The Contents of the Blue Sitting Room

Lucy Bennett inherited Great-Aunt Margaret’s ghost on a Wednesday afternoon. The solicitor delivered the news in the same tone he had used for everything else.

“Your great-aunt has left you the contents of the blue sitting room, the sum of two hundred and fourteen pounds and sixty-three pence, and Edgar.”

Lucy looked down at the will.

Then back at him.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your great-aunt has left you the contents of the blue sitting—”

“No, no, I heard that bit,” Lucy cut in. “I was waiting for you to say something after Edgar.”

Mr Pritchard cleared his throat. “Edgar is listed as a personal bequest.”

Lucy gave him a careful look.

“Okay, is Edgar a pet?”

“No, not really”

“Then what the hell is Edgar?”

Across the table, her cousin Andrew made a strangled noise and disguised it as a cough.

Her mother had suddenly become interested in the carpet.

Lucy looked from one to the other.

“What?”

Her mother sighed.

“Oh, Lucy.”

It was the sort of sigh mothers gave when you had failed to know something nobody had ever told you.

“What?”

“Edgar is a ghost.”

Andrew coughed again.

Lucy stared at her mother, then at the solicitor.

“Right.”

Nobody laughed.

“That’s obviously ridiculous.”

“Yes,” said her mother.

Lucy frowned. “You’re supposed to argue.”

“I don’t see much point.”

Mr Pritchard removed his glasses and polished them, which suggested he had sat through stranger probate meetings than this one and resented none of them sufficiently to retire.

Lucy looked at Andrew.

“You know about this?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of how?” Lucy asked.

“I knew Aunt Margaret had someone called Edgar.”

“But she lived alone.”

“I know.”

“So you all just accepted there was an invisible man called Edgar knocking about in Aunt Margarets house?”

“I didn’t think about it very much.”

“That explains a lot about you in general.”

Her mother shifted in her chair.

“Margaret didn’t really like us calling him a ghost.”

“So what did she call him?”

“Edgar.”

This, apparently, was considered an answer.

Mr Pritchard slid an envelope across the desk.

Margaret’s handwriting was on the front.

LUCY.

Underneath, in smaller letters:

NOT YOUR MOTHER. I MEAN IT.

Her mother’s mouth tightened. “Well, that really wasn’t needed.” 

Lucy opened it.

Dear Lucy,

Before you do anything dramatic, he cannot be sold, donated, abandoned, exorcised, left on public transport or transferred to another member of the family without his agreement.

I know because I tried most of those.

He is annoying, but he grows on you.

Do not let him near daytime television.

Margaret

Lucy read it twice.

“I’m going home.”

“You haven’t met him,” her mother said.

“I don’t need to.”

“You might like him.”

“There’s enough people I don’t like who are still alive without inheriting a dead man.”

“You inherited the blue room too.”

“I live in a one-bedroom flat.”

“You don’t have to take the furniture.”

“Wonderful. Problem solved.”

Mr Pritchard cleared his throat.

“I’m afraid Edgar is attached to one of the items.”

Lucy sighed.

“Which item?”

“That has never been established.”

“Can anyone in this family tell me one normal thing?”

Andrew raised a hand.

“I got the lawnmower.”

Lucy pointed at him.

“Get out.”

*

Great-Aunt Margaret’s house smelled of furniture polish, old books and lavender soap.

Margaret had lived in the same narrow red-brick house for more than sixty years and resisted almost every decorative development after 1972.

The blue sitting room was at the back.

It was still blue.

Not a pleasant blue. It was an aggressive, institutional blue that made Lucy feel as though she had entered the waiting room of a dentist who specialised in punishment.

The room contained two armchairs, a sofa, a china cabinet, several small tables, three lamps, a bureau, a brass umbrella stand and enough porcelain to suggest Margaret had been personally keeping Stoke-on-Trent in business.

“So, one of these is haunted.”

“Possibly.”

“And nobody knows which.”

“No.”

“How have we reached this point as a family?”

Her mother opened the curtains.

“We never talked about Edgar very much.”

“Why?”

“Margaret didn’t like people making a fuss.”

“About the ghost.”

“About anything.”

Lucy stepped inside.

Nothing happened.

“Where is he?”

“He’ll appear when he wants to.”

“Fantastic.”

