Sommersgate House (Ghosts and Reincarnation #2)(39)

“Charlie,” Julia explained, still laughing and touched by this offer from her new friend, “I can’t drive. I don’t have a car or a license yet.”

“Then I’ll come get you!” Charlotte declared.

Julia had to decline. As much as she wanted to escape, it would mean taking the kids out of school, shaking up their lives yet again and she couldn’t do that.

No, she was stuck and she had to do the best she could.

However, sadly, Monique wasn’t nearly finished yet.

All sign of sugar bowl, butter and jam was away the next morning at the breakfast table. When Julia asked Mrs. K where it was, Mrs. K explained that Lady Ashton had told her not to include it when laying the table.

So Julia put it on the table herself.

The next morning, it was gone again.

So Julia put it back.

And this went on.

Evening meals were the same struggle. Eventually, Julia commandeered Carter, grabbed Ruby and went to the grocery store herself.

Mrs. K continued to make healthy meals. Julia, with Ruby’s “help”, worked alongside her adding buttery garlic bread and thick gravies and making cakes and pies.

It was the fourth night Monique was home, and the first night she deigned to dine with them, when pecan pie with ice cream concluded the dinner.

When Julia brought in the dessert, Monique stared at it in disgust.

As Julia cut a healthy piece for the still introverted Lizzie, Monique announced, “You do that child no favours, she’s already fighting a weight problem as it is.”

Lizzie’s twelve year old girl ears registered this insult and she stiffened.

Julia stared at her niece, the girl’s eyes haunted, her cheeks hollow. Lizzie had most likely lost ten pounds she couldn’t afford since her parents died. She had no weight problem.

The courteous thing to do was hold her tongue and have a word with Monique during a private moment but Julia was too incensed for courtesy.

“Monique, you may be under the ludicrous impression that those Hollywood lollipop girls with their stick-thin bodies and enormous heads are attractive but they… are… not. They look like aliens from another planet! Lizzie needs to put on weight, not take it off.”

Monique had stared at her with murder in her eyes and, with no other option, Julia simply stared back. All three children watched in stunned silence but finally Julia broke the staring contest and carried on serving dessert like nothing happened while Monique left the table in icy silence.

After that episode, she wanted to call Douglas again, which she knew was an irrational idea. She was saved from doing that by Charlie calling her.

She told her friend about the lollipop girl comment and Charlie hooted with laughter.

“Forget coming here, I’m coming to visit you. This I have to see.”

Julia laughed with her but no matter how fun Charlie was making it seem, it was anything but fun and the next day, it became worse.

When she asked Carter to take her to the grocery store, he declined saying that Lady Ashton told him that he could only take Julia somewhere if she approved it, personally.

“I see,” Julia replied quietly as Carter wrung the cap in his hands either nervously or angrily, she couldn’t tell as his face was carefully blank but his lips were thinned. “That’s okay, Carter, it’s a beautiful day. I’ll walk!”

It was not a beautiful day. It was chilly and grey and threatening rain. But that wasn’t going to stop her. Nothing was going to stop her.

There were footpaths crisscrossing all over the United Kingdom, Gavin had introduced her to them. She found a walking map in the library, plotted her course, grabbed a couple of umbrellas and she and Ruby went on an expedition. It was more than two miles there and back and both of them were exhausted and drenched by the rain that came in the last half mile but it didn’t matter. Ruby loved it and Julia was determined that woman was not going to beat her. Monique was not going to use the staff against her and Julia was not going to allow the servants’ already unhappy existence to suffer for anything Julia did.

Luckily, the next day, her driving license came in the mail.

“Relief!” she shouted as she opened her mail and Veronika, who was clearing away the breakfast dishes jumped. Julia walked straight to her and grabbed both her cheeks and kissed the girl on her forehead. “Freedom!” she crowed to Mrs. K who had just walked in to witness her exuberance and Julia waved the license at them and strode away to e-mail her mother and call Charlie and Sam.

That evening, just when she thought things would start swinging her way, she saw the man behind the window. He was looking at her imploringly and trying to reach through the glass toward her. The minute his hands tried to push through the glass, he disappeared, the vision of him shimmering and melting until he was gone.

Julia had stifled a scream upon seeing him, stood staring at the space he was in for moments after he was gone and then she slapped the draperies shut. She spent the rest of the night trying (and failing) to talk herself out of believing what she saw.

There were no such things as ghosts.

Were there?

The next day, Monique thankfully left for a spa visit in London with no word on when she would return and no good-byes.

With the vision of the man still foremost in her mind (and seeing a ghost was not a relief from having Monique or Douglas’s bizarrely passionate kiss good-bye (he’d never kissed her, passionately or otherwise) being the things foremost in her mind), Julia approached Mrs. K and Veronika in the afternoon while they were in the kitchen.