Joss forced herself to smile. She liked the rector and had enjoyed going occasionally to his services in the church, but his reaction to their request did not inspire her with any confidence. ‘Your blessing would be wonderful, rector. Thank you.’ She glanced at Luke. He was looking away from her, seemingly studying the fire and she could not see his face.
They both sat, heads bowed, there in the study while he prayed over them, then they stood in the great hall while he said another short prayer, presumably designed to cover the rest of the house. It was as he was leaving that he turned to Joss. ‘My dear. You told me I think that you had visited Edgar Gower? Have you spoken to him about your troubles?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s still away.’ She had tried to ring him almost every day over the last month or two, hoping he might be back from South Africa.
‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘He would be the man to help you, I feel sure. He knows Belheddon. He knew your mother and father. And he is more sympathetic than I to the ideas you are putting forward.’ He looked shame faced for a moment. ‘I have never seen a ghost or experienced anything remotely supernatural outside my own religious experience. I find it hard to understand.’
Joss put her hand on his arm. ‘It doesn’t matter. You have done your best.’
The trouble was, his best might not be good enough.
For several weeks she thought it had worked. The weather had grown steadily warmer; Luke’s vegetable garden was beginning to take shape.
In the middle of the month Luke went up to London for the wine auction.
‘I wish you had come with me, Joss.’ He was full of excitement. ‘It was amazing! We’re rich!’ He seized her hands and whirled her round. ‘Even after they’ve taken their cut we will have about ￡27,000! No more worries for a bit. Oh Joss!’
Joss, buoyed up with energy and optimism threw herself into her writing again. Working with Lyn in the house, cooking, helping Luke with his accounts she tried very hard to put her worries out of her head. The house was at peace. The atmosphere had lost its tension. The spring sun had swept away the shadows.
Then about an hour after he had been put to bed on Friday night Tom had another nightmare. The adults had just sat down around the kitchen table when his screams rang out from the baby alarm. All three jumped to their feet. Joss, in spite of her increasing bulk was there first.
The cot had once more moved across the nursery floor to the corner near the window. Tom was standing up, his face red, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes tight shut. ‘Tin man,’ he bellowed. ‘Me see the tin man. Me don’t like him!’
‘Don’t pick him up, love, he’s too heavy for you now.’ Luke’s admonition came too late as Joss swung him up out of the cot and hugged the little boy to her, feeling his legs straddling her rib cage, his small arms tightly clinging round her neck. ‘What is it? What tin man.’ She buried her face in his hot little neck. ‘Sweetheart, don’t cry. You’ve had a bad dream, that’s all. There is no one here. Look Daddy is going to put your bed back where it belongs.’
Luke was looking at the floor. ‘I had wedged those castors so they couldn’t move. I can’t think how he’s managing to rock himself across the room like that. He must be remarkably strong.’ He straightened the bed, still miraculously dry, and reached out his arms for his son. ‘Come on, sausage. Let Daddy carry you.’
‘Who is this tin man he sees?’ Joss was looking at Lyn. ‘I thought I asked you not to ever read him The Wizard of Oz again! It’s upsetting him.’
Lyn shook her head impatiently. ‘I haven’t, Joss. As far as I know we haven’t even got a copy. We are reading Babar books, aren’t we Tom –’ She broke off as Luke tried to lower Tom into the bed. The child’s scream was piercing. ‘He’ll have to come down. Let him fall asleep with us. I’ll bring him up later.’ Fussing she followed Luke as he carried the little boy downstairs, bringing with her his comfort blanket and his black teddy bear. In the doorway she paused. ‘Joss? Are you coming?’
‘In a second.’ Joss was staring round the room. ‘Let me just look. Maybe it’s a shadow or something that he sees.’
She heard their footsteps cross her and Luke’s bedroom, then clump across the landing. In a moment they had walked downstairs and she was alone. She looked round the room. Behind the thick curtains it was still daylight outside, but the room was brightly lit now from the centre light, the floor a litter of Tom’s larger toys, the small ones neatly put away in his playbox. In the corner his chest of drawers stood between the door and the wall, on it the shaded night lamp. There was nothing there that could possibly frighten him. Aware that her own heart beat was thudding uncomfortably fast in her ears, Joss went to the door and switched off the main light then she walked back and stood by the cot, looking round. The shaded bulb hardly penetrated the murky corners of the room. Standing beside the cot she could see the huge multicoloured plastic ball the Goodyears had given him, the bright rag rug and the toy box itself, cardboard, but covered by Lyn with thick sticky-backed scarlet and blue paper, almost in the corner of the room, the heaped toys spilling out of the top. The curtains were pulled tightly across the window. She frowned. The curtains were moving, sucked in and blown out as though by a strong draught. Nervously, she stepped towards them.
‘Who’s there?’
Of course there was no one. How could there be? But the window was shut. It was very cold. Outside one of the late frosts that so often blight an English May was turning the garden silver, and she had shut it herself when she kissed Tom good night earlier. So why were the curtains moving? Her heart in her mouth, she was there in two steps, flinging back the multicoloured curtains to expose the windows behind. The reflection of the lamp shone back at her, somewhere behind her shoulder. There was no stirring from the fabric now except that which she had caused by her own impetuous movement. She shivered.