Deep Water, Thin Ice by Kathy Shuker Page B

decided what yet. I’ll maybe scatter them somewhere…or bury them sometime – if I can decide the right place to do it. I don’t know.’ She stood up abruptly. ‘Have you finished your coffee? Shall we get on?’
    *
    So Erica was coming to stay and Alex was glad. She didn’t regret having come to Devon; she’d needed the space it gave her and she felt better for it. But, argue as they might, she loved her sister and missed her. She also recognised that she’d maybe spent too much time alone of late which sometimes made it difficult not to let things prey on her mind.
    After a succession of incidents, she’d become convinced that there was something strange going on in her bedroom. Things would move, icy columns of air would develop erratically and then disappear again, she would find the door open when she was sure it had been closed. The photograph Sarah had given her had been on the bed when she’d come back home the other day and she certainly hadn’t left it there. She’d stood staring at the picture, her skin prickling with fear, sweat forming in a cold band down the middle of her back. She looked round the room, barely breathing and listened to the house for sounds of movement but she heard nothing. There was no-one there.
    It had been in the early hours of the following morning, unable to sleep, that the idea had come to her that perhaps it was Simon who was doing these things. His ashes were in the room with her, couldn’t his spirit be there too? In the dark hours of the night it had seemed a completely rational and even comforting thought. She finally drifted off to sleep but when she woke the next morning the idea appeared altogether more far-fetched and not a little disconcerting. She was reluctant to think too much about it. So maybe she needed a dose of Erica’s down-to-earth and pragmatic company after all. Her sister had always, in that dry way of hers, been accustomed to toning down what she described as Alex’s ‘extreme flights of fancy’. ‘Entertaining idea Ali,’ she often used to say when they were younger, ‘but come on .’
    Erica was the sort of person who buzzed with restless energy. In an effort to better her life she constantly read magazines looking for ideas for the house, for her hair or clothes; fleeting enthusiasms had her doing classes in upholstery or keep fit or hat-making, each hobby abandoned before much had been achieved; and she fretted over Ben too, looking for ways to enhance his education and skills, desperate to ensure his future success. She was naturally suspicious, often jealous, and yet never let a week go by without checking on her elderly neighbours in case they were ill or needed anything.
    She and Erica were an odd pair, Alex thought. Like those married couples who marry and divorce and remarry because they can’t live together and yet can’t live apart: devoted to each other and yet completely at odds. But despite their differences, they’d always looked out for each other. When Victoria had tried, with considerable vehemence, to stamp on Alex’s singing ambitions, it was always Erica who’d stood up for her, Erica who made sure she was at all those early performances when Alex was wracked with nerves; when Erica’s latest romance failed it was always Alex who’d agreed what a bastard he was, who’d hugged her sister while she cried and told her there’d be a better man for her one day. A shared history created quite a bond.
    But Erica hadn’t been at Hillen Hall above half an hour when Alex began to wonder if she’d done the right thing. Her sister had come to stay for three nights and, with all her bags shifted inside, Alex gave her a tour of the house. They’d seen all the downstairs rooms and were now in the guest bedroom where Erica stood at the window looking out at the sweeping views across and down to the sea.
    ‘So, what do you think?’ asked Alex.
    ‘What do I think?’
    ‘Of Hillen Hall?’
    ‘It’s a surprising place,’