Legacy of Lies- The Haunting of Hilda Page 8

  “Today?” Mum said, excitedly.

  He nodded. “If that’s okay with you, Hilda?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing to do with me. If she wants to go, then go.” I managed a wan smile, once again feeling a little miffed. “I can go to the solicitors and the bank. Mum’s already given her permission for me to deal with them on her behalf, so that should be fine.”

  “Did you find where her things were stored?” Neil asked.

  “Yes. A storage unit in Tauranga.”

  “Fabulous. It will be nice to get your hands on all your old things again, won’t it?” He chewed on his lip, enthusiastically.

  Mum shook her head. “I don’t even know what could possibly be there, after all these years. No doubt a load of old junk.”

  “We can go and check it out tomorrow, if you like?” I said, wanting to make it clear to Neil that I’d be spending the following day with her.

  “I’d like that. Why don’t you come too, Neil?” She smiled warmly—clearly smitten with him..

  Pete smirked and began clearing the plates. Good job he’d moved or I would’ve kicked his shin under the table.

  “Oh, I don’t want to get in the way,” Neil said looking at me.

  I felt my resolve weaken. “Don’t be silly, Neil. Of course you can come. I’ll give them a call later, once I get the details. Which reminds me, I’d best get going. You two have a nice afternoon.” I grabbed my bag and the envelope with Mum’s ID inside before heading for the door.

  In the hallway, the air stilled.

  I took several slow, tentative steps towards the front door, then ran the last few feet and out onto the veranda. My heartbeat thundered in my ears.

  Rebecca had everything organised for me when I arrived. I gave her the bank details and she confirmed the money would be transferred overnight. She handed me an envelope with two key cards and the paperwork. I could hardly wait to see what treasures from my childhood the storage unit held.

  Mum and Neil arrived home a few hours later. They were giggling and teasing each other once again, reminding me of a couple of teenagers. It was lovely to see her like that. She was thrilled when I told her we were okay to go to the unit the next day.

  Neil said his goodbyes and told us he’d be back again at nine in the morning.

  Mum had eaten already, so Pete headed into town to buy fish and chips for the two of us. After we’d eaten, he ran me a bath.

  As usual, I took my new Kindle into the tub, but within minutes my eyes were drooping. I was worried I would drop the new device into the water so I put it down and closed my eyes, sinking deeply into the delicious vanilla scented bubbles.

  I could hear Pete hammering something in the back of the house. I wondered where Mum was. I didn’t like leaving her alone for too long. Maybe she’d gone for a lie down. She’d been buzzing with the painting she’d done, but she said I couldn’t see it until it was dry. Neil had taken it home with him.

  I sighed deeply, knowing I should get out of the bath, but I hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long time.

  A strange shuffling sound beside me roused me from my slumber. Confused, I forced one eye open.

  My grandmother was bent over the top of me—her face mere inches from mine so I could see the intricate design of her moko.

  I gasped and jumped sideways, sending a tsunami of water gushing over the sides of the tub and all over the floor—my eyes fixed firmly on her in terror.

  She slowly stood upright and gazed down at me, unblinking, before leaning over and placing a key on the windowsill. I couldn’t breathe. What the hell did she want? Why was this happening to me?

  Her expression was pained, and deep creases marked her brow. She bent towards me again, her gnarly, crooked finger pointing at my face.

  Petrified, I closed my eyes and pulled away, my head slipping under the water. I held myself still, waiting for her touch, terrified of what she intended to do to me. After a few seconds I opened my eyes and could tell, through the water, she’d gone.

  “Come on, calm down. What’s happened?” Pete asked, grabbing my wet shoulders.

  I was totally naked. I hadn’t even bothered to pick up a towel before fleeing from the empty bathroom and through to the dusty work site. I could barely get my words out. I remember mumbling something about the ghost–my grandmother.

  “Darling, you must’ve fallen asleep. You do know that, don’t you?”

