The Ghost Garden Read online

  First published in 2021 in Great Britain by

  Barrington Stoke Ltd

  18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP

  This ebook edition first published in 2021

  www.barringtonstoke.co.uk

  Text © 2021 Emma Carroll

  Illustrations © 2021 Kaja Kajfež

  The moral right of Emma Carroll and Kaja Kajfež to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request

  ISBN: 978-1-80090-028-8

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Behind the story

  Chapter 1

  Fran found the bone in the potato patch. It was lying deep in the soil, as dark as an old tree root. The prong of Fran’s garden fork hit it with a grim thwack.

  “Oh!” Fran said as she leapt back, startled. She crouched down for a better look.

  Much to Fran’s disappointment, there was no skeleton attached to the bone. No skull baring its teeth. It was just a single bone – so big that it might have once been a creature’s leg, Fran guessed. She’d broken it with her fork. A fresh, jagged line ran right along the length of it as it lay gleaming in the dirt.

  Fran sat back on her heels. She felt guilty now, as if she’d hurt some real living thing. She glanced behind her to check her father hadn’t noticed what had happened. He was still bent over a row of lettuces, deciding which ones to pull for lunch.

  Fran’s father was Head Gardener here at Longbarrow House, which was owned by old Mrs Walker. He’d taken the job two years ago, and Fran loved working alongside him during her school holidays. Often she’d find lost objects in the house’s vast gardens – clay pipes, bits of china, a pretty hat pin, a shilling piece. But Fran had never found a bone before. And this one was disturbingly human-sized.

  Fran shivered despite the heat of the summer morning. Where had the bone come from? Ideas rushed into her head as she wiped her hands on her pinafore and got to her feet: murder, kidnap, a missing person. Fran moved fast to cover the bone over again with soil before anyone else saw it.

  “You done digging spuds?” her father called.

  Fran pointed to the basket on the ground beside her. “That’s got to be enough, hasn’t it?” she replied.

  The potatoes and the lettuces were for Mrs Walker and her grandchildren. For most of the year, her grandchildren went away to school somewhere strict and expensive. But they came to Longbarrow House for the summer because their parents were always working. Their father – Mrs Walker’s son – was an officer in the army. Their mother was a writer who lived in Paris.

  At first, everyone had thought Fran would be dying to make friends with the grandchildren: she was an only child, after all. Yet Fran had always preferred her own company or that of adults. Mrs Walker was a kind, clever lady who shared Fran’s love of mystery stories. The Walker grandchildren, however, were the noisiest, silliest, hungriest children Fran had ever met. She could hardly believe they were related to Mrs Walker.

  *

  Fran picked up the basket of potatoes and walked briskly towards the house with it on her hip. She enjoyed this part of the day, already thinking about the plate of delicious butter biscuits Millie would have waiting for her. Millie worked in the kitchens and was one of the few people Fran trusted and liked. Millie had a soft Irish voice and smiling eyes, and always gushed over the fine produce Fran’s father grew.

  Fran heard Mrs Walker’s grandchildren before she saw them. They were on the far side of the enormous front lawn. Fran guessed they were playing cricket – from the squeals and the tock of a bat hitting a ball. With her head down, she kept walking, hoping they wouldn’t spot her.

  The Walkers had arrived the last week of June in a motorcar piled high with luggage. Leo, Evan and Jessie were handsome, healthy children with spotless white clothes and neat hair. Last summer, Fran tried to be friendly towards them, after her parents nagged her. But every attempt to speak to the Walker children left Fran feeling tongue-tied and stupid. Leo, the eldest, wouldn’t even look at her. But the twins, Evan and Jessie, mimicked Fran’s country accent and laughed at the dirt under her fingernails.

  “You can play with us,” Jessie had said. “But please don’t touch our clothes.”

  This year Fran had already decided to keep out of their way. If this was what brothers and sisters were like, Fran was glad to have none of her own.

