‘I wasn’t the only one that had my eye on the rising starlet that was Fawn Burrows and Hamish… well, he thought he had ownership of her because her father had paid for her to be in the show,’ Walter huffed.
‘Wassheany —’
‘The best,’ Walter smiled. ‘She was betterthan the majority of actresses I’ve seen come and go over the years.’
‘That’s quite a claim!’ said Oscar.I hope he’s not including Olive, he caught himself thinking and was surprised at his own sudden defensiveness. ‘So, why are you still here?’
‘I’m getting there, boy. I’m not as young as you. Not as fast,’ Walter laughed.
‘Sorry,’ said Oscar, quickly glancing at the clockon the wall.
‘Hamish kept her close. Always kept her on his arm, showing her off at parties, practically forcing champagne and caviar down her throat…’
‘Sounds… awful?’ Oscar raised an eyebrow.
‘It was when it washim. The man was a…monster. He’d…hurtpeople. Or he’d get his right-hand man to do it for him so he never got his own hands dirty. And the temper on him. If hedidn’t get his way he’d turn into a child and his answer was always violence. No exceptions.’
‘Didn’t the police ever get involved?’ Oscar asked, not knowing what he’d do if anyone ever laid a hand on Olive.
‘Back then, if you had money, you had everything. If you wanted the police to turn a blind eye you could make it happen. Hamish had it all. The money, the sold-out show but…not the girl. Fawn despised him and did everything she could to get away from him but that just made him hold onto her even tighter and eventually he… he ruined her. Drove her mad.’ Walter looked down into his flask, the tea rippling and sloshing inside.
‘Did she… kill herself?’ Oscar asked, not knowing how to be delicate.
‘To this day, I still don’t know what went wrong. The onlyway out we could see was getting rid of Hamish. If we’d run, he would have followed us. He had eyes everywhere so we couldn’t hide and if she quit he threatened to kill her.’
‘So… you planned tokillhim?’
Walter laughed but this time, didn’t smile. ‘It sounds rash to you, I suppose, but you just don’t know what he was like. I look back and wonder if we were crazy but… there’s noway of knowing now.’ He took one last swig of his tea to avoid Oscar’s scrutiny and screwed the lid back onto his flask.
‘So what happened?’
‘During the final scene when Hamish was supposed to be shot… Fawn stepped in front of the gun,’ he said, without flinching. ‘At the very last second. The makeshift bullet I’d made killed her instead.’
‘And you don’t know why she did that?’
‘I don’t know why.’ Walter shook his head sadly. ‘Between you and me, I tried ending my life so many times after it happened. The guilt and the sadness never let up and I just couldn’t figure out a way to live without her but as it turned out, I didn’t have to.’ Walter narrowed his eyes at the young man sitting in his office. ‘You don’t seem like the type for ghost stories…’ he said, tryingto gauge how Oscar was handling the story so far, and Oscar tried to gauge how crazy he would sound if he admitted he may have seen a ghost.
‘I didn’t think I was until I came here,’ Oscar replied.
‘Met her, have you?’ Walter smiled.
‘I think I have, yeah!’ Oscar laughed, somewhat hysterically, swiping his hair back and feeling a sense of relief that perhaps he wasn’t goingcompletely mad.
‘When I realised her ghost was still inside this theatre, I couldn’t leave. I didn’t have much of a life before I came here, so I dropped everything. Moved in. Kept her company.’
‘Haven’t you asked why she did it?’
‘I asked once. Maybe two or three years after she started appearing. I’d always get a little bit of time with her before she would be pulled backto the stage to re-enact her death in the final scene of the show but when I asked that question, she was always pulled away from me early. As if asking that question was the trigger that sent her away. Whether it’s because she couldn’t cope with telling me the answer or whether something else in this theatre was stopping her, I’ll probably never know, but I stopped asking, just so I could havethat time with her.’ Walter didn’t look like a man desperate for answers. It seemed to Oscar that, in his old age, Walter had made peace with the things he might never understand.
‘Usually she only appears on the anniversary of her death but ever sinceyouturned up, she’s started turning up more often, too.’
‘Me?What have I got to do with this?’
‘You tell me! I’ve yet tofigure it out, but Fawn said it was something big.’
‘She spoke to you? When I met her she just… spelt everything out in the air. If I’d known her ghost could speak it would have made things a lot easier!’
‘Where’s Olive?’ Walter had already started trying to stand.