  I wrapped my arms around my nakedness, shivering. “I was almost asleep. But she woke me up. She was this far away from me.” I held my finger and thumb an inch apart. “Go and look at the state of the bathroom.”

  “Why, what did she do to it?”

  “Well, nothing. She scared me so much the water sloshed over the side of the bath.”

  He gave a backward nod, which I knew meant he didn’t actually believe me. “Let’s get you dressed. You’re freezing.”

  “She left something!” I suddenly squealed, remembering. I raced back to the bathroom with Pete close behind, desperate for the key to be there but I didn’t actually expect it to be. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the small brass key exactly where she’d placed it. “See! How do you explain that then?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it was already there.”

  “It wasn’t. I cleaned this entire room when we first moved in. I would’ve seen it.”

  “Maybe your mum put it there? Come on, babe, get dressed. You had a nightmare.”

  “Why won’t you believe me?” I asked, exasperated.

  “You know why. I don’t believe in ghosts. And neither do you, not really.”

  “Well, this place is haunted. I hope she pays you a visit and let’s see how calm and rational you are then.”

  He wrapped the towel around me and led me shivering to the bedroom.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, as promised, Neil arrived bright and early. “Shall we take my car?” he asked.

  “Sure, if you don’t mind?” Pete said. “I’ve only been to Tauranga once before for a flying visit.”

  “Oh, it’s lovely. Maybe we can go for a bite of lunch at the harbour later?” Neil suggested.

  “Don’t see why not. Got nothing to rush back for, have we, babe?”

  “What?” I asked, still distracted and out of sorts from last night’s events. “Oh, of course, that’ll be fine. You ready, Mum?” I said, tapping on my mother’s bedroom door.

  “Where are we going?” Mum asked, as she stepped out of her room into the hallway.

  “We’re going to the storage locker,” I said. “Had you forgotten?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember. It just slipped my mind, that’s all.”

  A few minutes later we were all piled into Neil’s car—Pete in the front, Mum and me in the back.

  “Are you excited?” I asked her.

  “A little. I’m a bit scared too.”

  “Why?”

  She took a deep breath and turned to look out the window, exhaling slowly. “I’m presuming a lot of your dad’s stuff will be there. I don’t know if I can cope, it makes me anxious.”

  “We don’t have to deal with anything yet.” I didn’t feel quite as cheerful as I tried to sound. “We can just have a quick look, choose what we want to take with us and the rest can stay where it is for now.”

  “It would be nice to see some of my old paintings. In fact, they may be worth a little bit by now. Somebody contacted me while I was in prison and asked to buy them. They said they would be worth more now I was a convicted murderer.”

  “Really? Why on earth would they be worth more?”

  “Some people are into gory stuff,” Mum said.

  “Your paintings are of scenery, the odd fruit bowl, flowers—how can that be gory?”

  “You’d probably get some crazy people analysing them, saying you can tell with the way the shadow fell on the water, or the flow of the brush, that the painter was a serial killer.” Neil laughed.

  “Mum is not a serial killer,” I snapped
.

  “I know that,” he responded quickly. “But these nutters just make things up to make a few dollars.”

  I shrugged, not really in the mood for him today.

  Less than an hour later we were pulling into the Tauranga Secure Storage yard. The gates were wide open as the guy on the phone said they would be. The sign said they close at four o’clock, which is what we would need the key card for. Number eighteen was located at the far end of the property on the ground floor. The roller door was operated by a standard garage door opener, also supplied in the envelope.

  Pete opened it up.

  Although tidily packed, the entire space was crammed floor-to-ceiling with stuff. There was hardly enough space to manoeuvre in and out comfortably.

  “Bugger. I didn’t expect there to be this much stuff. Did you, Mum?”

  She shook her head, seeming a little overwhelmed.

  “Give us a hand to pull a couple of these bigger items out, Neil,” Pete said.

