Page 1 of One Last Touch

Chapter One

I had never seen a ghost before I came to Alswell Manor. They were not ghosts in the way that I had been taught to see them, the way that we all had, as white sheets with eye cut-outs and arms that were tented. No, these ghosts were the much more ordinary kind. A cup of tea left out on the side, not knowing it would never again be sipped. Dust motes that slipped through the air, waiting for a new breeze, a new breath. A painting, half-finished, the brushstrokes frozen, the paint congealing.

I myself was haunted, as most people tended to be. Haunted by the wrong decisions I’d made and the way I’d let time slip through my fingers like it was an infinite pool. But you never knew how much time you had left, and now I often found myself wishing I’d lingered on the phone a little longer, made sure to memorise her smile, had squeezed a little tighter, before those things were gone forever. Just like she now was.

I had made my way steadily through life like a ghost and I imagined that nothing much changed when you were dead. People would still speak over you, speed past you impatiently or cut you up while you walked as if you were never there. Lost like a fingerprint, smudged on the lip of the Earth. But I hadn’t known true loneliness until my mother, the only family I had left, faded out of existence six weeks ago. Or, at least, it had been six weeks since I’d known she was gone, but two months since she’d actually left me, and this world, behind. It was so strange to think that as you walked or talked or fucked or shopped, someone’s last breath might be blowing right by you and you would never know it. I hadn’t known it.

It took a month for them to find her body. Mostly because I hadn’t known I’d needed to look—so she’d laid there in the cold for weeks until she was discovered. It wasn’t unusual for us to go so long without talking, especially since I’d been at uni and my mother had taken to travelling the world on extended trips. But when I’d got the call, seen that unfamiliar number pop up on my phone, my blood had chilled. Somehow, I’d just known something had happened.

Her body had been found in a private cemetery, discovered by errant tourists travelling through the countryside on the way to the city and I hated that thought. That strangers had been the ones to find her, to see her in those last and infinitely private moments. But then again, better them than me. I preferred to remember her exactly as she’d been in life—slight, dark-haired, blue-eyed, graceful. I had no idea what my mother was doing there at Alswell Manor, although it turned out that wasn’t the only secret she’d kept from me. I had to wonder if it was the most dangerous one, however.

Her death had been ruled homicide, but without any leads the police had essentially shrugged and released her body to me—and I’d done exactly as she’d asked in the will I hadn’t known existed and buried her body in the same cemetery where she’d been murdered.

What was more shocking than the first call, was the second about her estate. My mother had no family except for me, but it seemed that wasn’t always the case. Natalia Cole was actually Natalia Alswell and her inheritance became mine—money, property, even some land. With my studies completed and previously about ten pounds to my name, what other choice did I have but to accept what was being offered to me, pack up my meagre belongings into a battered old suitcase and leave my student accommodation for the manor that was now home? It was the only tangible thing I had left of my mother.

Warwickshire was quite the drive, though thankfully I wasn’t the one who had to do it. I booked a cab, loaded my one suitcase into the boot and nodded at the driver before we lapsed into silence for the next two hours. Perfect.

It was raining and the quiet shush of the water over the windows nearly lulled me to sleep, so I rolled it down to let the cool air in, soothing my skin and filling my nose with the familiar scent of wet earth and leaves. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do when I got to the house. I had no clue if there would be someone there to greet me or show me around. I was pretty sure these old houses had staff normally, but nobody had said anything to me about if that was the case at Alswell or if I might be expected to retain them. Though, thanks to my inheritance, that wouldn’t be a problem. It took me by surprise initially but made a lot of sense the more I thought about it—we’d always had money when I was growing up. Not ostentatious amounts or anything, but we were comfortable, we travelled, and when I decided to go to university, my mum had insisted on paying for it rather than letting me take on student loans. I guess as a kid it hadn’t been something I’d ever thought about. Lucky me. Now I was alone and would have to learn to be there for myself, the way my mother had always done.

The roads were relatively clear and the sky was a grey that bordered on blue, like it was still deciding whether or not to piss it down again, and I rubbed my temples as they throbbed. The sky darkened further and I was relieved as it eased the ache in my eyes from the headache coming on.

I’d already signed over the deed for the house and got a key from the estate executor, I was just hoping the place was actually liveable. In hindsight, I probably should have looked it up before I’d decided to move in, but my university tenancy was expiring and I’d been desperate. I had nowhere else to go now that my mother was gone. The few casual friends I’d had at uni had gone abroad travelling, but I wouldn’t have gone to them anyway. We weren’t that kind of friendly.

Besides, as long as it had a roof and four walls, how bad could it be?

The driver turned on the radio and hummed along absently to some pop song I’d probably have known if I’d bothered to go out to any of the pubs or clubs back in Reading. My interests had been elsewhere though, other than the occasional pint on a quiet afternoon, silently contemplating the people that passed around me and offering a smile to the pretty waitress that had worked there on Wednesday afternoons. It was an odd feeling, belonging and yet not, like running your gaze over a group of people and having the prickling sensation that something, someone was not quite right. I’d made a few friends in my class, but we didn’t hang out beyond that and I didn’t mind the quiet—preferring to be lost in the pages of a book rather than in conversation.

The trees outside the window were dense along the side of the road. The leaves bled into a stream of oranges and browns and greens that, while entirely unfamiliar, felt soothing somehow, like something in my soul recognised these woods and this road. The driver had avoided the motorway as much as possible, which I couldn’t fault him for really, as long as we got there I didn’t mind which route he took.

