“Hong Kong,” says Tamar. “Hong Kong . . . our son is in Hong Kong.”
“Yes, exactly, Hong Kong . . . and Ambrose and Kenzilea off in St. Kitts know too, and if I don’t praise some of the rest of you for also knowing what family’s about, that’s because I don’t like praising people for doing exactly what they should be doing. Anyway, I’m not asking you Lees to help pick the people who’ll live in the houses—I’m asking you to help pick the actual houses. There are three in particular that I’ve been offered as a job lot, and at a price so low that I’m almost sure mischief is afoot . . .”
“The estate agency is a reputable one, though,” Tamar put in. “We’ve been dealing with them for years. Miss Maszkeradi said that the thing to bear in mind about two of the houses is that they’re absolutely, definitely not haunted—”
“Meaning she thinks they’re as haunted as fuck and wants to mention it in advance because one of the pre-sale stipulations is that a potential buyer has to spend a night in each of the houses,” Rémy said.
Perdita liked the sound of this.
“But apparently there’s something else to bear in mind about the third house—”
“Yes, what is it Miss Maszkeradi said about the third house again?” Ari asked.
“She said we can have it if we can get in,” said Tamar.
Margot managed to establish that Miss Maszkeradi was the estate agent who’d come to them with the three-house deal, and that though the Kerchevals’ estate agency of choice did indeed have a venerable history, Miss Maszkeradi herself was new to the job. All three Kerchevals present had met Miss Maszkeradi in person, and all three disagreed on basic aspects of her physique.
Margot’s opinion: “She sounds . . . well, I’ve never heard estate agents talk about houses they’re supposed to be trying to sell in this way . . .”
“Doesn’t mean she’s not on the level,” Perdita said.
“Well, let’s see . . . we’ll set up viewings . . . first house weekend after next . . . Harriet and I have to do a bit of work. And, Perdita, you should get back to school. I think I’ll call my tattoo artist friend too.”
“Your tattoo artist friend?” Tamar asked.
“Yes—he has some very good patterns that ward off spirit possession.”
“Make it an appointment for four,” said Tamar.
Ari wanted the Lees to stay the night, wanted them to move back in, actually. Not a chance. For the Lees, home was somewhere else—they’d visit again very soon, though. Yes, there’d be lots of visits, and he must visit them too . . . and they caught the last train back to London with Tamar in tow.
15
The tattoo made Harriet’s heart ache for days. She liked it, but it was drawn on to a sensitive place, the place between her breasts where it seemed to her that the skin was thinner. Thinner and itchier, but also more easily soothed with a fingertip dipped in lotion. As for the device Margot’s friend chose, it was seven crisscrossed swords—or seven arrows—the sharp points curlicued as though twisted at gale force. Perdita didn’t end up getting tattooed. “Any spirit that wants to have a go at possessing me is welcome to try,” said she, and out came the jack-o’-lantern grin, along with a few exclamations from both her grandmothers, who’d never seen it before. For Tamar, Margot, and Harriet, though, the tattoo was a reassuring precaution to take. Especially once they’d read up on the house they were going to view. The Baker House. Its bad reputation wasn’t due to its being a very old house, though it was very old. Nor was the bad reputation due to reports of ghostly apparitions or supernatural occurrences. A sad, strange, and nefarious scheme had been conceived of and carried out in the rooms of this house a decade ago. There was no ghost, not a ghost, but there was something there. So people reasoned that the house must be haunted by all the goings-on. It was a shame, because most people who spent a little time in the house agreed that it was a nice house and could not help gathering the infamous Baker family’s dreams and memories and belongings up in its bricks and mortar; the house was only doing what it had been built to do. So it did that, and remained empty. This was Harriet’s assessment when she looked through photos and documents pertaining to the house, the facade of which she felt some low-key rapport with. She’d walked past this house many a time, she didn’t remember doing so, but she must have done. She was often in Camden.
As for what had happened: high-achieving Jackie Baker and her similarly high-achieving youngest daughter, Tara, had got together and evaluated the other members of their family and found their flaws too detestable and their endearing qualities too insignificant to be borne. Tara and Jackie Baker had no choice but to reject all association with these scroungers and finalized this rejection by engineering accidents for them all: mostly electrical accidents, taking care to factor in a few shocks and spills for themselves too. Family friends thought at first that the Bakers were simply . . . clumsy? Unlucky? Tara Baker and her mother didn’t manage to kill anybody, but mentally, emotionally, and atmospherically speaking, the house became a madhouse. So many accidents, and nobody who could openly be blamed for them . . . all this had been systematically brought to light by the best friend of one of the targeted siblings, who turned Sherlock not even in the pursuit of justice, necessarily, but out of sheer disbelief that his mate kept denying that he’d been subject to at least three instances of attempted murder. Confessions having been secured, one thing Ma Baker said in a newspaper interview stuck in Harriet’s mind: They didn’t even love us. Harriet imagined that this was said casually, with equally casual subtext: So we couldn’t let them live.
The Bakers dispersed—some to lead lives that sounded ordinary enough, others to full-time care facilities. Perdita thought there might yet be a ghost in their house. In one of her printouts of the newspaper interviews there are three parts Perdita’s underlined in red—Jackie Baker’s three answers to the same question: How many children do you have, Mrs. Baker?
Jackie Baker’s first answer is that she gave birth to five children, but only one is really her child—the rest are leeches.
Jackie Baker’s second answer is that she gave birth to six children, but only one is really her child—the rest are leeches.