Jessica Bannister and the Ghosts of the Past

By Janet Farell and ttl

Despite a number of brushes with the supernatural in her first six months on the job as a journalist for the capital city's favourite tabloid, the London City Observer, Jessica Bannister remains naturally suspicious whenever anyone claims that ghosts and ghouls are responsible for the mysterious goings-on in any given place – and with so many bad actors around, seemingly intent on preying on the superstitions of the locals for their own ends, who can blame her? But when the spectres of the past rear their ugly heads and she discovers there may be more to her dreams and premonitions than she first thought, she's forced to re-evaluate her scepticism and revisit painful memories from her own life as well as having visions of tragedies that happened centuries ago. Yet, in spite of the danger and heartache awaiting her, and even though she often finds herself in isolated locations, cut off from civilisation, she's determined to get to the truth – and write it all down for her readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J-Novel Club
• Release date: Nov 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781718323544

Book preview

She Foresaw Her End

By Janet Farell

I hurried through the dense fog that swirled around London’s streets that morning at a brisk pace, fearfully checking over my shoulder every few steps, as I felt like I was being followed... by a phantom! The dark, ghostly figure was little more than a silhouette in the thick grey fog, but it had been sneaking along behind me for a while now. There was something unnerving about its gait — something predatory — but all I could make out of my pursuer was a long, flowing overcoat that ended in an unusually high upturned collar. Nevertheless, I still recognised him, as I had dreamt about him the night before. It had been a terrible dream — the type of awful nightmare that had plagued me since I was twelve, when I’d experienced my first nightmare of this sort the night my parents died.

Almost exactly thirteen years ago, my parents, Julia and Jonathan Bannister, had entrusted their little girl — namely me, their twelve-year-old daughter — to Aunt Bell, which they often did when they went out together for the evening as they knew how much I loved my great-aunt and how much I enjoyed spending time with her. That evening, Aunt Bell and I were sitting in front of the fire in the parlour of her old Victorian villa — Aunt Bell in her big armchair with me on the fur rug at her feet, listening intently as she read to me from a book of traditional ghost stories. I loved those stories, and even though they were all quite spooky, I never felt scared, even enjoying the goosebumps that would prickle my skin as I listened. With Aunt Bell close by, I always felt safe. Eventually, her voice lulled me to sleep...

And that’s when it happened! Terrible images conjured themselves up in my mind’s eye: images that seemed so real that, even before I awoke from the nightmare, it was clear to me they must be real. I saw my parents driving through a surreal landscape when, without warning, a black hole opened up in front of them, and they plunged into it like it was the gaping mouth of a monster! I heard their blood-curdling, terrified screams, and I heard myself screaming too. Aunt Bell leapt to her feet, shaking me awake, and holding me close as my whole body shook violently.

‘Jessica! Jess, my dear child! What’s wrong?’

When she had managed to calm me down a bit, I told her between sobs about what I had dreamt, and how I thought it had been more than just a dream.

‘Are my parents dead?’ I asked Aunt Bell, as tears streamed down my face.

Aunt Bell stroked my cheek and used a corner of her pinny to wipe away my tears.

‘Of course not, little one. It was just a bad dream. We sometimes have bad dreams which show us our deepest fears — the ones we worry about subconsciously — but they have little bearing on reality.’

I didn’t believe her as I could see from her expression that she was suddenly worried about my parents too, and she seemed unsure whether she should treat my nightmare as more than just a dream — though, as I was only twelve at the time, I didn’t think about her strange reaction all that much. Aunt Bell continued to comfort me as I couldn’t stop crying; the dream had been so vivid, I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling that something bad had happened to my parents. I must have nodded off again at some point though, as the sound of the doorbell abruptly yanked me out of my slumber. I awoke to find myself still lying on the fur rug in front of the fireplace with a warm down blanket on me that Aunt Bell had placed over me. She was still sitting in her armchair, watching over me as I slept.

‘Go back to sleep, my child,’ said Aunt Bell as she got up and went to the door.

