BACK 2 BACK
watching
you, watching me
Tasha’s side of the story …
CHLOË RAYBAN
with grateful thanks to James Ross, Felix Milton, Molly Milton and Leo Bear for their help with the music and club scene
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Also by Chloë Rayban
Copyright
About the Publisher
There it was again. That creepy feeling in the small of my back. I swung round and looked back down the road. I could feel someone watching me. But where from? The street was deserted, not even a car coming down it. I scanned windows for twitching nets, and my gaze settled on number twenty-five.
Number twenty-five had been boarded up for ages, years. Ever since Mr Copps, the old man who’d lived there, had died. There’d been some sort of legal battle about who was meant to inherit it, and until this was settled it couldn’t be sold.
Jamie and Gemma called it ‘the spook house’, and I must admit that on occasions, when they were being a real pain while I was baby-sitting, I’d made up ghost stories about it to keep them quiet. Jamie had woken up screaming with a nightmare one night, so Mum had put an end to that. She was livid.
Number twenty-five looked pretty spooky, as a matter of fact, on an overcast afternoon like today. It was a tall terraced house like the others in the street, but the windows, with their rough covering of weathered boarding, gave it a blind, desolate look. Paint was peeling off the window frames and weeds had grown up through the front path. There was a row of house-martins’ nests under the eaves — slowly nature was taking over.
I shook myself and continued down the road. I decided to put the whole thing down to an over-active imagination. My own fault really for making up all those stories.
It was later that evening, when he was meant to be getting ready for bed and was hiding from Mum behind the curtains in my room, that Jamie suddenly let out a whimper.
‘Tasha!’ He ran and clung to me.
‘Hey … what is it?’
They’re there … they’re really there …’
‘Who are where?’
‘At number twenty-five — the spooks’
‘Don’t be silly. ‘Course they’re not. No such thing as spooks. You know that, don’t you?’
‘But there are. They’re there …’ He dragged at my sleeve. ‘Come ‘n look … There’s lights moving around in the house.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said. But I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck rising in spite of myself. ‘You’re making it up.’
‘No honest … There are … Look.’
I let him lead me to the window, and we crouched in the dark part between the curtains and the windowpane, staring out.
‘Where?’ I demanded. This was typical of Jamie, always blowing up the most trivial thing into a drama.
‘Wait …’ he whispered. His hand was holding my arm so hard it hurt.
I scanned the bleak façade of number twenty-five. And then I froze. He was right. Just the faintest glimmer of a light, but it was moving through the rooms. You caught a glimpse of it every time it passed a crack in the boarding. It would pause and glimmer and then it would flicker on. It was moving up now as if something was floating upwards through the house …
‘What are you two up to?’ Mum pulled the curtains back and found us sitting there.
‘We’ve found a spook,’ said Jamie, now emboldened by the presence of Mum and the cheery light of the room.
‘Tasha …’ said Mum with a warning look.
‘No … its not me this time, honestly. But there is someone or something in number twenty-five … See for yourself.’
The three of us huddled behind the curtain. It took some minutes before Mums eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and then she pronounced:
‘Squatters.’
‘What’s squatters?’ asked Jamie, his lower lip wobbling. To his six-year-old brain ‘Squatters’ were quite possibly as bad as spooks, or maybe they were worse — a special kind of spook, one that moved around by a kind of legless elevation like those weirdo yogic flyers.
‘That’s the limit,’ she said. ‘I knew something like this would happen if that house was left empty like that.’ She set off down the stairs to find Dad.
‘Tasha — what are squatters?’ demanded Jamie again in a wavering voice.
I put an arm round him. ‘Squatters are people who haven’t got homes of their own. So they find empty houses and they break in and squat in them.’
‘Why can’t they stand up straight?’
‘They can, silly … ‘Squat’ is just a word that means … umm … to take over an empty house and live there, without paying rent or anything.’
‘Why isn’t there a proper word?’
‘I don’t know!’ I hadn’t time to get into ‘why-mode’ for a discussion with Jamie — I wanted to know what Dad was going to make of the situation.
Dad came striding through my door at that moment. He stuck his head through the curtains and stared out.
‘Can’t see a thing — you’re all making this up.’
‘Wait until your eyes get adjusted,’ said Mum.
‘Hrrmph,’ said Dad.
‘It’s