The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(33)

How old is Kate now? Daniel is eighteen and hoping to go to university in September. As long as this wretched virus is over by then. I don’t know if you know that Victoria and I are divorced. I’m living on my own and teaching at Nottingham University. It’s a very interesting town, historically. You must visit one day. When all this is over etc etc.

Take care

Px

Ruth looks at this missive for some time. It brings back Peter in all his lovable, annoying glory. He had loved the cats and they had shared their kittenhood together. The mention of Sparky still makes Ruth sad, even after all these years. The comment about the purchase of the house being nobody’s business but hers seems rather pointed though. There had been some talk of them buying the house together, but Ruth had, even then, been determined that it would belong to her alone. She must have known, at some level, that she and Peter were not destined to be partners for life. But she had forgotten about ‘The Cabin’. There had even been a sign with a lopsided drawing of a house. It had seemed funny back then when ‘horror story tropes’ were an amusing, academic joke.

She can’t believe that Daniel, who was a little boy when she last saw Peter, is about to go to university. She seems to be haunted by Daniels. There’s her childhood boyfriend, Daniel Breakspeare, and she had a good friend at university called Dan Golding. Why has Peter, like the other Daniel, chosen to contact her now? It’s the pandemic, she thinks, and the prospect of weeks (months?) with only a laptop and memories for company. She should stop this correspondence now. She knows that she will never visit Peter in Nottingham, no matter how interesting the town is ‘historically’.

She’s about to press ‘shut down’, when another email appears on the screen. The sender is identified only by an anonymous Gmail address and the message is brief.

Beware the Grey Lady.





Chapter 17


Beware the Grey Lady. Ruth thinks about those words the next morning when she watches Zoe driving off to work, dressed in blue scrubs. She and Kate are on their own now, with only Flint for protection. Ruth waves from the window, remembering her parents’ next-door neighbour, Mrs Grantham, who was housebound by some mysterious illness. Mrs Grantham was always at the window when Ruth returned from school. ‘She likes to see you,’ Ruth’s mother used to say, and Ruth would always wave cheerfully before dismissing the lonely figure from her mind. After only a day of lockdown, Ruth is turning into Mrs Grantham.

Ruth is pathetically grateful when the postman knocks at the door with a delivery. It’s an Amazon parcel from Simon. Ruth usually tries to avoid ordering from the online retailer, preferring to shop at local bookshops, but there is something very comforting about being sent a book. It shows that her brother is thinking about her. Maybe it’s a crime novel, something by Ian Rankin or Val McDermid? Fictional murder is oddly soothing in troubled times. Ruth tears open the cardboard. Government Conspiracies and How to Spot Them. Hmmm.

Kate is having a Zoom lesson. Ruth admires the way that the Year 6 teacher, Mrs Obuya, manages to make grammar both interesting and entertaining. Ruth herself, despite having a PhD, has no idea what a ‘fronted adverbial phrase’ is. But online lessons mean that Kate needs the laptop, so Ruth can’t do any of her own work. Ruth’s scheduled lectures take priority, of course, but she doesn’t want Kate to miss any face-to-face teaching, especially when these sessions are so rare. Maybe she should buy another laptop but she doesn’t like the thought of Kate having her own computer. Besides, Ruth has already felt the disastrous pull of online shopping. PayPal doesn’t seem like real money, but she has to be careful. She is lucky to be in full-time employment and not furloughed but who knows what the future holds for unfashionable universities teaching unfashionable subjects?

Ruth doesn’t like using her phone for confidential university business, so her options seem to be reading Simon’s book about faked moon landings, doing some housework or continuing her research into the history of the house. She goes into the garden to call Janet.

‘I was just about to send you an email,’ says Janet. ‘This is all a bit scary, isn’t it?’

‘It doesn’t seem real,’ says Ruth. ‘Words like pandemic and lockdown belong in a science fiction novel.’

‘Or a history book,’ says Janet. ‘I keep thinking how it must have felt during the plague in Norwich. There were people called “keepers”, appointed to make sure residents stayed in their houses. They used to carry red wands, about a metre long, to encourage others to keep their distance. There were “watchers” too.’

‘Social distancing,’ says Ruth. She wants to stop Janet before she goes any deeper into the fourteenth century. ‘I’ve been thinking of doing some research into my house. That’s why I sent you the email.’

‘What’s brought this on?’ says Janet.

‘I found a picture of the cottages in the sixties,’ says Ruth. ‘It made me think.’

‘Pictures are very important artefacts,’ says Janet. ‘You live on New Road, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got a great picture of those cottages from the nineteen hundreds. I’ll email it. Otherwise it’s best to work backwards in time. Look at street directories and electoral registers. The 1939 register is particularly good because there wasn’t one during the war. Also try searching via address in newspaper archives. I’ll send a link.’