‘That’ll be Mum and Dad!’ I yelled, immediately wide awake and fully convinced it was them. After my horrible dream, I couldn’t wait to fall into their arms and get a reassuring squeeze. I loved them so, so much, and I was overjoyed they were back.

I scurried after Aunt Bell into the hallway of the old Victorian villa where terrifying demon masks from long-lost cultures hung on the walls, though they didn’t scare me. A terrible thunderstorm had descended on the city, so when Aunt Bell opened the front door, we were met with the sight of rain and lightning, as thunder boomed all around. But it hadn’t been my parents who had rung the doorbell. A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, and I saw the silhouette of a stranger, his presence on our doorstep making me jump back in fright — though after a moment, I realised he was a policeman. He had removed his hat, not seeming the least bit bothered that he was getting soaked in the downpour, and he had a serious expression on his face which only hardened when he saw me next to my great-aunt.

‘Mrs Beverly Gormic?’ he asked.

‘Y-Yes?’ my great-aunt stammered. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘We were told you are the next of kin of a Mr Jonathan Bannister and a Mrs Julia Bannister?’ The uniformed man asked it in the form of a question. He wanted to be sure.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

I was standing behind Aunt Bell, and I noticed her voice was quivering. The policeman glanced down at me with a look on his face that I didn’t quite understand but knew it couldn’t mean anything good. He turned back to Aunt Bell, thunder and lightning continuing to rumble in the background.

‘I... I regret to inform you that Julia and Jonathan Bannister... were involved in a serious car accident this evening and... have been killed,’ the policeman said in a shaky voice. I felt myself getting dizzier as each word came out of his mouth. I instinctively clutched my great-aunt’s dress. Aunt Bell turned to me, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me towards her.

‘Dear God,’ she murmured, her gaze resting on me. ‘Oh God, oh God...’

The expression in her tear-stained eyes wasn’t one I would soon forget, and it was the same expression she would get even to this day when I told her about my strange nightmares...

***

The second time I had one of these vivid nightmares, I was sixteen. After the death of my parents, Aunt Bell had taken me in and done everything she could to make up for their absence. She had given me all the love and support a young person so desperately needs in their formative years, and I had been very happy growing up in the care of such an understanding and good-natured woman. Aunt Bell had her quirks, such as her fascination with all things related to spiritualism and the occult, though she wasn’t so fanatical that it made her resent how sceptical I was about the whole shebang. In fact, she retained a critical eye herself, and had exposed charlatans on more than one occasion.

That night, I had dreamt that my best friend who lived next door was surrounded by fire. I had screamed in my dream, and in the real world, I was tossing and turning in my sleep. When I jerked awake, Aunt Bell was by the side of my bed, trying to calm me down, but also wanting to know what I had dreamt about. Aunt Bell had become increasingly anxious as I told her about my dream, and I’d hardly finished recounting it when she jumped to her feet.

‘Wait here, my child. I’ll go check on them,’ she said.

With that, she threw on her purple dressing gown, hurried across to our neighbour’s house, and repeatedly rung the doorbell until the noise finally woke up the whole family. Her quick thinking ended up saving the lives of my friend and her family, because unbeknown to them, a fire had broken out in their basement, and the house would eventually burn down, with only its foundations left standing. Ever since then, Aunt Bell was convinced I had supernatural abilities, and that I could see future events in my nightmares, but I didn’t believe in all that; for me, stuff like that entered the realm of fantasy and belonged in fairy tales, not reality — though it came as no surprise given her strange hobby that Aunt Bell would wish to ascribe such abilities to me.

For a long time after, I didn’t have any more of these foreboding nightmares, and if Aunt Bell hadn’t brought up the first two from time to time, I would’ve undoubtedly pushed them out of my mind altogether and eventually forgotten about them. But when I began working at a London newspaper — the London City Observer — at the age of twenty-five, the nightmares suddenly started up again. They were extremely vivid and intense — so much so that I often couldn’t tell if they were really just dreams or if they’d actually taken place, and sometimes, these dreams ended up being scaringly similar to real-life events. That wasn’t all: I also started getting premonitions and visions — strange, often scary dreamlike images that came to me in the middle of the day and overwhelmed my senses. Still, I refused to give credence to Aunt Bell’s theory that I somehow possessed supernatural abilities. As the old saying goes: ‘dreams are froth’ — and who am I to argue against such received wisdom, passed down through the ages?

