Alice had been having the most peculiar dreams since she’d returned to Nanette’s house. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she had been hallucinating the last few nights. As she stood in the kitchen eating a piece of stale toast smeared with marmalade, she gazed out the window at the garden sloping below. Her eyes smarted and she blinked. It was either a series of connected dreams or a hallucination. If the former, perhaps it was something she’d eaten, and she might try changing her diet or maybe read a different kind of book before she went to sleep. If the latter, she’d have to inform Ronit, and he would make a fuss and possibly suggest medication, which would be irksome. She finished off the piece of toast, and absentmindedly wiping the sticky crumbs from her fingers on her nightgown, she wandered into the sunroom and out onto the veranda. She would work with the dream hypothesis first, she decided; there was no need to bother Ronit just yet.

There were long weeds growing between the broken paving stones of the veranda, and Alice had been pulling up a few of these each morning after breakfast, as her contribution to keeping up the family house. She squatted now, her long, pale legs poking out comically from beneath the baby-blue cotton nightgown she’d borrowed from Nanette’s drawer when she realised she’d forgotten to pack anything to sleep in. As she pulled up the weeds, she considered her hallucinations – no – dreams. She’d been dreaming vividly of elegant parties. The parties took place in this house, but during an earlier period. She knew it was an earlier period because the house was better kept, Nanette looked younger – perhaps in her thirties – and Clare appeared not yet born. The ages she was easily able to guess because they corresponded to pictures in the photo albums Nanette kept, each picture labelled neatly in her immaculate hand.

Alice paused for a moment, a large chunk of clover clutched in her fist. Dirt poured from the roots of the clover onto the flagstone below. She covered her face with her other hand and closed her eyes. If she’d been sleeping through the night and dreaming about these parties, why did her eyes hurt? That part troubled her. She did feel poorly rested. She was reminded of the fairy tale about the twelve dancing princesses who spent every night dancing in a fairy palace. Every night they wore a fresh pair of silk dancing slippers to the palace, and each morning the slippers were ragged and full of holes. This was how the king had realised they were going somewhere. He then set forth a challenge in which contestants who thought they could discover the mystery were given three nights to figure it out or be beheaded if they failed. Why was it necessary to behead them? Alice wondered if it was possible she too was getting up in the middle of the night and attending parties, and if so, why did she only watch and not interact with anyone? Ronit probably would not buy the idea that she was under a faerie enchantment. She wondered if she should set out a pair of fresh silk slippers each night to see if they were worn to ribbons in the morning. But how was she to find silk slippers? Did people even wear such things anymore?

Silly girl, she thought, you’ve been eating those questionable cheeses every night after dinner. They probably contain a toxic mould that’s giving you indigestion and nightmares with themes drawn from family photo albums. But her mind kept returning to the parties, and all the different people she had seen there: Nanette and a young Aunty Bix. There were other children, probably her uncles, and adults as well. She did recognise a few friends of Nanette’s from around here, and Nanette’s sister was there too. Nothing much happened. Alice walked around, feeling wraith-like – she was able to walk and move incorporeally through people and furniture during these dreams – watching people drink cocktails, play croquet on the lawn, act out charades, etc. Her grandfather was not there, but that was reportedly unexceptional since he was away for work much of the time, and into his old age stayed away from Nanette’s side of the house. Perhaps even in those days he avoided her parties, or maybe Alice’s toxic-cheese-mould dream-state had written him out of the parties because he was seldom to be found in the photograph albums.

Alice plucked a few more weeds and then stood up, needing to stretch her legs. She yawned and flung the small armload of weeds behind the ornamental hedge that ringed the veranda and walked inside, dusting off her hands. The dirt was now sticking to the marmalade on her fingers, and she considered going in to wash her hands in the kitchen sink, but the nurse was in there scrubbing Nanette’s breakfast things. She thought she’d go upstairs and change instead, then go visit Nanette. As she walked up the curving staircase, she thought about last night’s party. There had been a nautical theme and a particularly handsome man – tall, red-headed, with a hawkish patrician nose. He looked fit and wore the attire of a sailor. He was too old for it, but then most of the adults had looked a bit foolish in their costumes. Alice stopped on the staircase to straighten a small watercolour of the Place de la Concorde that Nanette had painted as a teenager when she was travelling with her family. What it lacked in artistry was made up for by the exquisite labelling. Alice wondered if she should ask Nanette about the man in the sailor suit.

In her bedroom, a tiny room tucked under the eaves in the former maid’s quarters that she’d slept in since she was a child, she looked around carefully to see if there were any signs she might have gotten up and left her bed during the night. What sort of sign would that be, in the absence of fresh dancing slippers? She would have to set a trap for herself this evening. She sat down on the bed, the ancient springs creaking under the weight of her body, and pulled her feet up. They were covered with dirt, so she dusted them off. Maybe if she cleaned her feet very carefully before going to bed, she’d be able to make out telltale signs she’d been out of bed, such as dirt or dried grass. She didn’t usually clean her feet, so this would be a good test.

Letting her feet down again, she stood up and set about rummaging through her suitcase for clean clothes. There was a yellow sundress, which she put on after hanging up the nightgown on a hook on the back of the door, and one clean pair of underwear. She went and washed her hands in the tiny, stained sink in the adjoining bathroom. Everything in that bathroom was built on a miniature scale, making her tall, angular form appear exaggeratedly large. The sink was so low she had to lean over to get her hands under the faucet. She brushed her teeth and wiped off her hands and face, then started downstairs to see Nanette. On the landing, she thought she heard a shuffling sound from the direction of her grandfather’s old rooms. The rooms were usually shut off from the rest of the upstairs hall by a door, probably to keep the heating bills down, but now it was summer, and someone had opened the door. Who could be down there? Perhaps Clare had gone looking for something else to read besides Trollope?

Alice walked towards the doorway.

“Mother?” she called out. “Clare?” There was no response. She walked slowly down the hallway and glanced into the bathroom. No one there. The bedroom was empty, as was the dressing room. At the very end of the hall was the study. The door was ajar, and she slowly pushed it open. Next to the fireplace, in his red leather easy chair, a large, leather-bound book spread out on his knees, sat her grandfather, just as she’d always found him when she was a child.

Excerpted with permission from Alice Sees Ghosts, Daisy Rockwell, Bloomsbury.

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