  She heard a yell from the other side of the lawn and saw a small figure in white hurtling towards her. Fran walked even faster.

  “I say, Frannie!” called Evan. “Hold on there!”

  Fran hated that he called her that, but the panic in Evan Walker’s voice made her glance round. He stopped in front of her, his cricket whites smeared with what looked worryingly like blood.

  “We need your help,” cried Evan. “It’s my brother.” He waved towards the far end of the lawn, where someone now lay flat on the grass.

  Fran hesitated, thinking it might be a joke.

  “It’s Leo’s leg,” Evan explained. “Jessie walloped him with the bat.”

  Fran frowned.

  “She didn’t mean to hit him so hard,” Evan added hastily, “but he was being a bit of a plank. Going on and on about some duke being shot in Europe and how—”

  “How bad is it?” Fran interrupted Evan. She didn’t have time to hear Leo’s thoughts about the world or Evan’s explanation of them.

  “Something’s sticking out of his trouser leg,” Evan said. “It looks like bone.”

  A picture of it flew into Fran’s head all too fast: jagged, creamy-white. Fran flinched, remembering hitting the bone she’d found in the potato patch. It took a lot of force to break something like that.

  Fran put down the vegetable basket, pretty sure now that Evan wasn’t joking. “You’d better show me,” she said.

  She followed Evan across the grass, determined to be brave. But Leo Walker’s leg was worse than she’d expected, and the sight of it made Fran dizzy. Leo’s trousers were torn just below the knee. The rip revealed the splintered end of a leg bone. There was blood on the cricket bat, the grass, Jessie’s summer dress. Leo was groaning in agony.

  Fran felt sick with panic. They needed to get Leo back to the house as fast as they could. Mrs Walker would know what to do next.

  “We’ll have to lift him together,” Fran told the twins.

  But they couldn’t look at Leo without sobbing. It was useless.

  “He’s going to die!” Evan cried.

  “It’s all my fault!” Jessie wailed.

  Yes, Fran thought as she gritted her teeth. It is your fault, Jessie, you nasty little girl.

  Then Millie and Fran’s father came running, and soon Leo was safely inside.

  Later that day, as she pondered what had happened, Fran grew unsettled. First, she’d broken a bone with her garden fork, then, minutes later, Jessie smashed her brother’s leg. It was silly to think the two things were connected. Yet Fran couldn’t shake the feeling that they were.

  Chapter 2

  Leo Walker stayed in hospital for two whole weeks. The only person who visited him was Mrs Walker. The twins weren’t allowed to go with her, but they tried to sneak into the back of the motorcar when their grandmother wasn’t looking.

  “They’re a pair of pests,” Millie exclaimed. Sh
e was watching the twins’ antics from the kitchen window one morning as Fran sat at the table, downing a glass of milk. “Who’d hit their brother so hard as to break his leg, eh? It’s wickedness.”

  Fran explained what Evan had told her about Leo’s fixation on the duke in Europe who’d been shot dead.

  “That Archduke someone or other?” Millie asked. “Oh, it was shocking. He and his wife were killed in cold blood, and in public too. It was in the paper last week.”

  Fran’s family didn’t read the newspaper, but she agreed it sounded a grim story. “Seems a funny thing to fight about, even so,” Fran replied.

  “Oh, Leo’s forever talking about Germany getting too powerful and Russia not liking it,” Millie told her. “He thinks there’s going to be a war soon, and that’s scared Jessie.”

  “Is there?” Fran asked, surprised. “Going to be a war, I mean?”

  “Back home in Ireland, maybe,” Millie admitted sadly. “But not in Europe.”

  “So why was Jessie scared?”

  Millie’s face grew softer. “Ah, the wee thing loves her father. He’ll have to go off and fight if there’s a war. Evan’s worried about it too.”

  “They don’t act worried,” Fran pointed out. “They act like lunatics.”

