Bridge To Eternity

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Tina Small hated carrying clients in her white VW Golf, but it was part of the job. She was usually good at relaxed chit-chat but on this occasion she had something to hide and the elegant woman sitting beside her as they drove through the former mill town was tugging at her usually immune, estate agent’s conscience. How had she let this happen? She should have sent a taxi. She had broken her own golden rule and allowed Audrey Willatt to penetrate her tough enamelled veneer. Never like a client, her boss had warned her, and she never had, until now.

‘Has the sale of the boarding house provoked much local interest?’ Audrey asked, breaking the long silence.

Tina felt the blood rushing up her neck and spilling out across her cheeks. Thankfully, she had applied plenty of make-up so, with luck, her client wouldn’t notice. Blushing was for losers and she had worked hard to train her brain not to do it. At one point she’d gone to a hypnotist but, ultimately, it was Tina’s determination that had won through – until now. Her body felt hot as blood, pumped by guilt, flooded into surface veins, undoing years of hard work. She was a blusher and always would be. Fortunately, her hot ears were hidden by her blonde hair, but she could not hide her discordant breathing.

Her mother had suffered from panic attacks for years. Was this one? She had to get a grip. She knew she was smart, too smart to go to university.

‘Why should I waste my life and money going to a school for grown-ups when I can get on with my career right now?’ she had told her disappointed parents.

Now, twenty-one and with three years’ working for what she had helped become the area’s leading sales and lettings agency, she was experiencing her first major trauma.

It had seemed casual enough at the beginning when Trevor Harper, Tina’s boss, dropped a huge bunch of keys, the largest she had ever seen, on her desk and beamed down at her. ‘We got it! If we get an offer and it’s accepted by the executors managing the estate, it’s double commission for you, Tina, my girl.’

‘Nice tie,’ she responded as she scooped up the heavy bunch and pulled open a cupboard door to retrieve the agency’s digital camera; its wide-angle lens giving properties a scale they often didn’t deserve.

‘So, what’s the address?’

Trevor stopped thumbing a text on his phone, looked at the designer label on his tie and replied, ‘Hugo Boss’.

‘Not the tie. Where am I going?’ She slipped into her new Ted Baker raincoat.

‘You know, the old school boarding house, just off the High Street. The one that’s been empty for years.’

Tina froze. She hadn’t seen it coming. She’d been so busy selling new-build properties on an estate gracing former fields to the south of the River Hawk, she’d not heard about her boss going after the old school boarding house. If she had, she’d have ducked the job and made sure her lazy colleague, Max, had the pleasure; but now, standing with the keys in one hand and the camera in the other, she couldn’t back down.

Somehow, she forced a cheery smile. She liked working for Trevor. He was happily married and never tried it on with her. He was also ambitious, and she hoped one day to be offered a partnership in what she expected would become a long chain of estate agents.

She walked to her VW Golf, worried about the task ahead but too proud to confess her fears. There was absolutely no way she could wriggle out of spending at least a couple of hours within the forbidding building and retain her pride.

She sighed as she slipped into the black leather driver’s seat and clicked her belt. She checked her phone for messages before slotting it into its hands-free rest. And then she had a thought. She reached for her phone and searched online for Hawksmead and articles about the old school boarding house. Over lunch, one Sunday, her maternal grandmother had taken great delight in detailing the shocking goings-on that had led to the boarding house gaining its reputation for being haunted. To Tina’s surprise, her father had got up from the table and, without a word of explanation, had walked to the end of the garden.

After much badgering, her mother had told her about her father’s big brother. ‘He should have been a day boy but, for some reason, your grandparents thought it would be less disruptive if he boarded. Every day, he rode his bike from the boarding house up to the main school on the moor. One morning, he was hit by a car and killed.’

‘How come I’ve never heard of him?’

‘There wasn’t much child psychology in those days. Your dad was only five, and his parents thought it best if he forgot he ever had a brother. He was not taken to the funeral and all photos were hidden away.’

Frustratingly, Google could find nothing about the events of fifty years ago. It didn’t matter. Tina knew enough and it churned her perfectly flat stomach. She took a deep breath and fired up the car’s engine. She told herself it was just an old building like any other. She’d be fine. When was anyone ever hurt by a...? She couldn’t bear to even think the word.

She slipped the lever into first and released the handbrake. Her car always gave her a great sense of personal pride, but not today. She checked her side mirror and pulled away from the kerb with a feeling of dread she hadn’t experienced for a long time. Despite photographing and measuring up numerous empty properties and never being bothered by mice and spiders, the history of the old school boarding house chilled her to the core.

