DEAD GOOD (17 page)

And probably beyond.

And now Leo is almost doubled up with hilarity. Me and my big thoughts.

twenty-one

Mrs Hale looks a bit lost sitting here in our kitchen, slowly turning her mug of tea around in her hands. It’s evident she can’t bear to look at Leo too long or too obviously for fear of appearing slightly mad. Which she probably is because she can see dead people as much as I can and I’m wondering which one of us is going to crack under the pressure of Mum’s gaze first.

I clear my throat. It’s only polite after all.

‘So, Mrs Hale,’ I say nicely. My parents frown rather hurtfully as if they don’t expect this degree of civility from their Firstborn. I ignore them. ‘How did you come to hear of our… um… “situation” then?’ I wait.

‘Well,’ Mrs Hale looks a bit perplexed at this query. Jeez – I only asked a simple question. It’s not like I’ve got a two hundred watt lightbulb shining in her eyes is it? She swallows nervously and twists her mug another 45 degrees. ‘Ah… I’m not sure I…um..’ she flicks her eyes briefly towards Leo who nods at her encouragingly. She turns away quickly like she’s been shot in the neck. ‘ Well, your mother and I… we um… Alison?’ she lifts her head pleadingly to Mum who pulls over a stool from the side wall and sits down opposite me. Leo continues to lord it over both parents now and is looking more and more impatient the longer this continues. I know how he feels. Poor Mrs Hale doesn’t seem to know where or who to look at first and then my mum tries to take the reins again.

‘…some experience,’ Mum continues. ‘With supernatural – type affairs… and things. I don’t know how we came to know this – I think it could have been something that was in the local papers at one time or another… I… um.. Philip?’ Mum turns her gaze to Dad who is just about to pour himself another glass of – what is it? I strain to read the label on the bottle. It’s twenty-five year old malt whiskey whatever the hell that means. Old stuff. Bleuch. It looks like something that’s been hidden in the bottom of a rusty old crate in the back of somebody’s cellar for over a hundred years. So probably the oldest, skankiest, cheapest bottle in the shop then. Double bleuch.

‘That fella who used to work at Twat Nest – remember Assilon?’ My Dad suggests. Er… helpfully?

‘Twat Nest?’ Mum repeats, scowling. ‘What the hell are you on about, Philip?’

‘I think he means the Bank, Mum,’ I translate and Dad nods heavily and slowly and points very lazily at Mrs Hale who shrinks back slightly in her seat to escape alcoholic fumes which by now could possibly singe a hair or two from her eyebrows if she got too close.

‘Kevin,’ Dad proclaims delightedly.

‘Ah yes. The IT guy.’ Mum recalls and then starts to recall the connection he had with Mrs Hale in the dim and distant past and how all of this could possibly tie in with the situation we all now find ourselves in. It’s really getting a bit boring but it sounds as if this IT guy Kevin who dad used to work with had some weird stuff happen in his house once and knew that Mrs Hale had dealings with the other side because his wife used to go for psychic readings with her or something – so anyway – upshot of it is that word must have got around about her abilities. And so here she is.

Across the table Leo sighs deeply and rolls his eyes and I am in completely agreement with his sentiments. This is very probably going to get us nowhere. My dad seems to be fit for nothing, my mum looks like she’s thinking twice about having invited Mrs Hale into our kitchen and I hear Davey making complaining noises in the background so he’s about to join this merry throng any second now and really place cats amongst pigeons. I wish I’d just stayed at school and slept during Graphics. Everyone else does.

‘Can I have a milkshake?’ Davey waves his cup and straw over at us masterfully with his plaster-casted arm as he rubs an eye with his other hand and tries to focus on the assembled crowd at the table. It must look like we’re in a kind of waiting room to him. All these grown ups in one place at one time and nobody talking much. He looks suitably cautious.

Mum reaches over and takes his cup from him and when she’s gone he pulls himself onto her seat and starts to stare around at all of us v-e-r-y slowly. He smiles at me. I smile back. Then his gaze follows round to Mrs Hale at whom he frowns until she smiles sweetly and does a gentle little wave and then he drops his barrier and smiles back. Dad rolls his head over to his son and does what he believes to be an entertaining “knock-knock”ing on his plaster, which makes him scowl and pull his arm away angrily. Then Davey’s gaze lifts and lifts until his eyes meet Leo’s and then his smile broadens into a full-blown grin.

‘Le-o…’ he says matter-of-factly as if he’s known Leo all his life and is not in the slightest bit fazed at having the ghost of a dead person standing in his kitchen. ‘Where’s Mia gone?’

Leo does a full shoulder-shrug and smiles back at him. ‘Dunno, Davey,’ he says like he’s talking to his own kid brother. ‘But she’ll be back later – she likes playing with you.’

Mrs Hale has been playing Leo-Davey tennis quite blatantly with her eyes out on stalks and I wait for a million pennies to drop – all on the kitchen table and at once.

Mum walks slowly over towards Dad, her eyes scarily wide open as she scans the air from floor to ceiling trying to see what it is that Davey (and me, oh, and Mrs Hale) can see but she can’t. Why can’t she anyway?

‘She doesn’t have the freedom of spirit,’ Leo tells me. I frown in query. Freedom of spirit? What the hell does that mean?

‘She’s too guarded; too suspicious. It comes with age I guess. The longer you live, the more cautious you become – the less likely you are to accept that there are “other-worldly” things going on around you. You just want to see the obvious things, things that make sense. Other stuff – like me – spiritual stuff, only the equally free-spirited can see. The younger you are, the more natural it is – the older you get… well… as you can see.’ He turns a hand towards my mum who is still straining and peering and doing a really odd-looking slow dance around the area that Davey pointed to just now.