Though when I glanced over my shoulder again in search of my pursuer in the fog, I suddenly had doubts. Could there be some truth to my great-aunt’s oracle-like words? I’d dreamt of this man, I was sure of it...

***

The ghostly apparition in the strange coat looked very similar to the person I’d seen in my nightmare. Had my dream been trying to warn me to watch out for this stranger?

Nonsense! I told myself. You’re starting to think like Aunt Bell!

A man carrying a briefcase under his arm walked towards me, hurrying through the morning fog with large strides, probably on his way to work like me. I quickly came to the decision that I would stop this stranger and ask him to chase away my pursuer — or at the very least, get him to accompany me to the safety of the London City Observer, the widely-read tabloid newspaper I’d been working at for the last six months. I was lucky to get a job in my chosen field as most of the people I’d graduated with from my journalism course had found it impossible to land a job that would kick-start their careers in journalism, instead having to settle for working in fast food restaurants, on food stalls, and all those types of places for the time being. Martin T. Stone, the editor-in-chief of the London City Observer, hadn’t made it easy for me in the beginning, though. He would’ve preferred a more experienced journalist to have filled the vacancy, but Arnold Reed, the newspaper’s owner, had been good friends with my late great-uncle, Francis ‘Frank’ Gormic, and had insisted I be given a chance. Since then, I’d managed to enhance my reputation as a journalist in Stone’s eyes, and several months down the line, he counted me as one of his best employees.

I resolutely stood in the path of the stranger with the briefcase, and turned again to look at my ghostly pursuer, but I couldn’t see the dark figure in the long overcoat with its upturned collar anywhere. The thick fog seemed to have swallowed him whole.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ the man with the briefcase barked at me, sidestepping me at the last minute before he too disappeared into the thick fog behind me. Feeling more than a little uneasy about the whole encounter, I continued on my way, but when I did eventually look over my shoulder again, my suspicions were confirmed: the stranger in the long coat was behind me once more!

Who are you? I thought to myself. What do you want from me?

Panic began to rise up inside me, and I quickened my stride. I finally neared a high-rise office building which had a steady stream of people rushing from the nearby bus stop to its entrance, the modern building rising up out of the fog like a giant grey block of concrete and steel. I instinctively joined the crowd and walked up the marble steps towards the glass doors, before stopping next to one of the columns and turning around. The stranger in his unusual coat had disappeared again and was nowhere to be seen. Had he disappeared into thin air? Goosebumps shot up my spine. There had to be some logical explanation for the unnerving events of the past few hours, surely?

I took a deep breath, and in my head I started replaying everything that had happened to me that morning...

***

‘Jess, you shouldn’t drive to work in this weather,’ my great-aunt, Beverly Gormic — or as I called her, Aunt Bell — had told me that morning as we sat eating breakfast in the kitchen of the old Victorian villa I lived in with her. Aunt Bell was a short, full-figured woman of around sixty-five, and was not, by and large, an anxious person, but on days like today, when the weather was similar to the night my parents died, she seemed to get very worried about me. Her usually good-natured face, framed by her grey curly hair, looked very concerned and apprehensive.

I usually drove my well-looked-after vintage cherry-red Mercedes 190 to my workplace in Lupus Street every morning — Aunt Bell’s Victorian villa was in Hampstead, a somewhat nicer and more upmarket residential area on the north side of London, so I had to traverse the capital to get to the city centre. I typically preferred driving as I often needed my car throughout the day to get to an interview or to do some research outside the office, but a quick glance out of the kitchen window told me the fog was so thick this morning I’d only be able to see a few metres in front of the bonnet, and navigating my way through a busy city in it wouldn’t be fun.

