The White House - Book 6, The Porth Kerensa Series

Chapter Twenty-Two

Elise woke, cramped and cold, on the attic floor, clutching the fleece blanket from the sofa. The last thing she remembered was dozing in the lounge, waiting for James to come home. Groaning with the effort she sat up and stretched out. Behind her, the rocking horse creaked into life and began gently moving back and forth, as if Oliver had been waiting for her to wake up before he began playing. Elise shook her head, stood up and left the room without acknowledging him.

Memories of the night before and the Ouija board session with Val cascaded through her mind and she felt bad for hardening her heart to the ghost child, but she was tired and helpless in the face of a world she had no experience with. In her old life Elise had been a woman who dealt only in facts and evidence. Now she was at a loss when it came to ghosts and Ouija boards and she couldn’t help wishing they’d never moved to the white house.

If James had rented a house that didn’t cry out to every maternal instinct she was trying to ignore would they be finding a way back to each other now? Would they be weaving a new life together, or would they still be ripping apart the threads of the old one?

She could hear Val laughing downstairs in the kitchen and the smell of coffee percolating drifted, pleasantly, through the house. Elise went into the bedroom for a change of clothes before heading down to the bathroom on the first floor.

Halfway down the stairs something swiped her hard, from behind, and a sharp pain across her shoulders made her stumble forward with a shocked cry. She grabbed at the handrail, but wasn’t quick enough to stop her tumble and she slipped down the last few stairs, landing on her backside at the foot of the staircase. Mumbling with embarrassment and grateful that neither Val nor James seemed to have heard her fall she stood up and hobbled to the bathroom, grimacing at the burning pain in her shoulders.

She stood with her back to the mirror, peeled off her top and when she glanced behind at her reflection she gasped at the sight of three livid red scratches across her upper back. Blood was beginning to seep from each laceration and Elise stared, horrifed, at the scratches for a few seconds. She got some tissue and with trembling hands dabbed at them, gently, before turning the shower on.

She washed, quickly; wincing when the hot water pattered across the cuts, but the bleeding had stopped when she got out of the shower and she dressed, carefully, before going downstairs to join James and Val.

James was out on the decking smoking a cigarette and Val was washing up their breakfast things. She stopped and dried her hands on the tea-towel when Elise walked into the kitchen.

“Good morning, sleepy-head,” she said, smiling. “Did you enjoy your lie in and do you want a coffee before I hit the road?”

Elise nodded and began drying up whilst Val poured her a coffee. The back door banged and the stale smell of tobacco drifted through the kitchen before James appeared. He seemed startled at the sight of Elise standing by the draining board, wiping the plates, and he stopped abruptly in the doorway, unsure of how to react to her and terrified that she would look at his face and instantly know what he had done the night before.

He smiled, politely, at her. “Did you sleep well?”

She wanted to ask him where he thought she’d slept and why he hadn’t woken her when he’d come in, but she simply inclined her head and concentrated on the plate in her hands, acutely aware of Val in the room. 

Guilty relief washed through James when she looked away from him and he turned to Val who was watching the two of them with a veiled expression in her eyes. “What time are you heading back to Kent?”

“In half an hour,” she replied, quietly, placing Elise’s coffee on the counter.

“Well, I’ll say goodbye now and leave you two to make your tearful farewells.”