The Ghosts of Paradise Place Read online

  While not dealing with general duties and getting up to speed on how the library system worked, she tried to find time to prepare her first exhibition that would launch in the New Year.

  Timothy came up to the seventh floor and hovered around, pretending to be sorting stuff out in the storeroom just off the seventh floor counter.

  Kath felt him nearby, the way you know someone is taking you in, behind your back.

  She felt his presence, too close. He leaned over her shoulder, his hand on the counter next to hers. She drew her hand away and hid it on her lap.

  ‘How’s it going with the next exhibition? I trust Saturday gave you lots of inspiration?’

  He chortled. Actually chortled. It was the only word for it.

  “I’m a little stuck to be honest,” she said.

  “It’s a simple historical exhibition about some nice things at Moseley Hall. Nice and cosy.”

  Kath felt a sudden urgent need to dodge out of his cloud of aftershave.

  “It’s a hospital now, of course,” he said. “But it was part of the Cadbury estate, and before that Joseph Priestley’s manor house. So much history.”

  “Perhaps too much. Difficult to find an angle.”

  “You know,” he said, “there’s a really fascinating piece of film in the archives. You absolutely have to have it as the centrepiece of the exhibition. It’s from the 1930s and it shows a gymkhana tournament in the grounds. A beautiful, idyllic British summer. The absolute picture of Home and Empire. You must track it down. Huntley Archive.”

  He took a step back and Kath breathed, scribbling down his suggestion to busy her hands.

  “Huntley Archive. Thank you.”

  “Very good,” he said, and tootled off down the spiral staircase, whistling something tuneless.

  She looked up the reference and went through to the stacks to find it, but it was missing.

  Someone must have taken it out, she thought, and made a note to trace it.

  Back at her desk, she leafed through the pile of photographs she’d collected and paused at a picture of the Dovecote.

  A whisper at her shoulder.

  That feeling again. A ghost behind her.

  She shuddered it away like a dog shaking off the rain, and looked around the research room. A handful of Greys quietly browsing through archives.

  A man in a waistcoat, his white shirtsleeves rolled up, walked through the door marked Staff Only at the other end.

  Kath stood. Had that been a member of the public?

  She strode over and pushed through.

  Beyond the door were acres of shelves that the public never saw. Over two-thirds of the gigantic inverted ziggurat was a vast warehouse of reference books and files.

  “Excuse me,” she said. Too quiet.

  The man ignored her and kept on walking. His confidence made her doubt herself. It was as if he had a right to be there, to walk wherever he liked. Perhaps he was a manager she hadn’t met yet.

  Footsteps echoing. He dodged into the stacks.

  She rushed after.

  He was gone.

  She couldn’t hear his footsteps any longer. Perhaps he’d gone through to the other side of the building. He must have been a member of staff or he wouldn’t have walked on so boldly.

  She went back to the research room and resumed her studies into Moseley Hall. The picture of the dovecote that had spooked her, lying there on her desk.

  — 6 —

  AS THE AFTERNOON WANED, she found herself delving into a fascinating story of a witch trial in Birmingham in the 1700s. Selly Oak had allegedly been named after a witch who’d been hanged and buried at a crossroads with an oak stake through her heart. The oak had grown into a tree. Sally’s Oak. A notorious Puritan clergyman and witch-finder, Edmund Meckle, had passed through the hamlet and put her on trial. There were no historical records for any of it; just whispers and rumours that had floated down the centuries. A folk tale. A warning to women not to step out of line.

  Three hours later the library was closing. She had fallen through a rabbit hole of research and forgotten all time.

  Liz was gone. It was Friday night.

  Katherine closed up and left the building, rushing head down through the crowds thronging the German market, hordes of suited workers necking Hofbrau and glühwein.

  She got a 50 bus home to her Spartan ground floor flat and opened the tiny freezer compartment of the fridge. A stack of ready-made meals in tiny foil trays, marked For One Person. She microwaved a macaroni cheese and ate it sullenly before TV news. DNA analysis had identified human remains found in Russia in 1991 as Tsar Nicholas. She gawped at history and science meeting. She was almost a scientist herself, patiently uncovering the physical artefacts of the past, even if those artefacts were only words and images kept in dusty archives.

  At nine, she looked around at the depressing reality of her life. A lone woman of nearly thirty in an empty flat on a Friday night, with no friends and no social life.

  She had had friends. But when she’d split with Darren she’d found they were all his friends, not hers.

  She slapped on some make-up and changed into a lovely blue Mary Quant dress she’d bought at a vintage fair, with a 60s coat, too thin for winter. It was freezing, but only a short trip to Moseley. She hopped on the 50. It was a handful of stops and she could have walked there in five minutes, but the bus was warm.

  She stepped off in the village and took it in. This was Moseley. You had to go to the Prince of Wales for a drink on Friday night.

  Entering a bar alone. Her mum had told her that was never the done thing. A woman alone in a bar. That meant you were a tart. It didn’t matter. Things were different now. It was 2008. Katherine could walk into any bar she chose and order what she liked, and no one would give her so much as a sideways glance. She had a feeling it was doubly so here in Moseley.

