MAGDALENA'S GHOST: THE HAUNTING OF THE HOUSE IN GALLOWS LANE by PEPPI HILTON Page B

felt no sense of belonging and she couldn’t help but wonder if she could ever truly settle.

9
    As the days passed Anton worked his way through the house from morning until night, whilst Lucy scrubbed and cleaned and cooked – having eventually got the hang of the range. She soon found herself enjoying their new home, or at least part of it. The finished parts had taken on a reasonably friendly atmosphere, once they had begun to put their own stamp on it, but there was still a long way to go. Lucy began to wonder if perhaps she had been acting rather foolishly lately by insisting that she’d seen that old woman, and complaining of snoring sounds in the bedroom – not to mention her petulant behaviour with some silly notion that she was having her nose pushed out. She had to admit to herself that she’d been sounding rather neurotic lately, and that could easily build a bridge between them if she didn’t pull herself together. Anton had gone out of his way to push ahead with the house purchase and work extremely hard at creating a home for her. Any woman would give her right arm for a man like him, and right now she was suffering from a guilty conscience.
    Anton had plumbed the washing machine in and together they were quite organised. Although the house looked sparse and drab elsewhere, the sitting room and the scullery looked and felt more homely, and even inviting to a certain extent. Fortunately with Anton having worked hard on the gardens and grounds whilst waiting for the mortgage to come through, it was all looking good outside and soon they were both proud to say they were the owners of Juniper House.
    Days turned into weeks, and the time was growing close to when Anton would have to tell Lucy that he would be working away. He wasn’t looking forward to it, particularly as she had been in good form lately showing signs of enjoying their new home and paying him a lot of attention – just like she always used to do. He’d been feeling pretty good about that. They’d been going to bed early and getting close, and she seemed to have lost all her superstitions about the house having a presence – or two.
    At least he’d managed to finish decorating the most important rooms, which were the sitting room and the scullery, plus the back hall with the pot sink in it, and a few more parts here and there. There was no doubt he was being somewhat over-sentimental when he’d put the old cracked mirror back on the hook above the sink, especially when Lucy had earmarked it for binning. But it was there when they moved in, and somehow he felt that it rightfully belonged there.
    In general it looked much more enticing – and not quite as spooky, as Lucy had been quick to point out. However, the long hallway from the entrance door to the grand hall, plus the staircase and landing, were gloomy, shabby, dilapidated and darkly lit – not to mention the second floor which was uninhabitable! He was able to see through the dilapidations up there and imagine how it would look once all the work was done. But he knew Lucy would never venture up onto that floor in a thousand years, so there was no urgency to start on that area, and there were still plenty of rooms downstairs to make a start on. It was a pretty big house with six bedrooms on the first floor, plus more rooms could be found via the secondary staircase leading to the second floor, which probably once served as the nursery and staff rooms. Anyway, as far as he was concerned, the parts which mattered to Lucy the most were looking ship-shape for when he was gone. Surely she wouldn’t mind him working away after all the efforts he’d put in, and, after all, it was for her benefit. However, he still kept putting it off until he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer.
    “Lucy love,” he began.
    Lucy was immediately alerted to something fishy going on. He didn’t call her by her proper name unless he was sheepish about something. She walked over to him and eyed him