I faced the front again, tugging errantly on the simple black gem stud in my ear as I caught a flash of my mis-matched eyes in the rearview mirror. The driver looked up and jumped when he saw me staring back at him and I smiled wryly. I supposed it was fairly disconcerting if you weren’t used to it—one of my eyes was the same shade as my mother’s, a deep blue like the sea during a storm. The other was a perfect, almost clear, grey. My mum had said I was her little storm cloud, what with my dark hair, pale skin, and stormy eyes. I liked to think I looked a lot like her, something in the slant of my mouth, the tilt of my chin… But I suspected I looked a lot more like my father than she had been willing to admit. I’d never met him, had learned not to ask after I’d spent so long as a kid poking and squeezing, desperate to extract any little detail I could about him out of my mum. Of course, as a child, I hadn’t noticed the sadness on her face, or the way she could hardly look at me for a day or two after I’d forced her into remembrance. It was that, more than anything else, that made me wonder if I looked like my father. If his eyes were grey too and I’d been formed as perfect halves of them both. Maybe going to Alswell Manor was my chance to find out the answers to those questions, the ones I’d been too scared to ask my mum. And now she was dead and I would never get to ask her anything again. It was possible the truth had been buried with her.

My breath seemed to tighten in my chest and I bit into my cheeks so hard I tasted blood as I waited for the blur in my eyes to clear. It felt like I was always moments away from crying lately as life threatened to overwhelm me and I found myself reaching for my phone to get her advice, only to remember she couldn’t answer.

I swiped at my cheeks angrily. I was not going to be one of those girls who cried in the back of a cab. I took a swig from the water bottle I’d brought with me and tried a few more calming breaths before I noticed the car had been slowing and nervousness took me.

What if it was a shit tip? All overgrown and with a caved-in roof? Worse, what if there were squatters? Or bugs? Rats? Did they get rats in Warwickshire? The woods gave way and the cab drove along next to a tall, grey brick wall. It was obviously old, with green moss growing from between the cracks in the stone and the mortar. The car slowed even more as the wall curved around and a gate sat a little further back than the road, a mixture of dirt and gravel marking it as the entrance. There was another set of tyre tracks and footprints in the road dust and for a moment I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Was this how she had gotten into the manor too? Were those the last footsteps my mother had made? More likely they were from the police and ambulance units, but still, I couldn’t help but let my mind drift, imagining some last remnant of my mother imprinted and encased perfectly in the damp earth.

The cabbie pulled into the space and turned the car so its nose pointed outwards, ready to depart as soon as I climbed out. I tapped my card to his machine and tried not to wince at the cost—even if it was no longer a problem, old habits died hard. The air was colder than I’d expected it would be, as if the temperature had dropped ten degrees just by going a couple hours up the road, but I breathed it in, letting it sink into my lungs and cool my chest. In some ways, it felt like I had been frozen ever since I’d got the news, like it had sunk its claws into me and refused to let go no matter how hard I burned or cried or screamed. My mother wasn’t coming back, and only time would thaw the numbness that had seeped into me.

It felt like the breeze here was familiar. Like the trees themselves groaned my name in a whispered hush that intermingled with the sound of rushing leaves. Georgina. Georgina. Georgina. I raised my eyes slowly, examining the gate thoroughly from the bottom to its top, stepping forward and brushing a finger over the places where the metal had begun to peel and rust. It was not ornate, which surprised me, it felt… solid. Like it was just there, as if it had sprouted out of the ground fully formed and ready to shelter its occupants. I left my case next to the seam and walked over to the footprints I’d seen from the car, squatting down and letting my hand rest against the dark dirt, pressed flat by a petite shoe. Whether they were hers or not, I was still retracing the last steps my mother had ever made.

I pulled out the heavy key I’d been given by the estate executor. Apparently the manor didn’t actually have its own key, there was only this one for the gate, so I would likely have to have my own cut. It creaked open and it felt like the wind hushed, holding its breath alongside me as I stepped through and finally dared to look beyond at the house waiting for me. Alswell Manor. The place my mother had died. The place I could only assume I had been conceived.

It cut an imposing figure against the charcoal of the sky, the ivy that crawled across the brickwork making it look like nature was trying to reclaim it. There was a side porch that had probably once been lovely, with a wooden fence running around the outside that was so weathered I wasn’t sure how it was still standing and a small portion of decking that raised it up from the ground.

Movement drew my eyes upward in time to see a curtain flutter from one of the front-facing upstairs windows and I fell still for a moment, wondering if it had been a draft or a person.

The gate clanged shut behind me and the vibrations rattled my teeth and the silence I hadn’t noticed fall was shattered as sound rushed back. It was a wild unleashing of wind and leaves and birds and grass and somewhere in the distance I could hear the faint plink of water as the clouds opened up and rain began to drip down my face.

Georgina. It seemed to say. Georgina, welcome home.

Chapter Two

There was grass on all sides surrounding what had probably once been a very stately entryway up to the house, but it was now brown, withered and overgrown. Not quite up to my waist, but it would be a task to get through with a mower. The gravel path up to the house remained clear and there was an old stone fountain before I reached the front door. Like everything else at Alswell, or so it seemed, it too was decaying. The stone was bleached from the sunlight and crumbling in the curves of the swooping arches that had long since run dry. Alswell Manor had the appearance of a place that had once been beautiful but, like so many other things in life, had faded.

I walked down past the fountain and paused, looking out to where I’d heard the soft sounds of water earlier and catching a glimpse of what looked like a lake, dark waters reflecting the stormy sky. I wanted to go and explore, but I had a more pressing issue—there was someone inside my house.

As I peered through the window, I was surprised to see an elderly woman staring back at me with her eyes wide and I met her gaze with an equally startled look of my own. Who was she and what was she doing here? I took a step forward and jumped when a hand closed around my shoulder, pulling me to a stop.

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