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one last time, hoping the mother and daughter were admiring him and his car, and as he did, he thought he saw someone looking at him from an upstairs window. He glanced away before he registered what he was seeing and then slowed his car to have another look. He felt his insides churning as he prepared to face the old house again. He really didn’t want to look and told himself what did it matter anyway? He didn’t have to go back there again. If the ladies wanted to meet up they could meet somewhere else. He tried to shake the curiosity away but it was like a magnet was turning his head in the direction of the stone building, like whatever he saw wanted him to see again. With great trepidation he turned his head and kept his eyes fixed on the house. To his enormous relief he saw nothing in any of the windows.
    He let out a sigh and chuckled to himself. “Jesus Christ Leeson, what the fucks the matter with you. Getting spooked by an old house!”
    As he finally drove out of the grounds and turned onto the country lane with large elm trees lining either side that were probably older than the house, he began to think rationally again. It seemed like the house had taken control of him, or at least his thoughts.
    “First thinking there were ghosts in the house and thinking I saw one. I don’t know, I must be going crazy.”
    He was aware of both the fact that he said that out loud and also of the awful irony that he had just left a place that once was a mental asylum. As he pushed that thought to the back of his mind he understood why the mother and daughter had thought they’d seen Mr. Hendry in the upstairs window, after all he thought he had as well. It was a horrible feeling and he wiped it from his mind as quickly as he wiped the sweat from the palms of his hands onto his expensive tailored trousers. The last thing he wanted was for his hand to slip from the gear stick and stall his beautiful new ride.

13
    They entered the large old-fashioned kitchen and sat down at the rustic pine oval dining table which would be plenty big enough to fit eight people easily around it. They sat in stunned silence for a few minutes until Debbie rose and went over to the work-top, her sensible low-heeled shoes making a quiet, pleasant clacking sound on the stone floor. Almost any sound would have been pleasant to them at that moment in time, something just to break the eerie silence that engulfed the room and magnified the emptiness of the huge house. The silence seemed so loud. Lisa and Aiden watched as she filled the worn and rusted stainless steel kettle and put it on the hob of the large aga. On tip-toe she then rooted around in the creaky cupboards that were barely stocked, for three mugs and the coffee.
    “I could do with something a bit stronger than that mum!” joked Aiden half-heartedly.
    “You’re under age so you’ll have to make with this young man” Debbie said smiling at her son as she scalded him lovingly, pleased that the silence had been broken and some of the tension along with it. She made them all a cup of coffee and brought them over to the table where she placed one in front of each of them.
    “I can’t believe he’s dead” said Lisa hacking away with a spoon at the hard lumpy sugar before stirring it into her coffee. The sugar had not been used for months by the look of it.
    “I know! I don’t know what to feel. I don’t really feel anything but relief to tell you the truth.” Debbie told them. She actually felt guilty about this; after all, he was her father, well, biologically anyway. He had never been a father to her in all of her life she thought with an aching heart.
    “What are we going to do about the house mum?” Debbie looked over her steaming coffee at her beautiful daughter, relishing the searing heat coming from the mug that covered her face giving her a not unpleasant sensation of prickly heat. It was the only thing so far that seemed remotely every-day to her.
    “We’ll have to phone