‘Where?’ she says and Davey points again. Leo sidesteps as mum is about to walk straight through him again. He must find it nearly as weird as I do – seeing one person walk right through another. So how come I get to see these ghosts then? I couldn’t be more cautious and suspicious if Caution and Suspicion were being given away in a Buy One Get One Free at a Top Shop end of season sale.

Leo laughs. ‘You have plenty of free-spirit, Maddie,’ he says, doing a funny skip away from Mum again whilst Davey grins on, pointing to wherever Leo lands next, delighted with the whole mad performance. ‘You just don’t realise it.’

‘He’s right, my duck,’ Mrs Hale pats my hand unexpectedly. ‘You seem to be a receptor at the moment. You and Davey both. It’s okay. Really – it is.’ She crinkles her eyes kindly. ‘There’s very likely some kind of reason you and your brother can see these people; there’s always a connection, a key that unlocks one world to the next. We simply have to find out what it is.’

My eyes hold hers. Is it? Is he right? Is what’s happening to me – to us here - alright? And then I’m surprised my cheeks aren’t spitting like water on a frying pan because pent up tears start to spill out of my eyes and down my hot face unending. As I continue to embrace Mrs Hale’s sympathetic stare, I realise that all I needed was a little grown-up validation of my sanity to make me feel more normal and not quite so fruit-cake-y. And then I feel my period start. Big time.

twenty-two

As I fish about frantically in the box marked ‘girl stuff’ which is taped up in the corner of the bathroom, I can hear a low hum of voices downstairs still. I can’t make out what it is they’re saying precisely but there’s the odd trill of excitement from Davey and I can guess that Mum is still pretty much trying to see what it is her son can. And not succeeding I would imagine. Really, she did look funny trying to see Leo. If she’d widened her eyes any more I swear I’d have had to have got eggcups out of the cupboard to catch her eyeballs in when they fell out of her head.

‘Maddie?’ She yells up the stairs now. ‘We have to sit down and sort this out – come on – Penny doesn’t have all day you know!’

Oh, I’m sure she bloody does, I sniff crossly as I flush the loo and turn the hot tap on, squidging some almond handsoap into my palm. I love this smell. It reminds me of Christmas and marzipan icing on the cake. There’s a tap on the door.

‘Okay, okay, I’m coming!’ I yell. ‘Can’t a girl even pee in peace now or what?!’

It doesn’t matter what they say to me, I’ve decided that I’m still really angry that they’ve made us move into this stupid haunted house. I don’t care that it’s not exactly Mum or Dad’s fault – they could have had this place tested first, surely? For entities? Like you have to have surveys and stuff, right – when you move? Couldn’t they have gotten someone in who did a thorough check to ensure that the previous occupants hadn’t left anything important behind, like – oh, I don’t know – their undead souls or something? There is no way that any amount of persuasion from Mrs Hale, Ghostbuster extraordinaire or not, is going to change my mind about how detrimental moving to this house has been. And if my grades go downhill then I shall be sleeping on the steps of Number Ten until G. Eff. Brown Esquire bloody well recognises and does something about upturning our economy pretty damned sharpish before I end up having to sweep hair cuttings from the floor of whichever hair salon Amber will be working at.

Oh god, the humiliation.

‘Hey,’ It’s Leo’s voice outside the door. I turn the handle.

‘Sheee-it!’ I leap back into the bathroom as I meet his stare. Smiley stare but still a stare nonetheless. And a stare from a ghost can’t ever be a great thing. Especially when you’ve been fighting with tampons and panty liners not two feet away from it.

‘Did you do that?’ I demand, scowling at him and pointing furiously to the door. ‘knock on the door?’

He nods.

‘You’d better watch it – before you know it you’ll be able to touch all sorts of things and then I’ll have you making me endless cups of tea for all eternity!’ I grin forcibly and push through him. He flinches dramatically and then bends double, holding his middle like I’ve injured him or something. I can hear him making gruesome noises of feigned injury and so I totally ignore him and waltz back downstairs and into the kitchen, grateful that he can’t see me grinning.

‘Madeline you’ve been talking to somebody,’ Mum hands me a mug of tea, holding my gaze firmly.

I sigh resignedly, hold both my hands up in an ‘I surrender’ stance and take the mug from her greedily, plonking myself back down on the chair next to Mrs Hale. She smiles benevolently and I warm to her even more than I did earlier. When she virtually told me I wasn’t going mad. You remember.

‘Madeline I think you need to tell us what’s happening,’ Mum says quietly, sitting back down opposite us, next to Dad. I can hear the telly on next door and presume Davey’s away with the Big Bird down Sesame Street. He’ll be amused and occupied for hours. I wish I was in there with him.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I guess there’s no point in hiding it from you anyway – not after last night’s events,’ I take a sip of tea and it burns my top lip. I flinch. ‘I see dead people,’ I say casually without a flicker of amusement. I daren’t look up because I know that I’ll come face to face with irritation at my trying to Be Clever and winding them up. Only I’m not, am I? I DO see dead people. I’m staring right at one right now.

‘That’s not funny,’ Mum, Dad and Leo seem to say all at the same time.

‘I know it’s not,’ I can feel hot tears threatening to reveal themselves all over the table. Again. ‘And it’s actually not,’ anger is bubbling up now. ‘Not funny in the slightest - to be able to see things that aren’t there and be able to communicate with something that doesn’t exist anymore and get angry and frustrated and annoyed with a person who doesn’t breathe anymore. YOU try dealing with it and see how mega-super-duper-NOT-funny it seriously is!’