need to be right for tomorrow evening.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, sitting down in front of his screen. ‘I’m fine. I feel like bashing that wall down, but with a houseful of kids we can’t do that. I don’t want to freak them out.’

Barker’s phone went to voicemail and he left a message, asking him to call back urgently.

They spent the next ten minutes scanning and studying segments of websites on ley lines. Then Caro looked at her watch. ‘I’d better go down and see to lunch.’ She looked at him anxiously once more. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be in bed?’

He stood up and put his arms round her, holding her tightly. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Really. I guess I’m just all wound up about everything.’

‘That makes two of us,’ she said. ‘And we’re both going to be like this until we find out just who the hell else we’re sharing this house with.’

‘We will,’ he said. ‘And we’ll get rid of any unwanted guest we have, OK? The vicar and this Minister of Deliverance, Benedict Cutler, will sort it out tomorrow. They will, darling.’

She smiled, thinly. ‘I hope so.’

‘We will get this sorted out,’ he said, adamantly. ‘I promise you.’

She kissed him on the forehead then went out of the room and headed downstairs. He sat back down, turned to the computer screen, and froze. There was another message in large black letters.

IN YOUR FUCKING DREAMS.

50

Sunday, 20 September

As he stared, rooted to the spot, feeling as if his stomach had turned into a block of ice, the words faded. An instant later there was a tearing sound above him like someone ripping up a sheet of stiff paper or cardboard.

His eyes shot to the ceiling. A spider’s web of cracks was appearing, spreading out in front of his eyes. Moments later, a small chunk of plaster, accompanied by a shower of dust, fell down on his head and on to the keyboard.

He looked up again, shivers rippling through him, at the tiny area of exposed rafter.

As suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The cracks did not grow any bigger. No more dust fell.

He stared up again, shaking uncontrollably, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Jesus, what the hell was happening?

He went down to the first-floor landing, where he could smell the aroma of roasting meat from the kitchen and hear the music pounding out of Jade’s room, then walked along to the yellow room, and back into the en-suite bathroom. He looked at the old-fashioned enamel bathtub, with brown stains below the big old taps and around the plughole. Then he stared at the tiled walls. He went through into the blue room next door, and over to the wall which should adjoin the bathroom, and rapped hard on it, to see if it was hollow.

But it was solid.

What the hell was behind that tiny window? What room? Who was in there?

As he went back out onto the landing someone barged into him, sending him flying forward, crashing down onto the threadbare carpet.

‘Hey!’ he said angrily, thinking for a moment it must be Ruari.

Then, as he looked around, he realized there was no one there.

‘Lunch!’ Caro shouted out from downstairs. ‘Lunch!’

‘OK, darling!’ he called back, his voice shaky, hauling himself up onto his knees.

‘Tell Jade, Phoebe and Ruari to come down,’ she called back.

He stood up, looking around and up at the ceiling. ‘Yes, OK, I’ll get them.’

‘It’s on the table!’

Jade was full of excitement, at lunch, about the music video, showing them all a clip on her phone and talking about her party next week, and the labradoodle puppy they were going to go and see. Ruari, whom Ollie and Caro liked a lot, was his usual chatty self, talking about football and in particular Brighton’s bitter rivals, Crystal Palace. Ollie and Ruari both agreed that Crystal Palace looked like they were going to struggle to avoid relegation from the Premier League this season.

‘Jade says you’ve got a ghost here,’ Ruari said suddenly, with a grin. ‘That’s pretty cool.’

‘I think most old houses have ghosts of some kind,’ Ollie replied. His plate of food sat on the refectory table in front of him, virtually untouched. Roast pork and crackling was one of his favourite dishes, but right now he had no appetite.

‘Epic,’ Ruari said, nodding his head. ‘Just epic.’

Then Ollie saw a shadow moving in the doorway to the atrium. Hovering. Just as it had hovered before when he’d been in the drawing room yesterday morning with the vicar.

‘Excuse me a second.’ Ollie stood up abruptly and strode over to the door and out, across the atrium and into the hall. The hairs rose on the nape of his neck. A short distance along, at the foot of the stairs, facing away from him, stood the translucent silhouettes of a woman and girl. From behind they looked like Caro and Jade. He ran towards them and, as he reached them, they vanished. There was nothing there. He stood, shivering, looking all around and up the stairs.

Nothing.

Shaking all over, wondering again just what was going on in his head, he went back into the kitchen and saw Caro frowning at him. Jade, Phoebe and Ruari were giggling over some private joke.

‘Thought I heard a car,’ he said, lamely.

As soon as lunch was over, Ollie excused himself and went back up to his office, glancing around nervously with every step he took. Then, as he entered the tower room and looked up at the ceiling, he stopped and stood still in disbelief.