Parallel [ONC 2020] // Shortlisted

Epilogue

"Our project is on the History of this building and the family that built and lived here hundreds of years ago," the girl said.

"The Longdale family built this house in 1762 and lived here for many years after, but their family ended up plagued by a string of unfortunate circumstances which lead to the convertion of the Longdale family home into the school we sit in today," the boy added.

One of them pressed a button on the laptop the screen at the front of the classroom changed. A single portrait of a young girl with dark brown hair sat at a desk filled the screen, she wore a pale blue dress and a blue ribbon kept her hair tied back and away from her face. She smiled brightly as though she had not a care in the world, a singular moment or event in history forever captured in a painting.

"This is a painting of Harriet Longdale, the eldest daughter to Charles and Jane Longdale. In 1882, after a family trip to the theatre, the Longdale family carriage was overturned when it caught a stone on the gravel path leading up to the house. Harriet was killed instantly and her younger brother Luke had this painting commissioned in 1897. He remarked that the painting was made of his sister as he remembered her on the morning of the trip that would lead to Harriet's death. He said she had been teasing him about his interest in ghosts."

"Harriet was buried in the family mausoleum and her parents are known to have visited it a log after she died." The boy paused. "This was not the only bad luck that the Longdale family experienced. In 1916, Luke Longdale took part in the Battle of the Somme in the First World War, an incident that would become infamous for one of the highest death tolls of the Great War. Luke was killed on the first day of the battle, leaving behind five children and a wife to look after him. His last child, Mary Lucy Longdale was born on the same day he died."

A quiet bubble of conversation broke out among the students who sat at their desks and listened with great interest at the story that they were being told. The teacher, who had perched to the side to watch the presentation in all its glory called for the class to settle down. After a few seconds, the conversation came to end and the two teenagers at the front of the room continued.

"After the death of their only living child, Mrs Longdale died in 1918, just days before the end of the war was declared. Mr Longdale died in 1929 after adding his son's death which he kept hidden behind a brick in the wall of his study, now the headteachers office," the girl said."

"The Longdale family home became a school in 1939 on the outbreak of the Second World War. It original held evacuees from London but when the war was over remained a school, as it is today. The family Bible was found last month during renovations of the headmasters office."

The boy hit the button the laptop once more and the screen changed to the end slide, the words The End being shown in dark blue text art. Applause broke out among the students and the boy and girl took to the front of the stage to bow slightly before returning to their desks. They sat through four other presentations before the lesson came to an end and all the students were dismissed for their lunchbreak. Whilst everyone else departed, the boy and girl remained.

"Why did you two do your project on the school? I thought you would have done something a little more violent," the teacher asked.

"We're not sure, we just thought it was the right thing to do," the girl said.

"Well, I'm glad you did. There were things in there that even I didn't know about."

The teacher left.

"Do you reckon we should have told her?" the boy asked.

"What that I found a letter in my room written by someone called Harriet Longdale and we both had a photograph of us with a girl that looks just like her? No way. She would think we're having her on, that and we can't remember even having the photograph taken in the first place."

"I suppose not."

They exchanged looks but both knew better then to tell anyone what they had discovered that morning over a month before. No one would have believed that they had found the letter from someone who had been dead for over one hundred years especially as they letter had been addressed to them directly.

As they gathered up their things to leave, neither of them noticed the girl standing in the corner. The same girl they had seen only moments before in a painting.

She wasn't a ghost, not in the usual sense as she smiled at them both as they left. She was an echo. A flash of an image forever embedded in time.