‘I’ll go by public transport today,’ I replied, and gave Aunt Bell an encouraging smile. Her face lit up on hearing this, and after breakfast, she accompanied me to the door and gave me a goodbye kiss on the forehead — something she hadn’t done in a very long time — before I walked out into the fog and cold air. The grey soup seemed to have swallowed the world around me, and the familiar sight of the tall, old poplar trees that separated our Victorian villa from Shirlock Road was little more than a row of vague silhouettes in it. The almost surreal surroundings reminded me uncomfortably of my latest nightmare, in which an eerie figure in a long, billowing coat with a upturned collar had followed me through a bizarre, fog-smothered dreamscape. I had known instinctively — as seems to be the tendency in dreams — that the stranger was up to no good, and it definitely wasn’t a good idea to let him get his hands on me. So I ran as fast as I could away from him, but only seemed to get even more lost in the labyrinthine landscape, towering walls seeming to spring up in front of me out of the fog. There was no escape. The stranger caught me in the end, holding my arms tightly as he slowly bent down to kiss me...

I tried to shake the images from that horrible dream out of my head and walked up to the street with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked around, my eyes on stalks, and noted how London’s streets could look very grim, even creepy, on foggy mornings. The houses and Victorian villas that lined Shirlock Road were shrouded in grey mist, and they all looked forlorn and abandoned. Feeling unsure of myself, I gingerly placed one foot in front of the other and headed up the street. It seemed like an eternity had passed by the time the bus stop sign came into view. I soon realised I was the only one waiting for the bus this morning, and the street was deserted, save for the bright lights of a passing car piercing the fog from time to time, only to disappear again moments later. On the opposite side of the street was a church surrounded by tall oak trees. Of course, in this thick fog, I could only make out the vague outline of the church’s belltower and the eerie silhouettes of the trees, all of which seemed somehow monstrous and unfamiliar.

Suddenly, a figure wearing a long, dark coat with an upturned collar emerged from out of the shadows of the tree trunks! The stranger lingered suspiciously next to the trees, all the while staring over at me as the fog swirled around him. A wave of fear rushed through my limbs: the figure looked exactly like the menacing pursuer from my nightmare!

The stranger stood between the dark, mighty tree trunks, motionless and silent, staring at me through the fog. His face was shrouded by the shadow cast by his collar, meaning I couldn’t make out who he was or what he looked like. I wanted to call over to the figure and ask him why he was staring at me, but fear had closed up my throat and I couldn’t utter a sound. I suddenly heard the bus I was waiting for rumbling out of the fog towards the bus stop I was standing at, and coming to a complete stop in front of me. The fear-induced paralysis I had experienced moments before melted away, and I got on the bus, my legs still shaking. Once I’d taken a seat, I looked out the window, but the stranger between the oak trees had disappeared again. I shook my head and tried to convince myself the coated stranger had just been an ordinary passerby, but the figure from my nightmare had looked so similar... And why had he stared at me like that?

Feeling frustrated by the encounter, I pushed the thoughts out of my head and tried to concentrate on what tasks I had to get done that day at the London City Observer. Articles had been piling up on my desk that I needed to finish writing, and Stone wanted them done today. After a few stops, I had to get off so I could continue my journey on the tube, and by that point, I’d nearly forgotten about the strange figure in his unusual coat. Lost in my thoughts, I hurried off the bus and joined the throng of passengers that spilled across the street. Suddenly, I froze, rooted to the spot, because the strange figure was back! He was leaning against a newspaper kiosk, staring over at me, as white mist wafted out of a manhole cover in front of him and partially shrouded him. I still couldn’t make out his face due to his ridiculous collar, but I could feel his piercing gaze all the same.

A car blared its horn, startling me and making me aware of my surroundings again; I had stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. I quickly hurried across the street, but when I reached the other side and turned to look back at the kiosk, the stranger had disappeared again. The knot in my stomach growing, I continued on towards the tube station, the wrought-iron gate that denoted its entrance little more than a black silhouette in the fog. I practically ran down the steps, taking them two at a time, as I heard my train leaving the station just before I could reach it, which meant, on top of everything else, I was going to be late for work. Stone wasn’t going to be pleased. The London City Observer’s editor-in-chief could get very unpleasant when he felt his journalists weren’t giving their absolute best, and whenever someone showed up late for work, his automatic reaction was to assume the worst of you. Stone ran a tight ship, and he took no prisoners when an article landed on his desk that he considered wasn’t up to snuff — though on the other hand, if you needed someone to fight your corner, you could always rely on him to back you up.