Lucy approached the fireplace. There was a ceramic dog with one eye, a silver candlestick, a clock that had stopped at eleven-seventeen, two porcelain shepherdesses and something that might once have been a vase but now looked vaguely diseased.

She picked up the ceramic dog.

“Edgar?”

Nothing.

She put it down.

“Good. Maybe he died again.”

Behind her, a man said, “Once has proved quite sufficient.”

Lucy dropped the dog.

The dog hit the carpet and survived, which seemed unfair.

A man stood beside the china cabinet.

He looked about forty. Tall, narrow-faced, dressed in a dark coat and pale waistcoat, with his hair tied at the back.

He was also slightly transparent.

His gaze moved to the ceramic dog.

“I have always hated that thing.”

Lucy turned to her mother.

“Mum.”

“Yes.”

“There’s ghost.”

“I told you.”

“There’s an actual ghost.”

“Yes.”

“You could have mentioned this at some point in the last thirty-two years.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Christmas? My eighteenth birthday? Any time the conversation went quiet?”

Edgar cleared his throat and bowed.

“Miss Bennett.”

“No.”

He straightened. “I beg your pardon?”

“Lucy. If you’re going to be living in my flat against my will, you’re not calling me Miss Bennett.”

“I lived with your Aunt Margaret for forty-three years and never once addressed her by her Christian name.”

“Yes, but Margaret had a dining room. I’ve got an IKEA table six feet from my bed. Standards have slipped.”

Edgar looked faintly amused.

Her mother noticed.

“Oh, he likes you.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“I assure you,” Edgar said, “I have not yet formed an opinion.”

“Great. Neither have I.”

“You called me an actual ghost.”

“You are.”

“Unnecessarily reductive.”

Lucy looked at her mother.

“This is going to be a nightmare.”

Edgar sighed.

“Margaret said the same thing.”

*

Lucy’s first attempt to get rid of him was to take nothing from the house.

She drove home alone, made pasta and congratulated herself on solving a supernatural problem through basic common sense.

At nine-thirteen, Edgar appeared beside the television.

Lucy screamed and threw her fork at him.

It passed through his chest and struck the wall.

“That seems unnecessary,” he said.

“How are you here?”

“I came with you.”

“You weren’t in the car.”

“No.”

“Then how?”

He looked at her patiently.

“I am a ghost.”

“Don’t say it like I’m stupid. I only found out ghosts existed this morning.”

“You have pasta on your shirt.”

Lucy looked down.

There was, in fact, pasta on her shirt.

She disliked him immediately.

*

The next morning, she drove back to Margaret’s and took the ceramic dog and left it in the park.

Edgar appeared in the passenger seat halfway home.

“That won’t work.”

“You could have mentioned that twelve miles ago.”

“You didn’t ask.”

She went back and collected the dog.

Next she tried the brass umbrella stand, she took it to a charity shop.

Edgar followed.

“They won’t take that.”

“They take furniture.”

“They won’t take that furniture.”

“But it’s Georgian.”

“So is syphilis. Age does not guarantee quality.”

Lucy stopped and stared at him.

A woman emerged from the shop, examined the umbrella stand and said, “Sorry, love. We’ve got nowhere for that.”

Edgar waited until they reached the car.

“I did warn you.”

“Shut up.”

By Saturday, Lucy was listing it online.

ANTIQUE BRASS UMBRELLA STAND.

She considered adding POSSIBLY HAUNTED, then decided people got funny about collection only.

Edgar looked over her shoulder.

“Only six pounds?”

“Yeah, it’s horrible.”

“But it’s Georgian.”

“So are you. I wouldn’t pay six pounds for you.”

“You have very little appreciation for craftsmanship.”

“You died before indoor plumbing.”

“An entirely separate issue.”

Lucy shut the laptop.

“Why me?”

Edgar moved away.

“I’ve got cousins. Mum’s alive. Aunt Margaret had friends. There must be someone more suitable.”

“Margaret chose you.”

“Yes, I understand the basic structure of a will.”

“Then there is little else to discuss.”

“Why did she choose me?”

Edgar looked towards the window.

“You would have to ask Margaret.”

“She’s dead.”

“So am I. It really does complicate correspondence.”

Lucy hated him.

Unfortunately, she had begun to enjoy hating him.

*

Edgar had been dead since 1774.

Lucy learned this while attempting to assemble a flat-pack bookshelf.

“You’ve been haunting my family for two hundred and fifty-two years?”