Driving across the moor with its beautiful golden hues caressed by the September sun did not calm her troubled thoughts. The humpback bridge that was the northern gateway to Hawksmead came way too soon and within a further minute she was parked in a short drive that led to a porch with a tiled roof and a large oak door. She picked up the camera from the passenger seat, took a deep breath, and went around to the boot to retrieve a tripod.

She looked up at the imposing, former annexe to the abandoned school out on the moor, and decided to shoot the exterior once she’d photographed all the interiors.

Finding the right key amongst so many on the large bunch took time and Tina was all for giving up when the aged lock gave, and the door creaked open. She stepped inside and was almost overwhelmed by a sense of impending doom. The hallway was dark, despite the hour, and eerily silent. Wooden panels caked with dark brown varnish lined the walls. The floor was a mix of well-trodden terracotta tiles and patches of cement filler. Ahead was a wide oak wood staircase leading up to a half landing, with a corridor to the left and a short flight off to the right.

Tina looked at her phone and selected one of her favourite play lists. If she was going to have to work in this miserable old building with its well-deserved reputation, she wanted to fill her head with Sam Smith, not with squeaking hinges. She inserted her ear buds and entered a world of silent tears, accompanied by the melodic pleading of Stay With Me.

The air in the cavernous hall had its own peculiar smell – not typical of an old house. It was pungent, and she feared it would linger in her nostrils long after she’d escaped. But that wouldn’t be for several hours, even when using her super-fast ultrasonic measurer. She had no idea how many rooms there were but, judging from the exterior and the number of keys on the bunch, she was going to be alone in the house for way too long.

Determined to suppress her fears, she twisted the telescopic legs on her tripod and fixed the camera to the screw fitting. Looking at the screen on her phone, she terminated Sam Smith mid-song and welcomed Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud into her head. After a few bars she terminated him, too. The music had to be more upbeat. She laughed at her choice and joined in the singing of One Direction’s Story of My Life, a song she was too cool to like even when she was a teenager.

Nearly four hours of photography and measurements later, after jumping at her own shadow more times than she would admit to her boss, Tina felt boundless relief as she finally stepped out of the former boarding house. She closed the heavy front door, ensured it was locked and carried the camera across Hawksmead High Street to get a good angle on the entire structure, the last building before the High Street became the Old Military Road. It felt good to be outside, breathing in air that was sweet and fresh. Fortunately, whatever horrors lurked within the corridors had been quelled by a constant flow of her favourite music, piped into her ears.

It was early afternoon by the time Tina returned to the estate agency. Without saying a word, she hung up her raincoat and slumped down in her desk chair.

Trevor wandered over. ‘Did you take all the measurements for the floor plan?’

Tina nodded. She’d never felt like this before as her mood was invariably buoyant.

‘It’s quite a place, isn’t it?’ he said.

She looked at him for the first time since getting back to the office. ‘Nobody’s going to buy it unless it’s to knock down and they can’t do that as it’s Grade II, so it’s going to stay empty.’

‘You’ll find some angle. There are people out there with more money than sense. And it’s going for a bargain price. Of course it will sell.’

‘I don’t think so. It’s the scariest and most depressing property I’ve ever been in. You do know its history?’

‘Rumours and hearsay. It’s just a building that needs revitalising. A little TLC. Anyway, I know you’ll do your best. Get it online as soon as possible.’

Tina created the floor plan, which covered four storeys, and then turned to her camera. She transferred all the photos from the chip onto her computer’s hard drive and set about selecting the best shots.

She was half-listening to Trevor’s phone conversation when she saw it. She leapt up from her chair and backed away from the computer, her eyes fixed on the screen.

‘I’ll put it to the vendor.’ Trevor ended his call and came over to her. ‘What is it?’ The swirling screensaver blocked the image. He moved the mouse and the image that had shocked Tina came back into view.

Trevor put his head close to the monitor. ‘It’s the Victorian glass. There’s always a slight ripple and it’s created an optical illusion.’ He looked at Tina. ‘Add in the clouds and you have another online hoax like the mystery ghost girl in Shropshire, or wherever it was.’

‘Except, that wasn’t a hoax.’ Her voice caught in her throat.

‘Every ghost picture online is either an elaborate scam or an optical illusion. You don’t even believe in God, Tina. How can you believe in ghosts?’

‘My grandmother is from Wern in Shropshire and that girl actually existed. They even know her name.’ She knew she was starting to sound shrill.

‘Really? Let’s keep it real.’

She slumped back into her chair. ‘Are you sure you want me to post this picture online, optical illusion and all?’

‘Go back before the light fails and shoot the house from a different angle,’ He took control of her mouse and deleted the image.

‘Could you please delete it from my memory, too?’ she asked.