One hand clutching the edge of the small desk, Eve went on to describe the events of two days ago, that early Sunday afternoon when she had dozed on the couch in Crickley Hall's sitting room: how Cam—she was certain it was Cam even if she hadn't actually seen him; her deepest inner feelings couldn't be wrong—had touched and soothed her after she had been frightened by something dark… something evil that was somehow connected to the house itself. And then waking to find Cam's photograph had fallen onto the floor. She stared earnestly into the psychic's green eyes.
'I knew it was my son who made the bad thing go away,' she insisted. 'I couldn't have imagined it all.'
Behind her, Eve heard the shop door open, followed by the heavy trudge of boots on wood flooring. Lili Peel had already looked towards the entrance and Eve swivelled on the chair to see the customer who had entered. It was a woman, middle-aged, portly, a scarf round her head, a closed umbrella in one hand. She was wearing hiking boots, baggy corduroys tucked into the ankles.
The customer frowned back at the two figures sitting at the desk and something must have been conveyed to her, a feeling that she'd interrupted something important and private, for she quickly picked up a stone ornament on a shelf, turned it over in her hand, perhaps to find the price sticker on the bottom, and just as quickly returned it to the shelf. Without inspecting another thing, the woman left the shop, closing the door quietly as she went.
Lili Peel jumped in first before Eve could say another word. She rested her elbows on the desktop, clasping her hands together, and said: 'Because someone has the psychic gift, it doesn't necessarily follow that that person believes in ghosts.'
She lifted a hand again, palm towards Eve, who was about to interrupt.
'As it happens,' Lili Peel went on, 'I do believe in ghosts and the afterlife. So what I want to know is, what makes you so sure that what you saw or sensed wasn't, in fact, your son's spirit, his ghost? It would sound more reasonable to me. Spirits have been known to move material objects, so why not the photograph? Why do you think it was telepathy rather than contact with your dead son's ethereal spirit?'
Her eyes bore into Eve's with a coldness to them, a kind of brittle hardness that could not be easily broken.
'Because Cam gave me hope again,' Eve responded immediately. 'I had almost given up, almost come to believe Cameron was dead, I just couldn't find it within myself to accept it. My doubts have been steadily growing stronger these last few months; but on Sunday, after what happened, the feeling it left me with, I knew, just knew, Cam was alive and trying to contact me through his mind. He's trying to tell me where I can find him.'
The psychic was silent for a few moments, as if she didn't know how to react. Then those green eyes hardened once again. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but that's not enough.' Her tone was still curt, as if she were determined not to accept Eve's conviction. 'It doesn't mean your son is alive. The opposite, if anything.'
Eve's own voice became curt. 'What if I told you he was being helped by others?'
'What do you mean by that?'
Eve, undaunted by the younger woman's attitude and without a trace of self-doubt, went on to explain what had been happening in the house they were renting, the rappings, the small pools of water, the cellar door that refused to stay shut. She told the psychic about the running footsteps she and her family had heard coming from the attic dormitory. She told Lili Peel about the spinning top and the dancing children that she and Cally had witnessed, the small faces at the dormer windows. Eve told her that eleven children had perished in the house, drowned in the great flood of 1943.
'This house,' said Lili Peel. 'What's it called? It has a name, doesn't it, not a number?'
Eve was surprised by the question. 'Yes. It's called Crickley Hall. Do you know of it?'
A shadow seemed to pass over the psychic's face. She stared intently at Eve. 'I was told about the floods when I was last in Hollow Bay. When I gave my card to the shopkeeper to put in her window, she read it and said if I was a psychic I should go up to Crickley Hall. Plenty of ghosts up there, she said, then she told me about the flood and the children, and that nobody had ever stayed at Crickley Hall for long. It was an unhappy house, she said, and I thought that in a strange way she enjoyed telling me about it. I remember passing the place—across a short wooden bridge, the shopkeeper said, a mile or so up the lane—and I remember I shivered when I saw it. There was a terrible depression about the place, not unlike the depression that hangs over the village itself, only this was stronger, more concentrated.'
'Then you do think it could be haunted? Haunted by those poor children.'
'I didn't say that. I've never been inside, so I wouldn't know.'
'But you said there was an atmosphere—a depression—about it, which you felt even though you were only passing by.'
'Some houses are affected by the tragic things that happen in them. It's as if the walls retain the memory. It doesn't mean they're haunted, though.'
Lili Peel was silent for a few moments. Then, abruptly: 'No, I won't—I can't—help you.'
Eve was dismayed. After all she had told the psychic, how she'd poured out her heart to her and had thought she was being believed. Despite her curtness, Eve had thought Lili Peel was sympathetic. Now she was refusing to help her.
'Haven't I convinced you?' she asked at last, almost pleadingly.
'It isn't that, although I wonder why, if as you say your son and you have always shared a telepathic link, he hasn't let you know his whereabouts psychically.'
'Because our mutual ability, especially mine, isn't strong enough. That's why I need you.'
'But what can I do?'
'You can help me find my son. If I do have any power it's too weak to strengthen the psychic link with Cameron. If you're genuinely psychic, it shouldn't be too difficult for you. I'm not interested in ghosts, I don't care if Crickley Hall is haunted or not; all I want you to do is talk to Cam. I know you can succeed where I've failed.'
Lili Peel was suddenly suspicious. 'What does your husband feel about this?' She had leaned back in her chair, one hand remaining on the desk, the other falling to her lap.
'He… he doesn't know about Cam coming to me.'
'That's curious. You haven't told him?'
'Gabe is awkward about this kind of thing. He doesn't really believe in it.'
'He's heard noises, has seen some kind of evidence, as you have, hasn't he?'
Eve gave a shake of her head as if dismissing her husband's part in the matter. 'He has heard noises, yes, and he was the one who discovered the puddles that appeared from nowhere. Gabe thinks there's a natural explanation for it all. But then he hasn't experienced what I have.'
The psychic exhaled a short but heavy breath, perhaps one of annoyance, Eve couldn't be sure.
'How do I know you haven't imagined these ghosts?' the psychic said. 'You seem distraught, you're obviously still in deep grief over your loss. Depression mixed with hope and anxiety can do a lot to the mind, can make you believe in the impossible. Perhaps even cause you to hallucinate. I think a doctor might help you better than I'm able.'
'I'm not mad, I'm not imagining.' Despair was provoking anger in Eve. 'I'm not hallucinating.'
'I'm not suggesting you're mad. But you are overwrought and that can—'
'Please, won't you help me?'
Lili Peel was startled by the fierceness of the outburst. When she spoke again, it was calmly, but determinedly. 'I no longer use my gift, Mrs Caleigh. Not deliberately, that is—I can't stop sensing some things, but I no longer practise as a psychic.'