  They pulled out an old-fashioned oak chest of drawers and placed it in front of the unit. Then a bookcase.

  “Do you recognise any of this, Mum?”

  “I think so. I recognise that.” She pointed to a cabinet with intricate latticework on the doors.

  I suddenly saw the cabinet in my mind’s eye. It used to be in the snug. Then I saw Charlie’s old dolls house.

  The men pulled out a stack of chairs each, followed by several large cardboard boxes, creating a good-sized turning circle.

  “What the heck are we going to do with this lot?” Pete said, scratching his head.

  “We don’t have to do anything with it for now,” I piped up. “The locker’s paid for till the end of the year.”

  “If we hire a van, we could do it in stages. I have a huge empty garage at my place,” Neil said. “We could take it there and go through it bit by bit. Sort out what you want to keep, and what you want to get rid of. Then, once there’s a space, we could do it all over again.”

  Completely outfaced with the enormity of the task ahead of us, I wanted to just shut the door and walk away, but that wasn’t fair on Mum.

  Pete shoved out our old sofa. I couldn’t have told you what it looked like ten minutes before, but as soon as I saw it I remembered it clearly. Not many people got to step back into their childhood twenty years in the past to find everything intact and untouched. I just wish there wasn’t so much of it.

  “Ah, look. This box is marked paintings,” Neil said excitedly.

  The box was approximately one metre high by one and a half metres wide and half a metre deep.

  “Be careful with that,” Mum said, as Neil and Pete got on either end of the box.

  They pulled it out onto the concrete.

  “Oh, look. There’s another box of paintings,” I cried. “We won’t be able to fit any of these in the car—we should have brought a trailer.”

  Next, Pete and Neil carried out our old solid wooden dining table. I got on Neil’s end as he appeared to be struggling with the weight of it.

  Several plastic containers were stacked behind Dad’s green armchair. Each had a list taped to the side. The one in the middle was marked photograph albums.

  “Maybe we can take that with us today?” I turned to see Mum stroking Dad’s armchair, she lifted a cushion and held it to her chest and my heart broke for her. I flapped my arms to get Pete’s attention, then nodded in Mum’s direction. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through.

  “Maybe we should get these photographs out, and then call it a day,” Pete said. “If we pack it all back in, leaving the paintings closest to the door we can pop back tomorrow with a trailer and take it from there.”

  I nodded, feeling emotional.

  It was almost noon by the time we’d packed everything away. Neil loaded the photographs into the boot of his car, then we went to show Pete the harbour. We had a stroll, and a bite to eat at a trendy bar before heading home.

  Chapter 18

  Mum was itching to get into the photo albums and as soon as Neil parked up outside the house, she rushed around to the back of the car.

  “Heck, Eliza. You’re keen.” Neil laughed, flicking the internal switch to open the boot.

  Pete thanked Neil then got out too. He retrieved the box and carried it inside for my impatient mother.

  “Are you coming in?” Mum asked Neil.

  “If you’re sure? But wouldn’t you rather go through your family photos without me?”

  “No. Come on in.” She took his hand. It was at that moment I suspected their relationship was intimate, or, if it wasn’t already, it was certainly heading that way.

  I made a pot of tea and sat beside Mum on the carpet in the snug. She’d already pulled out several albums and a pile of loose photographs.

  “I love looking at old photos,” I said. “Everything is digital nowadays, which is a shame. In twenty years from now nobody will have physical memories to look back on.”

  “What is digital?”

  “You know, on the phone or computer. Nine out of ten times, once the phone or computer dies, the images are lost.”

  Neil and Pete sat on the sofa behind us as Mum began turning the pages of the old album.

  Tears filled my eyes immediately—the first image was Mum and Dad from before Charlie and I were born.

  “I was pregnant with you then,” Mum said.

  “You look so young.” My heart melted.

  “I was around your age there.” She smiled sadly.

