***chapter 46***

***Matthew's Story***

After only a few mouthfuls, Matt set down his knife and fork. He still couldn't make up his mind about whether or not he thought ghosts actually existed, but at the present time was inclining towards the latter. And what if, queried his superstitious alter ego, the late Jimmy Turner took great exception to the newest and youngest employee of Saxe Coburg Mansion tucking into a large English breakfast so soon after his demise and decided this sufficient reason to haunt him?

He stared down at the grilled bacon, poached egg, sausage, beans, tomatoes and button mushrooms. Margaret Geraghty, dabbing her eyes both at the bereavement and the fact young Matthew had been at the death scene, hence his late breakfast alone, had piled even more food than usual on his dish, calling him a "poor little lamb" and ruffling his hair - all to Matthew's great embarrassment, for no self-respecting sixteen-year-old boy likes to be treated as though he were ten years younger.

He took a gulp of tea and concluded it was probably safer to eat nothing at all. But he was a growing lad and his stomach soon rumbled a loud objection and so he compromised with some thick buttered toast, which, he hoped, the deceased wouldn't find quite so inconsiderate. Lord Maddocks had said everyone should have a full breakfast in their belly. Mam had always said the same. She'd been wrong about so many things, especially the crazy notion he was ever going to become a priest, but she'd been spot on about a few others, he conceded. Like how sometimes you wished you had your Mam to talk to when you were feeling down.

Mrs Geraghty, sobbing quietly and not her usual talkative self, had finished unloading a mountain of cleaned dinner plates from the steaming dishwasher and disappeared into the large pantry. Matt could hear her clattering pots and pans in search of something and, aware she would insist he ate up (like many people, Margaret Geraghty equated food with being loved) he seized his chance. Quickly emptying the half-eaten breakfast into the bin for pig swill, he retrieved his work jacket, scarf and gloves, and slipped quietly as a shadow out through the back kitchen door.

The world glittered and twinkled like an enchanted fairyland, the snow whirling furiously in the bitter wind, its silence as it fell making it seem as though he was all alone in the world. He pulled his fleece tightly around himself as he headed for his small but cosy room in the servants' quarters. The staff had their own lounge and even an adjoining TV room but, though Matt had the day off, he wasn't in the mood for chit-chat or watching TV. His eyes suddenly moistened and he tried to tell himself it was only the wind to blame for his stinging tears and only the wild idea of ghosts and haunting that had stolen away his hearty appetite.

But deep down he knew neither were to blame.

The day everything changed, summer had recently broken through weeks of cool, dismal weather and temperatures soared. And, at first, it seemed nothing had changed at all.

The Beano that Matt had fallen asleep reading under cover of a cotton sheet (the increasingly warmer nights dispensing with the need for blankets) lay crumpled beneath him and the torch he'd been using to read it by had rolled down the bed and was digging in his waist. He flipped over on to his back only to feel biscuit crumbs in his pyjamas, the remains of the two Chocolate Digestives he'd smuggled upstairs with him last night.

With a sigh, the little boy sat up in bed and began fishing the crumbs out with his fingernails, flicking them idly to the floor, watching the curtains flutter in the gentle breeze from the open window, half listening to an aeroplane drone that faded away at the same time as his mother came upstairs singing some old Irish tune. He held his breath, not wanting Mam to know he was awake. Dan Doyle rose at 5.30 for work Monday to Saturday, and on Sundays, his lie-in-bed day, his wife always took him a mug of tea before she left for early morning Mass at eight o'clock. If Matt was awake, she would usually suggest he came with her "to give his Dad a rest" and church was the last place the six-year-old wanted to be.

He gazed round at his bedroom, which looked, as his father often commented "as though a train just ran through without time to stop" and, as his mother, when exasperated with the constant tidying up, would often describe it : "Matthew, I think your room's been burgled again!"

Two rubber suction darts were stuck to the ceiling and toys were everywhere but in the toy box; a dirty plastic beaker stood on the bedside locker alongside sticky rings of blackcurrant juice; the curtains were crooked and a dresser drawer was left open with some of its contents spilling out; coloured pencils were scattered randomly and not one book had been put back neatly on the book-shelf, but instead each was pulled slightly out of kilter, as if puzzled as to why Matt's toy bus should be parked on its side nearby, and peering out to see the phenomenon for themselves; the socks he'd worn yesterday had been thrown untidily under the bed and, for reasons unknown, his slippers were placed neatly together in the centre of the room.

But it was the toys which Matthew studied in breath-held silence. He planned to go into his parents' bedroom the moment his mother left, and he needed to consider which toy should accompany him. Mam always told him not to disturb his father on his day off, but Mr Doyle doted on his only son and it was a regular Sunday morning routine. And normally the room wouldn't be quite so untidy as it was on Sunday mornings, but on Saturday nights he was allowed to stay up late because he and Dad always played a game or two before he got into bed.

Matt was still trying to decide between the football (but he'd heard Dad telling Mam he felt poorly last night; would he be okay for a kickabout in the park?) or the kite (but would it be windy enough today on Denton Hill?) or the model aeroplane kit (if Dad was still poorly, they could glue it together indoors) when his whole world shattered. His mother's screams suddenly rent the air, sending shivers of fear and dread running down the little boy's spine…