Read Online The Haunting of Tabitha Grey by Vanessa Curtis - Free Book Online Page B

lions and the photo’s better, with sunshine glinting off their fierce
faces and I feel almost cheerful because at last I’m having fun and being useful and for a change – I’m not feeling scared.
    ‘Let’s do upstairs,’ Gemma says. ‘I like those grand bedrooms.’
    It’s a bit like the sun goes in when she says this but I’ve got a job to do for Dad and I’ve got Gemma right here next to me, so I smile and we head up the brown staircase
without me pausing to think about the footsteps I heard. I take a series of shots of Lady Eleanor’s bed with the floral bedspread and her dressing table with the silver-backed brushes and
I’m really getting into this now so I carry on, going from room to room and clicking away on my new gadget. When we’ve done all the first-floor rooms we head downstairs and then Gemma
stops at the bottom of the stairs and says, ‘Take a picture of the staircase, Tabs – your dad will want a record of all these paintings.’ She’s right, so we stand at the
bottom of the staircase and I take a couple of quick photographs before Gemma gets really hungry and we head back to the flat to see if Mum has got lunch.
    I kind of remember this morning for a long time afterwards.
    For three hours, I wasn’t scared.
    For three hours, I had fun.
    For three hours, I managed to stop being Tabitha Grey the weirdo and just be ‘Tabs’ the teenage girl, on half term and having a good time with her best mate.
    Three hours is not very long, really.
    Mum cooks us up a pasta thing with bits of bacon in it and Gem devours the whole plateful like it’s the last meal she’s ever going to eat or something, and I pick
at mine and try to look like I’m enjoying it.
    ‘Are you still feeling off-colour?’ asks Mum, placing her hand on my forehead. ‘You do look a bit peaky. You’re not hot, though – cold, if anything.’
    I sigh.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’m OK. I’ve probably just got a summer cold or something.’
    Mum looks doubtful but pulls a tub of chocolate-chip ice cream out of the freezer, gives me and Gem a spoon each and leaves us to it.
    Then I try to link up my new iPhone to my laptop and Gemma helps me. It doesn’t actually take very long at all and there are all my colour photographs downloading on to the screen so that
I can look at them blown up in size and decide which ones I’m going to email to Dad for his inventory.
    ‘They’re good,’ says Gem. She’s curled up in the corner of the sofa next to Ben and he’s got his head on her shoulder. Ben always did like Gem. She’s fun and
soft-hearted, just the sort of person he likes. He stares up at her with his thumb stuck in his mouth and she fiddles with her jewellery and her phone and asks me embarrassing questions about Jake,
and then her phone rings and it’s her mum asking her to come home and pick up some food shopping on the way. So she goes at three o’clock. Mum has gone for a lie-down so it’s just
me and Ben and the photographs.
    I page through the photos and admire my handiwork.
    ‘I could make a career out of this!’ I say to Ben, but he’s not very interested in my mad plans for the future and sits on the floor instead, so I page through on my own.
    ‘That’s good,’ I say, when the picture of the Chinese lions comes up. ‘Dad could use that.’
    I run through all the photographs until I reach the very last one.
    ‘Oh,’ I say. It’s the one I took on the staircase and there’s a dark smudge right in the middle of the photo which I stupidly rub on the screen.
    I hit the zoom button and the photo on the staircase is blown up to about five times the original size.
    For a moment I can’t think what I am looking at. And then I look a little closer, and as I stare I feel my skin going clammy and my hands turning ice-cold.
    It’s not a smudge.
    The more I stare at it, the more I see.
    There’s the outline of a black dress. Long, with a nipped-in waist and a corset top.
    No head.
    There’s