“Haunting is an inflammatory term.”

“You’ve been dead in our houses for two hundred and fifty-two years.”

“That is more accurate.”

“How many people have inherited you?”

“I dislike the phrasing.”

“Fine. How many keepers?”

“Eight.”

“All women?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve had two and a half centuries to ask.”

“I did ask.”

“And?”

“I’ve found that Bennett women always had difficulty answering direct questions.”

“That sounds right.”

Edgar had been passed from Josephine Bennett to her niece Anne, then to Beatrice, Florence, Edith, Joan, Margaret and now Lucy.

“What was Grandma Joan like?” Lucy asked.

Edgar smiled.

It was not reassuring.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Edgar.”

“Your grandmother stole a goat.”

Lucy stopped tightening a screw.

“No, she didn’t.”

“She did.”

“My grandmother ran the church flower rota.”

“Not at seventeen.”

Lucy stared at him.

“She also smoked, swore beautifully and once drove a delivery van into a duck pond.”

Lucy laughed before she could stop herself.

“Grandma?”

“She became considerably more restrained later.”

“You mean boring.”

“I was attempting tact.”

After that, Lucy began asking questions.

Not important ones, she told herself.

Who broke Great-Grandad Peter’s nose?

Florence.

Who hid the family silver during the war and forgot where?

Edith.

Had Margaret really thrown a Christmas pudding at a vicar?

Yes, although Edgar insisted the vicar had deserved it.

Family stories always arrive finished. People become the thing they were at the end, and all the embarrassing bits that came before somehow disappear.

Grandma Joan had been strict, organised and suspicious of foreign food and Margaret had been eccentric, unmarried and stubborn.

Nobody said Joan had stolen livestock or that Margaret had once climbed out of a bathroom window to avoid an engagement party.

“Whose?” Lucy asked.

“Her own.”

Lucy nearly dropped her tea.

“She was engaged?”

“Briefly.”

“To who?”

“An accountant named Maurice.”

“What happened?”

“She climbed out of the window.”

“I meant after.”

“So did Maurice.”

Lucy laughed.

Then she asked, “Why didn’t she marry?”

Edgar went quiet.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not.”

He turned away.

Lucy let it go.

For the moment.

*

Her mother brought over a box of Margaret’s papers the following Sunday.

Most of it was rubbish.

Bills, receipts, birthday cards and an envelope containing fifteen pounds marked FOR EMERGENCIES.

At the bottom was a photograph.

Margaret stood on a beach, young enough that Lucy almost didn’t recognise her. Her trousers were rolled to the knee and her hair blew across her face as she laughed at whoever held the camera.

Lucy turned it over.

1968

“Mum, who took this?”

Her mother looked.

“I don’t know.”

Edgar had gone very still.

“Edgar?”

“No.”

“I haven’t asked you anything.”

“You are about to.”

“Who took the photograph?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re terrible at lying.”

Edgar vanished.

Her mother stared at the empty space.

“He’s never done that to me.”

Lucy looked at the photograph.

“Well. That’s not suspicious at all.”

*

Edgar returned three hours later.

Lucy was waiting.

“I regret encouraging your curiosity,” he said.

“You’ve known me two weeks.”

“It's been a long two weeks.”

She held up the photograph.

“Who took it?”

“A woman named Rose Hartley.”

“And?”

Edgar sighed.

“Margaret loved her.”

Lucy looked down at the photograph.

“Oh.”

“They met when Margaret was twenty-three. Rose worked in a bookshop in Nottingham. Margaret developed a sudden and extremely expensive interest in travelling there.”

“Did the family know?”

“Some.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes.”

Lucy thought of the way everyone had described Margaret.

Independent. Private. Never found the right man.

“That’s why she never married?”

“No.”

Edgar’s voice was sharper than usual.

“That is why she did not marry Maurice. It is not why she never married.”

“Then why?”

“Rose died.”

Edgar looked at the photograph.

“1974. Cancer. Margaret was twenty-nine.”

Lucy said nothing.

“Afterwards everyone behaved very sensibly,” Edgar continued. “Which was intolerable.”

“What does that mean?”

“They told her she was young. That she would meet someone else. That nobody need know.”

Lucy winced.

“She didn’t speak to her sister for three years.”

“Grandma?”

“Your grandmother said something particularly stupid.”

“That also sounds right.”

Lucy sat down.

