I stood next to Lockwood as he knocked on the dark green front door. My friends and I were standing in front of a large white cottage across the road from the station's car park. The cottage was generally well cared for, with a clean porch and a section of the roof that had recently been re-tiled. The windowsills could use a lick of paint, though.
There was always something about the cottage that needed to be fixed up, though. Stationmaster Mills did his best to do the maintenance of the house, but with how busy he was, he always ran a little behind. A wave of nostalgia hit me when my eye fell on the hydrangea bush beneath the window. It was bare at the moment, just leaves and buds, but I knew for a fact it would bloom with blue flowers in a few weeks. I had helped prune the bush a couple times when I was a kid.
The door swung open and revealed Mills, wearing a faded pair of work jeans and an old button-up shirt. The expression on his weathered face was relaxed and got a little brighter when he met my eyes. "Ah, there ye all are," he greeted. "Come on in." I gave him a smile in response and lead my friends past him. Getting all of us into the narrow hallway was a bit of a squeeze, but we managed.
An interlude followed as greetings and introductions were exchanged, and jackets were hung on the coatrack.
"Kitchen or sitting room?" I asked, although I could already guess where we would be going. The kitchen was warm and cosy, but also tiny. From memory I would estimate it was about half the size of the kitchen at Portland Row, which was a tight fit with the five of us already.
"The sitting room, Lucy. Ye know the way, I'll make us a cuppa."
I led the others down the hallway into a well-lit room. The floorboard near the door creaked loudly as we stepped on it, and the familiar sound made me smile. Not much had changed over the years. The walls were still papered with striped cream wallpaper, and a couch and two cosy armchairs were arranged around a glass coffee table. A tv cabinet was pushed against the wall next to the window and held an old tv and a picture of Mill's late wife. The remainder of the space was taken up by a wooden bookcase. All in all, the room looked the way it did in my memories. The only new additions appeared to be a crocheted afghan in a navy coloured wool draped over the back of the couch, and a small pin board on the wall next to the bookcase.
"It has barely changed since I was here last," I remarked.
"He seems like someone who likes consistency," Lockwood replied. I couldn't suppress my smile at that. Order and consistency were important to Mills. Lockwood had read his personality well.
"Did you come here often Luce?" George asked, looking around.
"Once a month when I was little. After I started my apprenticeship with Jacobs I couldn't come often, but I still stopped by from time to time."
As the others settled in - Lockwood claimed one of the armchairs, while Quill and George tried to get to the other one after counting the amount of spaces. Holly was faster - I took a moment to look at the pin board. It was filled with postcards, photos of a young family of four, and children's drawings. Most of them were recent. They were done with crayon or felt tips, in the impatient strokes of the four-year-old that featured prominently in most of the pictures on the board. An older pencil drawing caught my eye.
The paper had yellowed a little with age, and the bright blue colour of the flowers had faded a little, but I still recognised the drawing. I had made it the afternoon after we had pruned the Hydrangea bush, using one of the cut-offs as a reference. The lines were thick and uneven, and I had smudged some of them while drawing, but I remembered how proud I had been of it when presenting the finished drawing to Mills. I never expected him to have kept it, let alone display it along the drawings of his grandson.
Mills came in a moment later, carrying a tray with a simple white tea set and a tray of chocolate digestives. That little detail made me smile. He didn't have a sweet tooth, but knew I did. He had most likely gone out and gotten the biscuits just for us.
"I see Thomas and his wife had another child?" I remarked, pointing at the photo that showed Mills' son holding a tiny bundle of pink blankets with a tender expression.
"Ah yes, Jane was born last summer. She's a wee thing still." Mills replied with a smile. He put the tray down on the coffee table and walked towards the door. "Meanwhile, Matt is discovering his artistic talent in kindergarten right now. He likes flowers for a subject as much as you did," he said, pointing at a childish rendition of a bouquet in crayon before leaving the room again.
It didn't take long for him to return, carrying a dining chair with him. He put it down between the couch and the armchair Lockwood was sitting in.
"There you go," he said, gesturing to the chair before pouring the tea and handing out the cups. He lowered his large frame into the small free space on the couch. Quill and George didn't look too happy about being squeezed against each other, but neither of them complained out loud.
"How are ye holding up, Lucy?" Mills asked after everyone had taken their cup and adjusted the tea to taste with milk or sugar. He was not the only one interested in the answer, though. I felt the five sets of eyes on me as I gave a little shrug.
"Well enough, I suppose," I replied. "It's been hard, but I'll get trough…" Mills reached out to give my hand a pat.
"Yer welcome here, if ye need a break. All of ye."
"I know, thank you. I don't think we'll be staying long though."
"You can have all the time you need, Lucy. I won't force you to come back with us if you are still needed here." Lockwood interjected.
"That's not…" I trailed off, unsure how to express that I didn't think I'd be able to stand being cooped up with my sisters and their families much longer. There had been a reason I came back to London early last November.