I paced up and down the platform, which was your typical London Underground station, with its grey tiles and thick columns supporting a low ceiling. Shadows lurked all around, and an icy wind blew through the dark underground tunnels. A shadow suddenly darted across the top step of the stairs, and I saw the hem of a long, billowing coat, clear as day. I instinctively stepped behind a column so that the stranger wouldn’t be able to see which platform I was on from his vantage point. When I peeked out from behind the column again, the stairs were deserted, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was probably just acting foolishly; that long coat with the peculiar collar was likely on sale in some shop in Camden, which would explain why so many men were running around London wearing that ugly thing. Still, the relative protection offered by the column was comforting, and I stood in its shadow as I waited for the train. When the underground train finally did roll in, I squeezed through the doors before they’d even fully opened.

The train was packed with commuters, and every seat was taken. I caught myself looking around for the figure in the coat, but my mysterious pursuer didn’t seem to be in the sea of passengers. Maybe I’d lost him, or maybe he’d lost interest in me. I tried to relax a bit, telling myself it had all just been a coincidence, but I found it impossible to convince myself of that. Eventually, I got to my destination, and along with a number of other passengers, I stepped off the train and headed for the stairs that led to Lupus Street, where the offices of the London City Observer were located.

Here in the centre of London, the fog was even thicker than in the suburbs. It hung in the air like some kind of milky soup and made it impossible to see more than a few inches in front of me. The Thames was close by, its musty smell mixing with the typical stench of the metropolis, giving the impression of walking through a murky bog, with only the tip-tapping of passing footsteps and the roar of car engines to remind you that you were in fact in the big city. Even the tall modern buildings on Lupus Street looked ghostly and eerie in the thick fog, immediately reminding me of my nightmare.

Feeling uncertain, I looked around — and froze! Behind me, I could see the silhouette of my eerie pursuer in his signature coat, its collar unmistakable. Goosebumps shot up my spine, and I instinctively quickened my pace. I kept frantically looking over my shoulder and noticed that the stranger was still following me at the same distance as before, but the oddest thing was, I couldn’t hear his footsteps! It was here that I ran into the passerby with the briefcase, but when I went to ask him if he could accompany me down the street, the stranger in the coat had disappeared again.

I fled into the foyer of the modern high-rise office block, waiting to see if the stranger would show himself again, but he didn’t. I sighed and looked at the time, panic coursing through me as I realised just how late I was, so I continued on my way again, hurrying down the marble steps to the pavement outside. It didn’t matter if the stranger was still following me, I couldn’t afford to be any later than I already was, as I knew Martin T. Stone would be reading me the riot act, and that would be worse than a dozen of these spooky dream spectres!

***

The outline of the office building emerged out of the fog a few minutes later, its gloomy façade with its high Georgian windows, prominent cornices, and large bay windows lower down would have made an excellent setting for a horror film on this foggy morning. Even the neon sign below the balustrade that made the surrounding fog glow a blood red only added to the eerie look of it, with the words ‘LONDON CITY OBSERVER’ written on it in large letters. I took a deep breath and looked around one last time to see the figure in the long coat approaching me! I grabbed my purse, determined to wield it as a weapon to ward off the stranger, and mustered up all of my courage to make my voice sound a lot more determined and confident than I felt right at that moment.

‘Why are you following me?’ I called out sharply, and took a step towards the man.

‘Jessica Bannister? Is that you?’ asked a melodious voice.

Before me stood a tall man in an elegant coat, his dark hair peppered with grey at the temples. He had distinctive manly-looking features, and his blue eyes were staring at me in astonishment. It was Martin T. Stone, the London City Observer’s editor-in-chief.

‘Mr Stone?’ I asked in surprise. ‘I... I must have confused you with someone else.’

