The Houdini Effect by Bill Nagelkerke Read Free Book Online Page B

bothered me.’
    ‘ You don’t mean he thought
she was really still alive?’ I said, feeling a bit freaked out
myself at the idea of that. ‘Did he imagine she was talking to him
or something?’
    I was reminded of Harry’s
botched séance and how, for a short while, the experience of it had
seemed so creepily real. How would I have dealt with a dead and
disembodied voice if it had spoken to me through a medium, especially a
medium called Harry?
    ‘ No,’ said May, ‘not
exactly. But . . .’
    Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dad
and Barry sauntering back to the house. May must have spotted them
too.
    ‘ . . .
not long before Laurie left,’ she said, speeding up, ‘he let slip
to me that he was still waiting to hear from Iris and was really
aggrieved that she hadn’t been in touch with him. It seemed almost
as if . . . well, as if she’d broken some kind of promise to him.’
(Now it was definitely starting to sound like séance stuff. Later
on I wrote in my writing journal - something every serious writer
should have - that May gave birth to a
notion that had never seen the light of day
before . Totes melodramatic, I know, and
still in a medical vein but it seemed so accurate a description at
the
    time.) ‘But perhaps Laurie was losing his
mind and that’s why his son Mitchell wanted him to go up north.
That’s what Barry believes, anyway. Gaga he called him.’
    ‘ Sounds as if it would have
been far better if he
    had stayed around here,’ said Mum. ‘Gone to
Stately Havens like you said. Everything would
    have been far more familiar to him.’
    ‘ Laurie certainly never
wanted to leave,’ May reiterated. ‘In fact, he always insisted he
wanted to die in this house, his home. But we don’t always get to
choose what we want in life, do we?’
    May was well and truly winding down now,
just at the point when what she was saying was becoming more
interesting. Even Harry, had he stayed to listen, would have
pricked up his ears at that latest bit. (Imagine if Laurie had died
in this house. Yikes! Harry would have been more right than he
knew.) Dad and Barry were back from their barbeque sortie, their
loud voices already soaking up the sad atmosphere May’s story had
generated.
    I surprised myself by asking May one last
question. I didn’t want her to have to feel that she had to cease
and desist just because the menfolk had returned. Barry
especially.
    ‘ When did Laurie leave?’ I
said.
    ‘ Late last year,’ May said
in a whisper, having to make a real effort now that Dad and Barry
were listening in, too. ‘Mitchell was trying to do his best,
encouraging his father to move north so they could be close to each
other. We shouldn’t blame him,’ she said. ‘Laurie lived alone here
until he turned eighty-one. It was obvious it couldn’t go on.
Something had to change. The house was starting to fall down around
him.’
    ‘ It’s not as bad as all
that,’ said Dad, typically focusing on the only thing that really
interested him, the bit about the house being close to collapse.
His ears were instinctively tuned to
    anything to do with renovations. ‘Basically
its structure is sound. All it needs is a bit of TLC.’
    If stripping most of the weatherboards on
the south side of the house, a complete repaint, replacing bowed
window frames and cracked and rotten window sills (one of the
hardest things, believe me), etc, etc, was the same as TLC, well
then, yes, I suppose that was 'all' the house needed.
    Tender Loving Care.
    Yeah, I thought to myself, is that what old
Laurie didn’t get after Iris died? Is that what May was missing out
on, too? (What a lot of downers! I told you the story was getting
heavier.)
    ‘ What are you going to do
once it’s finished?’ said Barry clearly preferring, like Dad, to
focus on matters practical and financial. ‘Sell it for a good
profit and move on? Do up another house?’
    ‘ Well . . .’ began Dad, the
old enthusiasm (also known as the old madness)