For a moment my half finished reply hung in the air, but it dissolved when Mills smiled.
"I see ye friends take good care of ye, Lucy."
"Of course" Holly said.
"She's an important member of our team," George added.
"Aye, that brings me to the reason I invited ye over," Mills said, putting his cup down on a coaster on the coffee table.
With my hands wrapped around the white teacup, I waited. While it was nice to see him again, I knew it was unlikely that Mills had invited us to his house just for a social visit. Not when he'd gone through all the trouble of slipping me a note during the condolences. There was more to it than just wanting to catch up with me after two years.
My patience was rewarded after Mills had taken a long sip of his tea.
"I'm sorry for all the… subterfuge," he started, as if slipping me the note had been some cunning act of deceit, "but I approached yer sisters before ye arrived, and they did not appreciate my attempts at contact."
Quill raised an eyebrow. "Why not?" he asked, reaching out to take one of the biscuits from the plate. He had to wriggle backwards to get back on the couch.
"Unpleasant histories," Mills replied, making a dismissive gesture, "Bygones…" It was true that my sister never had been fond of the stationmaster, although I never knew why. As far as I was aware, they had barely even exchanged 10 words between the seven of them.
"I wanted to give ye is this." Mills reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out something that gleamed in the light. A thin silver chain dangled from his hand as he held it out to me. I took the necklace from him, making sure not to let it slip through my fingers. Where the links touched, the silver had blackened with age, and the hook of the closure was scratched.
In the middle of the chain, a little rectangular plate interrupted the shackles. When I turned it over, I could read the inscription.
Christopher Samuel Carlyle
Silver is one of the most important defences against Visitors. Even old and oxidised, like this necklace, it repels ghosts and resists the supernatural energy necessary for an object to contain a psychic echo. So I knew that the sickly feeling in my stomach was entirely my own.
"Where- where did this come from?" I asked, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat, "I thought they buried him with it?"
"We have renovated the station hall over the past few months. One of the porters found it last week," Mills replied. The friendly smile had slipped off his face. Now he was watching me with concern.
I twisted the nameplate between my fingers, trying to keep my hands from shaking. The chain felt heavy in my hands, but the implication weighed even heavier.
"So, they found it in the days before Mrs Carlyle got… Ghost Touched?" George had come to the same conclusion as I did. We all knew what the implication of this was. Sometimes, sources could be inactive for decades, only to be found once something in their environment changed and their visitor was released.
My father had never passed on to the Other Side, or wherever it was where the dead who didn't return as Visitors went, he had been lurking at the station all along, only contained by the old silver necklace he had stashed away from us. Trapped by an item of value he had refused to share with my mother.
All this time we thought the precautions we had taken right after my father's death had been enough, that we'd sealed the objects most likely to be his source. Mam had even payed off his extensive tab at the pub. We thought we'd done all that was necessary to stop him from coming back, but the silver necklace in my hand proved that we had been wrong all along.
"Yeah, two days before," Mills replied to George's question. "I was going to hand it to Mrs Carlyle. She didn't keep many of Chris' belongings."
"She had to sell his valuables for the funeral," I recalled.
"That must have been awful," Holly mumbled. I shrugged.
"Funerals aren't cheap, and she had seven girls to feed. She didn't have much of a choice, really…"
I let the shackles slide through my fingers and allowed the necklace to clatter onto the glass tabletop. The harsh sound pulled me out of myself a bit, and I fought to keep my voice steady.
"Thank you for showing this to us," I said. "I think we may need to revisit the station tonight."
If Mills was surprised about that assertion, he hid it well. He just nodded and poured me another cup of tea.
Lockwood stretched his hand out to the necklace, and when I didn't make a move to stop him, scooped it up from the table.
"Did the porter tell you where he found it exactly, Mr Mills?" he asked.
"He didn't say, but we were replacing the locker unit that day. I assume he found it there."
Lockwood asked more questions, with George, Holly and Quill joining in and asking for clarifications from time to time. I didn't take part in the discussion. I was content to let my friends take the lead on this as I tried to reorganise my world into something familiar again.
We had another cup of tea and made some more small talk until it was time to go. I lagged behind a little as my friends filed into the hall, attempting to help Mills by gathering the used cups. He waved me off with a smile, though.
"It's fine, Lucy. I can do that in a bit. Join yer friends," he said, ushering me to the others. After we'd squeezed into the hall as well, he pulled the door to the living room shut behind him.
Lockwood handed me my jacket and then opened the front door, politely thanking Mills for the tea before stepping out. The others went after him, but I lingered just a little longer.
I held out my hand to Mills to shake goodbye, but when he grasped my hand, he pulled me against him in a short hug.
"Aam proud of ye," he said, slipping into the dialect I had grown up with. "Ye got good friends, an Lockwood is a canny lad"
A/N: Hello! Not an April fool's joke, but a new chapter! I hope you enjoyed reading this, please let me know what you think!