‘This someone else doesn’t seem to have made a particularly good impression on you,’ Stone commented, nodding to my purse that I was still holding aloft like a medieval mace, ready to swing it at any moment. I went to explain myself, but Stone didn’t give me a chance. He made a show of looking at his watch.

‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘You’d better hurry up inside instead of standing around out here, trying to beat up anyone who’s walking past. Don’t you have work to do this morning?’

‘Yes, I do, but...’ But Stone had already turned his back to me and was striding purposefully towards the entrance of the gloomy building.

‘I want you and Jim Brodie in my office in five minutes!’ he yelled out over his shoulder, before disappearing inside. I shrugged resignedly and followed him, but before I entered the foyer, I took one last look down the street. Besides the swirling fog and the vague silhouettes of people hurrying to work, there was nothing the least bit suspicious about the scene. Had I imagined it all? Maybe my nightmare was responsible for me seeing strange pursuers everywhere, or maybe Aunt Bell’s insistence that I had supernatural abilities was to blame. One of those reasons was probably why I’d imagined the stranger following me out of my dream and stalking me in real life.

Shaking my head, I turned away and entered the foyer of the office building, which was as per usual bustling with frantic activity. I didn’t head to my cubicle in the large open-plan office like I usually would on walking in, instead opting to go directly to the dark room on the first floor. The red lamp above the thick black door hadn’t been switched on yet, which meant Jim Brodie, the London City Observer’s star photographer, wasn’t working on anything light-sensitive at that moment in time. I knocked on the door before walking into the dark room. The cramped, windowless room smelled musty, with the stench of chemicals lingering in the air. All sorts of tables, gadgetry, tubs of God-knows-what, and canisters were scattered around the room, and freshly-developed photographs had been hung up to dry on a line that stretched across the middle of the room. A slim young man in tatty, washed-out jeans stood in front of the dangling photos, his blond hair just as unkempt and disorderly as ever. He was looking up at the photos on the line, clearly dissatisfied with them.

‘Damn fog,’ cursed Jim Brodie. ‘I spent half the night down at the docks, trying to get a few pictures of the police raid on that freighter, the Justice Wind, but all that came out was this sodding fog even though I was only a few metres from the action. I even sneaked right up to the ship and managed to get the gorillas in their cramped cages in my viewfinder. Those poor animals had spent the entire journey from Africa to London in cages barely bigger than a rat trap, and they were malnourished and injured. One photo of those majestic animals in those horrible conditions would’ve touched the hearts of our readers, no doubt about it, and that edition of the paper would’ve flown off the shelves.’

‘It’s not all about selling papers. There’s more to our profession than that,’ I chided him. Jim didn’t respond, just plucked a photo from the line and passed it to me. All I could make out on it was a milky mass of cloud with hunched figures lurking in it. For a second, my nightmare flashed in front of my eyes, but I banished the images, and handed the photograph back to Jim.

Jim let out a bitter laugh. ‘The only headline that would go with that picture is Gorillas in the Mist, but I don’t see Stone going for that. His sense of humour is famously underdeveloped.’

I grinned, envious of the ease with which Jim brushed off his photographic disaster. He put the top of his finger under my chin and turned my head this way and that as he scrutinised my face.

‘You look like you hardly slept a wink last night.’

‘Thanks for the compliment.’

Jim grinned mischievously. ‘Oh, you’re still a knockout, naturally. I’m just afraid that I wasn’t the cause of your restless night.’

I laughed and shook my head. Jim made no secret of the fact he found me attractive, but the slim young photographer with his loose tongue wasn’t exactly the type of man I could see myself falling head over heels in love with. That’s not to say Jim Brodie was totally without his good points: he was an excellent colleague whose heart was in the right place, and I knew I could always rely on him, which counted for a lot. At twenty-six, he was a year older than me, and had already forged what could be described as a promising career, but while I tended to pay close attention to my appearance, he always walked around in old, patched-up jeans, his face rarely seeing a razor, and his blond hair all over the place.

‘Anyway, what brings you here?’

‘Stone wants to see us in his office.’

‘When?’

I looked at the clock. ‘Precisely three minutes ago.’