Nobody had ever mentioned Rose.

“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

“People become accustomed to silence.”

Lucy looked at the photograph.

“Is that why she chose me?”

Edgar looked confused.

“Because I’m—”

She stopped.

Unmarried?

Thirty-two?

The family member who had somehow failed to become anything definitive?

“No,” Edgar said.

“Then why?”

“Margaret believed you were waiting.”

“For what?”

“She didn’t know.”

“That’s incredibly unhelpful.”

“Yes. That’s what I told her.”

He crossed to the mantelpiece.

“She was worried you would wake up one day and discover you had mistaken waiting for living.”

Lucy disliked how much that sounded like Margaret.

“And her solution was to give me a Georgian ghost?”

“I asked precisely the same question.”

“What did she say?”

“That you needed someone around who remembered that everybody is a mess before they become a family story.”

Lucy frowned.

“She didn’t say that.”

“No.”

“I knew it.”

“Her version was considerably longer. I improved it.”

“Thank God. I was worried Margaret had secretly become profound.”

“She had her moments.”

*

Lucy found Margaret’s final note inside the mantel clock.

The clock fell while she was dusting. Edgar denied responsibility.

The back panel came loose and a folded piece of paper slipped onto the floor.

Edgar stopped talking.

Dear Lucy,

If you have found this, Edgar has almost certainly failed to tell you something important.

He is very good at that.

I have spent too much of my life keeping things because I was frightened of what would happen if I let them go.

Some were worth keeping.

Some were not.

You do not have to keep Edgar.

He knows that.

Make him tell you.

M.

Lucy read it twice.

Then she looked at Edgar.

“You can leave.”

He looked at the floor.

“You can leave.”

“Yes.”

“You absolute bastard.”

“That seems excessive.”

“You watched me take an umbrella stand to a charity shop.”

“You didn’t ask the right question.”

“I tried to sell it online.”

“I know.”

“How do I get rid of you?”

Edgar was quiet.

“The keeper releases me.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“No ritual?”

“No.”

“No Latin?”

“No.”

“What do I have to say?”

“That you release me.”

She laughed.

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“What happens?”

“I don’t know.”

“So all eight women could have done it?”

“Yes.”

“And nobody did?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Edgar glanced towards Margaret’s photograph.

“Your family does have a knack for not letting go, doesn’t it?”

He had said it before.

It had been funny then.

Lucy sat down.

“What did Margaret say at the end?”

“She said she was tired.”

Lucy nodded.

“She asked whether I thought Rose would recognise her.”

Lucy swallowed.

“What did you say?”

“I told her Rose had waited fifty-two years and was unlikely to object to a few wrinkles.”

A laugh caught somewhere in Lucy’s throat.

“And Margaret?”

“She told me I was still an arse.”

“That sounds more like her.”

“Yes.”

They were silent for a while.

Then Lucy asked, “Did you want her to release you?”

Edgar took his time.

“Yes.”

That hurt more than Lucy expected.

Two hundred and fifty-two years. Eight women. Houses, births, funerals, terrible wallpaper. Margaret and Rose on a beach. Joan and the goat. People disappeared until Edgar was the only person left who remembered who they had been before they became family stories.

No wonder nobody had let him go.

Lucy looked at Margaret’s photograph.

There were still hundreds of questions she could ask. There would always be another thing Edgar remembered and nobody else did.

“I release you,” Lucy said.

Nothing happened.

Edgar raised an eyebrow.

“That was awkward.”

“I meant it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I have spent two centuries watching your family lie to themselves.”

“Fair.”

For the first time since meeting him, Edgar seemed frightened.

Maybe every woman before her had reached this point and found one more question she needed answered. One more person she wasn’t ready to lose.

Lucy understood.

She also understood that she could keep asking forever.

She took a breath.

“I release you.”

Edgar closed his eyes.

This time the room began to show through him.

There was no flash of light or sudden wind. He simply began to fade, like chalk on a blackboard.

He looked down at his hands.

“Well,” he said. “That appears to have worked.”

“Yes.”

Edgar smiled.

Then he was gone.

The flat became very quiet.

Eventually Lucy picked up Margaret’s dead mantel clock and carried it towards the bin.

At the door, she stopped.

She looked at the clock in her hands, turned around and put it back on the mantelpiece beside the photograph.

Maybe Margaret was right. Some things were worth keeping.

*