  Besides, she was here in a new place with no bloody friends. She was desperate.

  She ordered a dry white wine, small, and thought she could neck it and go home if it was all too much.

  A stool at the bar was free so she took it, next to a bunch of old blokes in a circle. She took out her iPhone and scrolled through Faceparty for a while, thinking everyone in the bar must be watching, judging. The iPhone had been an absurd indulgence before the split with Darren, and now she had no money it made her sick to own it.

  She could see clear through to the corridor at the back, through the rear hatch where drinkers lined up to be served. There were two cosy rooms off to each side and the beer garden at the rear.

  An awful thought. She might see her Darren. What if he was here with his mates, or even worse, with a new girl?

  A familiar face at the hatch opposite. A double take. It was Liz. She nodded a greeting, like a man would with a vague acquaintance.

  Kath waved and then shoved her hand under the bar.

  Liz ordered drinks, three glasses of wine and retreated to the room on the left.

  Kath checked the inch of white wine left in her own glass and wondered how long she could make it last. Should she order another and go try to join Liz, make a connection, or just knock it back and leave?

  She scrolled through MySpace, looking at the interesting lives of people she barely knew, sipping at her wine till it was almost gone. Should she have brought a book with her, or would that look even worse? You could read a book on your phone now, apparently. Ebooks, they called them.

  “You waiting for someone?”

  At her shoulder. It was Liz.

  “No. Just having a quiet drink.”

  “That’s brave. Come and sit with us, if you like.”

  She walked off and left it like that. Kath looked around the front bar. No one had noticed. She ordered another small white wine, stepped off the high stool and walked round to the rear corridor.

  Liz was sitting in the room to the left, which had been done out to resemble a Victorian reading room. She had two girlfriends, Sian and Zara, and they were talk
ing excitedly about their imminent Christmas trip to Dartmoor. They’d booked a cottage and were going to spend Christmas away from everything.

  “Away from men,” Sian said.

  Kath detected the sad bravado of a woman who’d been dumped. She listened to their plans and smiled politely, shifting on her stool as if trying to adjust to the collision of work and private life.

  Sian got up to get a round and Zara went to help her. Kath declined, and showed her full glass. It was vitally important to avoid getting into a round with three women who drank wine by the bucket.

  Liz gazed into the distance for a few moments then opened her mouth to speak. “There’s something...” She shook her head and shrugged it away.

  There was something about the forthcoming trip that was unnerving her, Kath could tell, some secret between them all. Or maybe she was just dreading being with these two close friends for Christmas.

  “I found something really interesting for the next exhibition,” Kath said, and wondered why she’d brought it back to work at the first opportunity.

  Because that was all they had in common.

  “Oh yes?” Liz asked.

  “A news story about a murder trial. There was a series of witch sightings around the dovecote in 1889. A strange looking woman appearing at night. Then fingers were pointed at a local woman. But as they no longer burned witches, she was safe. Apparently. Till some local man decided to murder her because she’d ruined his business.”

  “Gruesome.”

  “I was thinking of tying it in to the witch hunts of a hundred years earlier. You know that Selly Oak got its name from Sally’s Oak, where they hanged a witch?”

  “Timothy won’t let you feature that,” Liz said. “Too dark.”

  “But it’s interesting.”

  “The cosy past, remember. In fact, he’s just policing our view of the past. He won’t want it because it reveals all the uncomfortable facts about how women were treated, and we can’t have that.”

  Kath saw all her research and the fire in her heart it had engendered, circling the plughole. A wasted day. “You don’t think he’ll let me use it?”

  “No. But it’s what we should be telling people about: the stupid brutality of their bloody ancestors.”

  Sian and Zara came back, and the talk turned to Dartmoor again. They even took out a map and discussed a long walk across the moor they had planned. Kath found herself thinking how nice it would be to do that. But not with three women.

  The evening blurred; she learned that Sian had recently divorced, and they all hated her stupid husband, Ian. She might have even told them about her own break up with stupid Darren. She wasn’t sure.

  As she went to leave, Liz pulled her into a hug.

  Kath squirmed, embarrassed at her drunken affection.

  But no. Liz hissed in her ear. “You should know Timothy wants you to fail your probation period. He wants his friend in the job and he’s furious they gave it to you. He’s going to make sure you fail.”

  “What do you mean?”

  But Liz sat down with a bump and knocked her wine glass over.

  Kath scurried out, head swimming, and stomped through the lively, crowded village, up the dark hill, not feeling the cold at all.

  A whisper.

  The dovecote across the street. Something sinister about it. A brooding presence. It buzzed with an electric power that resonated in her breastbone, as if it were a power station and she could feel its vibration humming through her.

  But there was a power station next door. Or a telephone exchange. It wasn’t clear. A flat-faced plastic-panelled 1960s building set back from the road. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps she was hypersensitive and could feel electricity now. Her boyfriend’s jokes about her being a crazy redhead came back to her. Ex-boyfriend. All said in jest, though once, near the end, said with real venom.

  Screw him, she thought. She’d show him.

  And as she walked on over the hill, she wasn’t sure if she was thinking about her ex or her boss.