Jim snorted a laugh and hooked his arm through mine.

‘Then we’d better go pay a visit to our very own newspaper gorilla in his cage,’ he said with a wink.

We took the shaky old lift up to the third floor and, still smirking, strode down the central walkway of the large open-plan office, with frantic activity all around us. The sizeable room was abuzz with loud conversations, telephones ringing, the click-clack of typewriters, and the hum of computer terminals. The uneasy feeling that had overwhelmed me when the mysterious figure was pursuing me had evaporated at Jim’s side. He had once again managed to infect me with his carefree attitude. It was good to know that I had a reliable friend in my life that I could count on...

***

Stone’s new secretary was called Joan Grey, as we surmised by the new nameplate on her desk, and she seemed to be doing her best to live up to her name. The tall, svelte woman was wearing a high V-necked mousy-coloured dress, and had her blonde hair tied up in the most unimaginative and bland hairstyle you’ve ever seen. Only the rainbow-coloured belt around her slim waist seemed out of place as the only splash of colour in the whole monochromatic ensemble. Stone was well-known for his high turnover of secretaries; they were often on the wrong end of his foul moods, and it only took a minor supposed transgression to cause Stone to terminate a secretary from her job in a fit of rage. Though, secretaries also left willingly just as often, unable to take their boss’s temper one moment longer. The other employees had already placed bets on which one Joan Grey would turn out to be, and how long she would last at the London City Observer.

‘Mr Stone is waiting for you,’ Joan Grey announced, gesturing to the door which was one-third frosted glass, bearing the legend: MARTIN T. STONE. Jim flashed the secretary a smile, then pushed open the door to the editor-in-chief’s office.

‘Come in!’ yelled Stone, even though we were already in front of his desk, which was fit to bursting with draft articles, newspaper clippings, letters to the editor, and reports from the newswire. Shelves bearing reference books and overfilled folders lined the walls, and the wastepaper basket in the corner was literally overflowing.

‘The name Sir Howard Grumor mean anything to you?’ asked Stone, without looking up from the reports he was leafing through.

I nodded, though as Stone wasn’t looking at me, he couldn’t have seen me doing so.

‘Sir Howard Grumor,’ I said, ‘is a well-known conductor and composer. He’s conducted many classical operas, but he’s also composed a few himself, and his concerts have enthralled audiences the world over. A true genius in all areas of music. He rose to fame at the young age of twenty-six, and critics talk about him in glowing terms.’

Stone looked at me and nodded, before turning to my colleague.

‘And it would seem, my dear Mr Brodie, that the name means nothing to you. A little culture in your life wouldn’t kill you. Might even improve your attitude.’

Jim grinned sourly. ‘Never heard of the guy,’ he said irreverently. ‘But I do know an Yvonne Grumor. She’s a singer and lyricist in an underground band here in London, and she’s got a superb voice. With her songs that stick it to the man, she’s all the rage with the kids right now.’

Stone raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Sir Howard does have a daughter called Yvonne, yes. I didn’t know she was in the music industry too.’

‘Guess you don’t hang with the right crowd,’ the young photographer remarked.

Stone ignored Jim’s jibe completely; he knew better than to rise to the bait.

‘I want you to write an article on Sir Howard Grumor. He’s currently working on an opera at Glyndebourne, but he’ll only be there for the upcoming season. Something of a cameo, you might say, but it’ll be the talk of London, you can count on it.’

I felt as though an icy-cold hand had wrapped itself around my neck. Glyndebourne... For some reason, the name seemed to echo hauntingly around my mind. It was a manor house with a famous opera house in its grounds located near a small town to the south of London called Lewes. That much I knew, but there was still something rattling around inside my head: a long-lost memory that—

‘Jessica, are you listening?’

Martin T. Stone’s booming voice brought me back to the present. I looked at him and tried to clear my head.

‘Sir Howard is a colourful personality, and he’s conducted in nearly all of the famous opera houses and concert halls of Europe,’ explained Stone. ‘And his own compositions have received high praise across the board. So I want you to write a comprehensive portrait of this Goliath of the music