parcel from the hall table and go straight out again.
Anita’s not where I left her and I assume she must have gone next-door already.
As I’m emerging from the gate, someone comes running along and collides with me, knocking into my shoulder with some force, and next moment, I’m landing on my bottom in the snow. Gasping, I lever myself up, wondering what on earth just happened. And that’s when I catch sight of the slight figure hurrying away through the snow.
He or she turns at one point and looks directly at me, walking backwards for a second. Then they speed off across the green.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Bloody hell. Who on earth was that?’ exclaims Anita. ‘I was just waiting for you in next-door’s garden and I saw this person in a hoodie, lurking by the window over there, trying to peer in. But obviously the curtains are drawn too tightly to see anything.’
‘A person in a hoodie?’ I murmur, recalling the first night I was here.
The figure in the back garden, looking in at me…
‘Yes. They seemed as if they were about to go around the back of the house. But when they saw me watching them, they ran off.’
She helps me up and I brush off the snow, staring over at the figure, who’s now vanishing into the distance. ‘Girl or boy?’
‘Not sure. I didn’t get a proper look at their face.’
‘I thought I saw someone in a hoodie in the back garden, the night I arrived. Perhaps it’s the same person.’
We exchange a puzzled look.
‘So not only do you have a mysterious stranger camping next door, there’s also someone spying on them?’ says Anita slowly. She shakes her head. ‘This gets weirder and weirder.’
‘Are you still up for delivering the parcel?’ I hold it aloft.
She grins. ‘Of course. Safety in numbers. Come on.’
‘We could do it tomorrow instead. In the daylight,’ I whisper, as we push open the gate to Moon Cottage.
Anita shakes her head. ‘No time like the present. Everything seems scarier in the dark, but it’ll be fine.’
I nod, my heart beating faster as we approach the front door. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. Our ghostly neighbour is hardly likely to appear…
There’s a plastic bag lying in the snow on the doorstep and we both eye it for a moment. Then I pick it up, ready to hand over along with the parcel I’m delivering. The front door has an old-fashioned brass knocker in the image of a lion’s head. It seems to be roaring at us, which isn’t a great omen. Taking a breath, I raise my hand to lift the metal ring in the lion’s mouth.
A sudden noise within makes me step back in alarm and bump into Anita, who’s standing at my shoulder. The door opens and in the dark hall, a figure looms. And the tabby cat I rescued from the barn jumps from the person’s arms and hares out of the door into the snow.
Anita gasps but I’m frozen to the spot. I have just a few seconds to register the bulky, black-clothed shape, and the wild, staring eyes beneath the shock of dark hair – before the door is slammed shut in our faces.
For a moment, we just stand there. My eyes are fixed on the lion’s head. Then, as one, we start walking quickly away, and half way down the path, we break into a run.
‘Frank Lennox,’ I pant, as we slam the gate shut and hurry up the path, back to the safety of Snowdrop Cottage.
At the front door, Anita turns to me, shaking her head. ‘That wasn’t Frank Lennox.’
Her face, in the light by the door, is a picture of stunned disbelief.
‘That was Reenie.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘Has Reenie been there all the time, do you think?’ I turn from the hob, where I’m stirring the pot of gently simmering mulled wine. ‘Would you like a mince pie?’
Anita has been sitting, dazed, at the kitchen table since our encounter next-door. She looks up as I offer the plate, her face still wreathed in a puzzled frown. She spies the sugar-sprinkled, short-crust pastry mince pies and smiles eagerly. ‘Ooh. Yes, please.’
‘Reenie?’ I prompt. ‘Do you think she ever went away?’
Anita’s mince pie is suspended in the air for a second as she considers this. ‘It doesn’t look like it. Maybe she wanted people to think that she’d gone. So she put about the rumour that she was staying with her sister in Portsmouth?’
‘But why?’ I strain the mulled wine into a