  — 7 —

  HEAD THROBBING AND her stomach lurching, she staggered into work, fighting back the retching urge as she passed the German beer stalls opening for the Saturday. The library would open at ten. It was Liz’s Brave New City exhibition opening, so everyone had to work the day. Kath didn’t mind. It was the only chance she would get to see up close how to launch her own exhibition; see how the job was actually done.

  Why had she got so drunk last night? Why had Liz, for that matter?

  She stumbled through the security barriers, a tight smile to the guys on the door, hoping she wouldn’t vomit on their shoes, and headed for the elevator hidden down the corridor beyond the children’s library, its glass frontage festooned with a tacked-up paper mural. Some art project that looked like a great Jackson Pollock painting and made her head swirl.

  The elevator lurched and shuddered up to the sixth floor and she stepped out to the glare of fluorescent strip light bouncing off acres of orange carpet.

  A team of Facilities men in City Council polo shirts were taking down the big hessian covered room divider panels to reveal the new exhibition.

  Liz was supervising them, a clipboard tucked under her arm. Kath went over to say hello, still in her coat.

  “Morning,” said Liz.

  Kath looked over her shoulder, checking to see if Timothy was around. “About that thing you said last n—”

  “You know, you sort of look the part,” Liz said. “Very sixties.”

  Kath shrugged. She hadn’t intended to, but perhaps unconsciously had dressed a little more retro.

  Liz wasn’t going to refer to it: the thing she’d said about Timothy. Had it been drunken rambling?

  They strolled around the exhibition space, imagining how the public would see it.

  “It looks great,” Kath said.

  “You know, we were talking about how Timothy sanitises it all last night?” Liz said, looking over her shoulder. “Well, there’s actually a story he vetoed for this.”

  Liz reached under her clipboard and opened a card folder, pulling out a single sheet of paper. A photocopy of a news story.

  Dark ‘mob’ scandal that shames our city.

  Kath scanned the content as Liz talked.

  “I found some really juicy stories in the news archives about a local gangster who built up a construction empire by giving bribes to councillors. They concreted this city on dodgy deals like that. Never mind Tsar Nicholas, they could run some DNA tests on the foundations of the Spaghetti Junction. You’d find a few missing persons who got in Bernie Powell’s way.”

  Kath felt the hope for her witch story fading. If Timothy wouldn’t let this in, Kath’s grubby Victorian murder story had no chance. “This reminds me of something interesting I saw. In this photo over here.”

  She led Liz to the World Cup photograph. The mayor surrounded by councillors and pretty girls.

  Kath pointed to the mysterious young man in the group. “Who’s that man? I recognize him.”

  Liz peered closer and shrugged. “No idea.”

  “He looks really familiar, like I’ve seen him before. I thought he might be a film star or something. Maybe a footballer?”

  “No one I know. Just a council hanger-on probably.”

  Kath shivered and swallowed acid reflux.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Not really. I’m a bit rough this morning, actually.”

  Liz smirked and elbowed her in the ribs. “Can’t take your drink.”

  “I really can’t.”

  “Go out for a glühwein at lunch. Hair of the dog. Better still, go and get one now. I’ll cover for you.”

  Kath shuddered and shook her head. “No. I’d just die. Besides.” She checked her wristwatch. “It’s opening time.”

  She doffed her coat and handbag, and got to work, wondering if she’d make it through to five without throwing up in Liz’s exhibition.

  The guest speakers arrived and Liz ran through
the schedule with them. The place started to fill up and people took seats for the talk.

  She had expected the audience to be the older crowd, the Greys, the white-haired boomers who were always up here on the sixth floor, but there were only a few of them. It was mostly younger people in their thirties and forties, a few in full Mod regalia who looked like time travellers walking in from the past. Kath recognized them from a Mod night she’d gone to a few times. For one evening every month, the upstairs room of a pub was turned into a nightclub from 1966, or how they imagined a nightclub in 1966 might look. Everyone would turn up in their Mod clothes and shimmy to beats from the Hit Parade. It was tacky and false, but at the edges of the room she had divined something that thrilled her — the feeling that she might slip into the past. However, it was the sort of time travel that took you to a place where everyone dressed like they might be in the past but they all had mobile phones.

  Darren had loved it. Kath wondered if he were taking some other girl to it now.

  He wouldn’t come here today for this exhibition, would he?

  Her belly flipped and she reached out and gripped the edge of a bookcase, anchoring herself. The thought of him walking in here with a new girlfriend. She really would be sick on his shoes.

  But he would come and see the exhibition, at some point, that was certain. She would no doubt bump into him.

  Just before the talk commenced, Liz left the speakers with Timothy, who would take over and pretend he’d organised the whole thing. She came to Kath’s side.

  “Forty-eight,” said Kath. “I’ve counted them.”

  “And a young crowd. Timothy will be so pleased. God knows why they’ve come.”

  “It’s interesting.”

  “But it’s not their past. None of this lot can remember any of this. Same with the older lot.”

  “They only come for the Victorian stuff?”

  “Oh yes,” said Liz. “They can’t get enough of that. This is their past, but the Victorian stuff is their parents’ time, their grandparents’.”