  “True.” Millie sighed. “But I don’t suppose Leo meant to upset his sister. It’s just that he often struggles to say the right things.”

  Fran knew what that felt like. She was also still troubled by what had happened to Leo’s leg. That perhaps – somehow – it was her, not Jessie, who was to blame.

  *

  Over the next few days, whenever she saw Jessie and Evan, Fran was tempted to ask after Leo. But the twins were always too busy throwing sticks or chasing pigeons across the lawn, or generally making noise. Anyway, Fran knew it was a silly idea, really – too silly to try to explain to anyone, especially the twins. Fran wasn’t the person who’d whacked Leo with a cricket bat, and the bone she’d found in the potato patch probably wasn’t even a human one. Yet the two things had happened just minutes apart, and this was the point she kept coming back to.

  What helped Fran was keeping busy in the gardens, and in full summer there was always plenty to do. It was during the second week of Leo’s hospital stay that Fran began to notice her father acting oddly. She kept catching sight of him leaning on his spade, drifting off into his own little world. It was as if her father had something on his mind too.

  “What shall I do next, Dad?” Fran asked one afternoon when he seemed more distant than ever.

  He pushed his cap up and blinked. “Onions, I think,” her father replied. “Yes, Millie said she wanted onions.”

  There were two rows of onions along the back wall of the garden, their green tops withered from the sun. To the right were the potatoes. The bone was still there somewhere, lying under the soil, but Fran was determined not to think about it. She was shaking the excess mud from the last onion when something tumbled to the ground.

  Fran mistook it for a white stone at first – until she caught it with her boot. The object flipped over. It wasn’t a stone at all but something shaped like a tiny baby. Fran picked it up warily, with the bone incident still vivid in her head. The baby was about the length of her little finger and made of smooth white china. It was sweet, really. Fran put it in her skirt pocket to show Millie.

  “Why that’s a Frozen Charlotte!” Millie laughed when she saw it. She explained the dolls were popular little trinkets. They’d been named after a girl who’d been too vain to dress sensibly on a sleigh ride and had died of the cold. It was just the sort of creepy story Millie loved to share. “It’s like the one I stir into the cake at Christmas,” Millie added, “so it’s a treat for anyone who finds it in their slice.”

  “Do you think it belongs to Mrs Walker, then?” Fran wanted to know.

  Millie peered closer at the figure in Fran’s upturned hand. “Don’t think so. It looks older – probably from the last century. Finder’s keepers, that’s what I say.”

  Fran smiled.

  “It’s a bit chipped, though,” Millie pointed out.

  Fran didn’t mind that the Frozen Charlotte wasn’t perfect. She was just glad it wasn’t another bone.

  *

  Later that afternoon, Fran’s mother made an announcement.

  “Your father and I have something to tell you,” she said to Fran as they sat down for their tea.

  Fran had sensed something was going on the moment she’d come indoors. The table had been laid with her mother’s special tablecloth, the one with butterflies sewn along the edges, which normally only came out for birthdays. There was cake too, as well as bread and butter. Fran’s mother was wearing a pretty blouse tucked into a rather tight skirt. It was odd for Fran to see her mother without her pinny.

  “It’s not something bad, is it?” Fran asked, feeling worried.

  Her mother laughed, catching her father’s eye across the table. “I hope not, love.”

  Fran relaxed a little.

  “You see, the thing is, love,” her mother started, paused, then said in a rush, “it seems you’re going to have a little brother or sister soon.”

  “What do you think of that, eh?” Fran’s father asked.

  Fran frowned at her plate. Her mother was having a baby? Wasn’t it a bit late for that? There’d be such an age gap between the baby and Fran. A baby would be so small. So noisy. Fran would be expected to play with a brother or sister, to look after them, to actually like them. She felt a pang of pity for Leo Walker and thought how hard it must be for him, with the twins.

  Fran’s mother and father were waiting for her to say something. Her father was smiling proudly. Fran couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked so relieved, so happy. This was probably why he’d seemed distant before in the garden.