  Flicking over a few more pages, baby number one, me, suddenly made an appearance—a shock of black hair and huge eyes.

  “I recognise that face,” Pete said. “Oh my, you haven’t changed at all.” He laughed.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “I think I may have changed a bit.”

  “But your face hasn’t. It’s so obvious it’s you. How old are you there? Just a couple of days old?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I always say all babies look the same, but that’s just proved me wrong.”

  We continued looking at the pictures for over an hour–holiday photos, first day of school, Dad at work, Mum accepting an award for her paintings, all sorts. Once the albums were finished, she started going through the box of loose photos. They were all mixed up.

  My heart missed a beat when she said, “Here’s one of your grandparents. Do you remember them?”

  I nodded, taking the photo from her. My grandmother was dressed exactly as she’d been just last night in the bathroom—a plain black dress with an apron at the waist, her grey hair pulled back into a bun and the moko on her chin jutting out proudly. She stood beside my grandfather who was in a wheelchair. “I don’t remember him being in a wheelchair.”

  “That wasn’t long before they died. I told you he was sick, didn’t I?”

  I nodded, handing the image to Pete. I eyeballed him and nodded as discreetly as possible.

  Pete smiled, clearly amused, then handed it back to me.

  “Can I keep this, Mum?”

  “Of course you can, love.”

  “Is that Uncle Declan?” I asked.

  “It is. And your dad.”

  I took the raggedy image from her. Uncle Declan was staring at the camera and Dad crouched down beside him. Then I suddenly recognised another of the men. “Is that you, Neil?”

  “Let me see.”

  I lifted it up for him to get a better look.

  “Bloody hell, it is.”

  “Did you work with Uncle Declan and Dad?”

  “Kind of. I was in the finance department with Wendy. Your dad was an engineer.”

  “Who’s that man?”

  Neil stared at the image, a look of contempt spread across his face. “That’s Fergie.”

  “He’s quite handsome. Didn’t you like him?” I asked.

  “He was nothing but a womaniser.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Died of cancer after he moved to Australia. Couldn’t have happene
d to a nicer bloke.” He got to his feet and returned his cup to the sink.

  That shocked me. I’d never known Neil to be so mean spirited. I raised my eyebrows at Mum and made a face.

  “Wendy,” she mouthed, and made a kissy face.

  I gasped and went to hand the image back to her, I suddenly recognised the woman standing next to Fergie. “Oh, my God, it’s Wendy.”

  “Yes. As I just said, we all worked together.” Neil sounded irritated, as he returned to his seat.

  “She was so pretty.” I didn’t remember thinking Wendy was particularly pretty when I was a kid, she was just an adult to me then. But in actual fact, she was stunning.

  “Was she prettier than me?” Mum asked, pushing her fingers through her hair.

  “No, of course not.” I winked at Neil. “You’re beautiful.”

  Neil didn’t respond, he still seemed a little miffed, which was understandable if Wendy and Fergie had been getting it on. The things that fly straight over the top of your head when you’re a kid—I’d been oblivious to all of it.

  Mum didn’t seem to notice Neil hadn’t replied. She smiled and went back to sorting through the box. “I liked my hair shorter.”

  “I’ll arrange a salon day. I could do with a restyle myself.”

  “Like a makeover?”

  “Exactly like a makeover.”

  Later that evening after dinner, I found Pete in our bedroom. “Will you come into the bathroom with me, while I have a shower?”

  “You’re not still fretting about your dream, are you?”

  “Did you see that photo? My grandmother was exactly as I described her.”

  “Of course, she was. She was your grandmother. You knew her, didn’t you?”

  “I knew her years ago when I was a kid. There’s no chance I would remember the details or what she was wearing, her hair, the creases around her mouth and eyes, the moko.”

  “The subconscious is a marvellous thing.”

  “For the last time, Pete, she’s here. In fact, I’m sure she’s trying to tell me something.”