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‘Ghost story,’ he said quietly, looking at Harry for approval.
‘Perhaps we should save ghost stories for another time. I could tell you about —’
‘No! I want a ghost story, right now!’ Oliver said bravely, glancing at his dad, who nodded.
In her mind Amy dialled down the blood, guts and gore Harry liked in a good ghost story. It would be all right. It was nowhere near night-time yet. It was only the middle of the afternoon. He’d have forgotten the story by bedtime. It would be fine.
‘This is an old, old story,’ she began, ‘that happened a long time ago in … in an entirely different part of the Lake District, nowhere near here. My mam told it to me when I was a little girl and we used to stay at the cottage.’
‘Is it true?’ Oliver’s voice quavered.
‘It’s a legend, Oliver, a kind of story. I’m sure it’s not true. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago there was a young man and he lived at … at a farm like this one, but a long way away.’
‘It was here, wasn’t it?’ Harry insisted, and she ignored him.
‘He was the only son of a farmer and his wife and when they died, he was going to inherit all their land and their house. Now, this young man’s parents wanted him to marry a young woman from another village because she was rich. The young man — who lived nowhere near here, Oliver, but a long way away — didn’t want to marry her, because he’d fallen in love with a beautiful servant girl who worked in his parents’ farmhouse. He knew his parents would be disappointed by his choice, he knew they would be angry, so he met the young girl in secret. Up by the tarn there are two rocks that meet and form a shelter. If you look carefully, the rocks look like a heart shape, remember? That’s where the true lovers used to meet in secret. I mean, at a place that looked like it. Not here, nowhere near here.’
‘Are you sure?’ Oliver’s voice quivered.
‘It’s a story Oliver. Look, I think maybe I should tell a different —’
‘No!’ Oliver said, glancing at Harry. ‘I want this story.’
‘Are you sure, Oliver?’ Matt asked.
‘Yes. I’m not a baby.’
Amy looked to Matt for permission to continue, and he nodded.
‘This young man was a shepherd, so he would take his sheepdog and tell everyone he was going out to check on the sheep, and she would say she was going to wash clothes in the beck and they’d meet at the heart shaped rocks, and exchange their vows of true love.’
‘Yack. Boring. Get to the ghost bit,’ said Harry, ever the harshest of literary critics, waving his mug of hot chocolate to indicate she should continue.
‘And then on the eve of the young man’s wedding — “eve” means the night before, like Christmas Eve,’ she explained, seeing Harry’s puzzled face, ‘the lovers met for what would have to be the last time. Tomorrow he would marry the rich lady, and they could never meet again. They knew they never wanted to be separated, and so the story says they held each other’s hands and together they fell into the tarn and drowned. The next morning, when his parents came to find their son to take him to the church for his wedding, his bed was empty. They searched high and low, but he wasn’t there, and neither was the servant girl, or his faithful sheepdog.’
‘Which was called Jen.’ Harry insisted.
‘Okay, Harry, yes, the sheepdog can be called Jen. Eventually they heard Jen the sheepdog crying, and they rushed out to find her. She was sitting by the tarn beneath the heart-shaped rocks, and there, floating peacefully on the water, were the bodies of the two young lovers, their arms wrapped around each other so tightly they could never again be separated. They were buried together in a single grave.’
She thought perhaps she might leave the story there. That was enough for Oliver.
‘But there’s no ghost!’ Harry protested, putting his mug down with a thump on the lid that covered the tiny sink.
‘Why is there no ghost?’ Oliver added.
‘Did they come up out of the grave, like zombies, and come back to the farmhouse and murder all the —?’
‘No, Harry! Nothing like that.’
‘Then tell the whole story,’ Oliver demanded.
‘If you’re sure, Oliver?’
Oliver nodded but his eyes were huge.
‘Well,’ she lowered her voice dramatically, ‘they say that on moonlight nights if you walk up to … the tarn a long way away from here where this story happened … if you look into the deepest, darkest part of the water, you can see the faces of two young lovers, still holding each other tight, looking up at you from the water. If you listen very carefully, you can hear on the still night air the sound of a faithful sheepdog crying for her master.’
Harry howled like a dog and giggled, and Oliver flinched.