  “Well?” Fran’s mother asked gently. “Is it a bit of a shock, love?”

  “What? No,” Fran replied, and sat up in her seat. “I’m fine, really. I’m pleased.”

  “You’ll be a wonderful big sister, I know you will,” her mother said. She took Fran’s hand and squeezed it fondly. Her father stood up and kissed the top of her head.

  They were lovely, both of her parents. Fran knew she should be thrilled.

  But it wasn’t just about the baby – at least, not the one growing in her mother’s belly. What troubled Fran was the china figure in her skirt pocket. Twice recently Fran had discovered something in the garden. And those somethings had predicted future events. First Leo’s broken leg and now her mother having a baby. Even if they were just coincidences, it was spooky. Fran dreaded to think what she might find next.

  Chapter 3

  When Leo returned to Longbarrow House, the doctor’s orders were for him to have complete bed rest. Fran guessed the twins had been finally allowed to see him; from the giggles wafting down from an open upstairs window, it sounded as if they were keeping their elder brother entertained.

  In the kitchens, Millie made up food trays for Leo – not just at mealtimes but heaving plates of sandwiches and cake in between. After two weeks of hospital food, Leo’s appetite was back with a vengeance. At least that’s what Millie told Fran, who pretended not to be interested.

  “He keeps asking for the newspaper,” Millie confided. “But Mrs Walker says he should read something more wholesome.”

  Fran remembered the argument between Leo and Jessie. “He’s still on about a war, then?” she asked.

  Millie nodded. “He goes on about lots of things, does Leo. Gets obsessed. Doesn’t know when to stop. He’s what you might call intense.”

  Another reason to keep out of Leo Walker’s way, Fran reminded herself.

  *

  Fran did her best to avoid Leo. Yet one afternoon she stumbled across him while on an errand for her father. Leo was alone on the lower lawn, sitting in a wicker bath chair with a blanket tucked around his knees. Fran was about to turn heel and run. But it was too late: Leo had spotted her.

&
nbsp; “Haven’t seen my blasted siblings, have you?” he called.

  Fran shook her head: no, she hadn’t. She wondered why Leo was such a long way from the house. It wasn’t exactly warm out here. The morning had been bright, but the sky was rapidly clouding over and a cool wind stirred the trees.

  “The twins brought me outside for some fresh air, then abandoned me,” Leo said.

  “Oh.” Fran felt herself becoming tongue-tied. “Umm … oh dear.”

  “There are supposed to be peace talks, you know, to calm things down a bit in Europe,” Leo went on. “I only mentioned it once, but Jessie told me to shut up and Evan said I was a bore. That was the last I saw of them.”

  To Fran’s surprise, Leo seemed almost as shy as she was. He could hardly meet her eye, and his hands kept smoothing down the already neat blanket.

  “I’ve been sitting here for over an hour,” Leo confessed.

  He looked thinner than when she’d last seen him – paler and quieter too. Leo really should be indoors on a sofa before a fire, Fran thought. It wouldn’t be right to walk off and leave him. Besides, Fran hadn’t yet shaken off the sense that it was her fault that he’d broken his leg. If she’d dug the potato patch just a bit to the left, she’d never have hit that bone.

  “I’ll take you back to the house,” Fran decided.

  Before Leo could object, she stepped behind the bath chair and gripped the handles.

  Fran pushed. The chair didn’t move. She pushed harder until she was leaning almost at a diagonal.

  “The brake!” Leo cried, pointing at a lever beside the right-hand wheel.

  There was a clunk of metal as Fran freed the lever and the bath chair lurched forwards. Even with the brake off, it wasn’t an easy thing to move. The wheels dragged across the grass, and the lawn was full of small bumps and dips that made Leo wince.

  “Ouch! Oh! I’m sorry!” Fran kept saying.

  “You’re a fat lot more careful than the twins,” Leo assured her.