There was a click, and the message ended.

For a minute I couldn’t move. I just stood there, the phone in my hand, gaping at the screen. And then a huge rush of exhilaration raced through me, and I found I was dancing, hopping in circles, punching the air and grinning like a lunatic.

“Bloody hell, what’s got into you?” a smoke-roughened voice said over my shoulder, and I turned, still grinning, to see Janine leaning against the door, a cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other.

“What’s got into me?” I said, hugging myself, full of a glee I couldn’t even try to suppress. “I’ll tell you what’s got into me, Janine. I’ve got a new job.”

“Well . . .” Janine’s expression as she flicked open the lighter was a little sour. “You needn’t look so triumphant about it.”

“Oh, come on, you’re as fed up with Val as I am. She’s screwing us all, and you know it. Ten percent she put up fees last year, and us assistants are barely getting minimum wage. She can’t keep blaming the recession forever.”

“You’re just pissed off that I got made head of the baby room,” Janine said. She took a drag of her cigarette, and then offered me the packet. I was trying to give up to improve my asthma (well, officially I had given up) but her words had hit home, and so I took one and lit it slowly, more as a way of giving myself time to rearrange my expression than because I actually wanted to smoke. I had been pissed off that she’d got promoted, when honestly I thought I had the better shot. I’d applied thinking I was a shoo-in—and the shock when the position had gone to Janine had been like a punch to the gut. But as Val had said at the time, there were two candidates and only one job. There was nothing she could do about that. Still, it had rankled, particularly when Janine had begun throwing her weight around and issuing orders in that grating drawl.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” I said, handing the lighter back with a sweet smile and exhaling the smoke. “Onwards and upwards, eh?” The slightly patronizing smile she gave made me add, a little maliciously, “Very much upwards, in fact.”

“What do you mean?” Janine said. She narrowed her eyes. “Are we talking more than thirty K?”

I made a rising movement with my hand, and her eyes widened.

“Forty? Fifty grand?”

“And it’s residential,” I said smugly, watching her jaw drop. She shook her head.

“You’re having me on.”

“I’m not.” Suddenly I didn’t need the cigarette anymore. I took a final drag, then dropped it to join the mush of dead butts in the yard and ground it out under my heel. “Thanks for the fag. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to phone up and accept a job.”

I dialed Sandra’s number, listening as it rang, and then clicked through to voice mail. In a way I was relieved, I didn’t want to get grilled about my start date in front of Janine. If she knew it was a make-or-break condition, she might well tell Val, who could deliberately make life difficult for me.

“Oh, hi, Sandra,” I said, when the beep had sounded. “Thanks so much for your message, I’m thrilled, and I’d be delighted to accept. I need to sort a few things out this end but I’ll email you about the start date. I’m sure it won’t be a problem. And . . . well, thanks, I guess! I’ll be in touch. Let me know if there’s anything you need from me to get the ball rolling.”

And then I hung up.

I handed in my notice to Val that same day. She tried to act pleased for me, but in truth, she looked mostly pissed off, particularly when I informed her that the amount of leave I had stacked up meant that I would be finishing on the sixteenth of June, rather than the first of July, as she had assumed. She tried to tell me that I needed to work my notice and take the leave as pay, but when I more or less invited her to see me in court, she caved.

The next few days passed in a whirl of activity and practicalities. Sandra did all her payroll remotely through a company in Manchester and wanted me to contact them direct with payment details and ID rather than sending all the paperwork up to Scotland. I had expected the process to be a major stumbling block, maybe even requiring me to travel to Manchester for an interview in person, but in the end it was surprisingly, almost disconcertingly simple—I forwarded them Sandra’s email with a reference number, and then when they replied, I sent the passport scan, utility bills, and bank details they requested. It went through without a hitch. Like it was meant to be.

The ghosts wouldn’t like it.

The phrase floated through my head, spoken in Maddie’s reedy little voice, its childlike quaver lending the words an eeriness I would normally have shrugged off.

But that was bollocks. Utter bollocks. I hadn’t seen a whiff of the supernatural the whole time I was in Carn Bridge. More likely it was just a cover story seized on by homesick au pairs, girls barely out of their teens with poor English, unable to cope with the isolation and remote location. I’d seen enough of them working at places in London to know the drill—I’d even picked up some emergency work when they scarpered in the night with the return half of their plane ticket, leaving the parents to pick up the pieces. It wasn’t uncommon.

I was considerably older and wiser than that, and I had very good reasons for wanting to make this work. No amount of alleged “haunting” was going to make me turn this chance down.

I look back, and I want to shake that smug young woman, sitting in her London flat, thinking she knew it all, had seen it all.

I want to slap her face and tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Because I was wrong, Mr. Wrexham. I was very, very wrong.

Less than three weeks later, I was standing on Carn Bridge station platform, surrounded by more cases and boxes than it seemed possible for one person to carry.

When Jack came striding up the platform, car keys jangling in his hand, he actually broke into a laugh.

“Christ, how did you get all that across London?”

“Slowly,” I said honestly. “And painfully. I took a taxi, but it was a bloody nightmare.”

“Aye, well, you’re here now,” he said, and took my largest two cases, giving me a friendly shove when I tried to take the smaller one back off him. “No, no, you take those others.”

“Please be careful,” I said anxiously. “They’re really heavy. I don’t want you to put your back out.”

He grinned, as if the possibility was so remote as to be laughable.

“Come on, car’s this way.”

It had been another glorious day—hot and sunny—and although the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon and the shadows were growing longer, the gorse was still popping audibly as we drove silently through the wooded lanes and moorland roads towards Heatherbrae. The house, as we drove up the drive, was even more beautiful than I had remembered, basking in evening sunshine, the doors flung open and the dogs running everywhere, barking their heads off. It suddenly occurred to me, with a little jolt, that I would presumably be in charge of the dogs as well as the kids, when Sandra and Bill were away. Or maybe that was Jack’s job too? I would have to find out. Two children and a baby were in my comfort zone. A teen as well, I could just about manage. At least, I hoped I could. But add in two boisterous dogs, and I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed.