‘Super. I can probably take it from here, thank you,’ said Thea, anxious to find her room and set down her heavy bags.
‘Very well. I will see you in the morning, then.’ As noiselessly as she had appeared, the Dame disappeared.
Thea shifted her suitcase to the other hand, shouldered her hockey bag and carried on along the hallway. The first room had the names of three girls affixed to the door: Aradia Bianchi, Morgan Addington-Clay, Sabrina Fox. She opened it a few inches and saw a large space with two dormer windows that faced the high street. Despite the sloping walls, there was ample room for three beds, desks and a large wardrobe. There was even space for a pair of red gingham-upholstered armchairs, which were arranged around a low table. In one corner was a washbasin and a table on which sat a kettle, mugs and a couple of storage jars.
Satisfied that she had seen all she needed to, Thea withdrew, closing the door behind her, and then hauled herself and her belongings up the final staircase to the top floor, where she found her rooms at the end of the corridor, past a door marked with the names Fenella and Camilla. She wouldn’t have been surprised to have also seen an Arabella, Henrietta or Clarissa affixed to the doors on the lower floors, such was the type of girl who was to attend Oxleigh College. She stopped herself. Her own name – Theodora – was hardly very different.
As she wheeled her suitcase into the room, she took an inventory of her surroundings. There was a single bed, made up as the girls’ had been with a ticking duvet and a navy tartan blanket at the end – thank goodness they hadn’t gone for pink – as well as an armchair placed next to the single dormer window, and a large dresser. On the dresser sat the same pebble-shaped ornament she had seen in the other rooms. Curious, she picked it up, noticing a string of blinking lights around the circumference and the word ‘Ekko’ printed along the side. It seemed to be one of those smart devices, the ones Thea was convinced listened in to your conversations, fed information back to God-only-knew-who. She put it down, supposing she could always remove the batteries.
She made her way to the far end of the room, where the walls sloped together to form a point and where she could only just stand up without hitting her head. There was another door, which she opened to discover a tiny bathroom. The floor creaked in complaint as she walked on it, groaning like a geriatric levering themselves out of a chair. It was also far from level, and in fact seemed to be skewed on an incline that made her feel as if she were in a ship’s cabin rather than on solid ground. She shrugged. It was an old house; it was to be expected. As a historian it thrilled her to be staying there, for the building appeared to date from at least the eighteenth century, judging by the exterior and the off-kilter floors.
Thea set down her sports bag, unzipping a side pocket and retrieving a somewhat worse for wear apple and the chocolate bar. She had noticed one more door at the end of the corridor, which she assumed was her study, but she would get to that later. For now, she kicked off her boots and flopped back on the bed, taking a large bite of the apple and chewing thoughtfully.
Every muscle in her body ached, the combined effect of a long plane journey followed by two days’ sightseeing in London scoping out museums for potential excursions for her classes, and her normally level spirits had dipped along with her blood sugar. It was probably this that made her suddenly wonder if she had made a mistake in coming. This school, with its ghosts; the privileged boys – and now girls – who attended it; the other teachers who were doubtless cut from the same cloth as Mr Battle – what would she have in common with any of them?
Sometimes she really didn’t understand herself.
Restless, she finished the apple and threw the core in a wastepaper bin on the far side of the room, the slam-dunk bringing a brief smile to her lips. She got to her feet, tossed her glasses on the bed, and went to wash her hands and face in the sink, standing on tiptoes to peer short-sightedly at herself in the mirror. Deep purple circles ringed her eyes and her long, straight brown hair had separated into lank strands. As she stared, she saw a shadow flit behind her, and she whirled around but it disappeared before she could make out what it was.
Nothing but the rattle of the windows in the wind.
Tiredness and the lukewarm welcome were making her paranoid. Get a grip, Rust.
She dried her hands, replaced her glasses and went back into the corridor and to the room next door. It was small, scarcely more than a box room, though there was a window that looked out over the back of the house. She opened the curtains and peered out, though in the darkness she could see very little. A smear caught her eye, which on closer inspection turned out to be a handprint, the finger marks widely spread. She rubbed at it with her sleeve, but it didn’t budge. It must be on the outside of the glass, though how anyone could have got that high up she had no idea, for the top floor – the attic, she supposed – of the house was too tall for even the longest ladder.
She turned back to the room, seeing a wooden desk, chair and a wastepaper basket. A multicoloured rug took up half of the tiny floor space, and there were hooks on the wall that must have been newly drilled, for there were small piles of dust on the floor beneath them.
A stack of buff-coloured folders sat on the desk, and she shuffled through them, curious. Each was marked with the name of a girl – the new Oxleigh students. She took them back to her bedroom, placing them on the bedside table to look at later. Her first priority was to unpack, and it didn’t take long to stow her clothes in the dresser and organise her toiletries in the bathroom. Reaching the bottom of her bag, she pulled out a cylindrical tin, a small photo in a wooden frame and a couple of books, all of which she placed on the small bookshelf at the end of the room. She opened the top book and looked at the faded ink script on the flyleaf, reading the inscription she knew by heart: HAR, September 1965, Mill House, Oxleigh College.
HAR: Henry Adam Rust. The reason she had been looking at the college website in the first place, and the deciding factor in impulsively applying for the job.
A sudden memory of her father rose, unbidden. She was sitting with him on the back verandah of their suburban house in Melbourne as he patiently applied whitener to his Dunlop Volleys in anticipation of his regular Sunday afternoon knockabout (which he nevertheless played with the commitment of a Wimbledon wildcard). There was always a cigarette burning, its ash growing ever longer, and a bottle of beer beaded with condensation next to it. She frowned as she recalled his competitiveness, never letting Thea or her younger sister, Pip, get the better of him. ‘Take no prisoners!’ was his favourite cry whenever they faced each other across the net. Desperate for his approval and his attention, they submitted to countless drubbings. She didn’t think either of them ever managed to best him, at tennis or cards or chess or anything else, for that matter. Just as well, for he hated losing; it would put him in a temper for days.
She closed the book and was about to go over to the bed when she was suddenly plunged into darkness. A heavy silence descended and the hairs on the back of Thea’s neck stood on end. Then, from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house, came a spine-chilling screech.
FOUR
September 1768, Oxleigh
In contrast to the rest of the almost silent, dim house, the kitchen was ablaze, and a not inconsiderable amount of smoke billowed from the wide fireplace, where a haunch of meat turned slowly on a spit. It was by far the warmest and most welcoming of all the rooms Rowan’s new master had led her through.