by Kitty French
My mother looks at me pithily. I know it was a cheap shot, but she deserved it after that stunt she pulled on my coffee table last night.
‘Belittling the valuable service we offer isn’t big or clever, Melody Bittersweet.’
‘Alright, maybe I shouldn’t have said the thing about the teapot, Mum, I know you provide an important service and that’s great, but it’s not for me.’
I turn to Gran. ‘But you’re right, too.’ I cover her bejewelled hand with my own in an attempt to win her over. ‘I see them. I see them everywhere, so much so that there’s no point in even trying to get a normal job anymore.’
They can’t argue with this, because any job I’ve held down outside of the family business has always gone spectacularly wrong. My stint as a solicitor’s assistant ended abruptly because the solicitor in question’s dead mother was in residence and wouldn’t give me a minute’s peace to get any work done. She badgered him relentlessly with messages, mostly to do with the fact that she didn’t approve of his torrid affair with his secretary. I can’t say I did either, but unlike his mother I preferred to keep my opinion to myself. It came to a head when I found myself loudly telling her to knob off, and that her son’s affair with his secretary was neither my business nor hers, which would probably have been okay had it not been for the fact that his wife had just turned up to take him to lunch as a surprise and heard every word. Suffice to say the solicitor soon needed a solicitor of his own. Then there was the time I landed a job as a dental nurse and found myself accompanied by the long-deceased dentist who’d opened the practice decades before and couldn’t seem to let go. He was constantly in my way as I worked, and wholly responsible for the fact that I prepped the dentist the wrong set of new enamels for Chapelwick’s MP and inadvertently turned him into Mr Ed. He still blames me for the fact that he lost his seat in the next election.
‘This way I’ll be providing a service to the dead too, just not in the same way you do. Can’t you see that, Gran? You and Mum, you’re like a ghoul telephone exchange. What I’m going to be is more of a . . .’ I cast around for a suitable definition.
‘Ghoul dispatcher?’ My mum is not one to be easily won over.
I shrug, exasperated. ‘If you like, yes. It’s not how I’d choose to put it, but we all know that ghosts get stuck sometimes and need help to move on.’
‘So you’re going to meddle. Bittersweets don’t meddle. That’s not our job.’
I take in the stubborn set of my mother’s mouth. It’s clear that if I hold out for her approval I’ll never get this business off the ground.
‘Gran?’
Both me and Mum look at our family elder. She spears another blueberry and pops it in her mouth, chewing it slowly even though she’s more than aware that we’re both waiting for her verdict. It’s obvious where my mother gets her dramatic bent.
Gran fixes me with her beady eyes and eventually points her fork at me.
‘This won’t affect the family firm in any negative way? We do rather depend on the ghosts being around, darling.’
‘Not a bit. These would be ghosts who’ve got stuck here or are causing trouble. You won’t even know I’m there. Promise.’ I shake my head and hold my breath as I silently draw a cross over my heart.
She chews another blueberry while she contemplates, and then lays her fork down carefully.
‘Champagne, Silvana. It looks like our baby is going into business.’
I can’t keep the grin from my face and only resist the urge to hug her because
Mum has gone silent, and the way she’s staring at me is unnerving.
‘Is this because of the twenty-seven years old thing again?’ she asks, soft and perceptive.
I flick my eyes quickly away from hers at the mention of my recent birthday. She really is way too good at this mum stuff for me to be able to fool her.
‘Because we’ve been through this,’ she says. ‘It’s just a number, no more, no less.’
Twenty-seven might be just a number to some people, but not to me. Twenty-seven is the age my mum was when she gave birth to me, and the age my gran was when she gave birth to my mother. It was also the age my father was on the day he died, his motorbike crushed beneath the wheels of a lorry as he dashed to the hospital to be with my mum when she gave birth.
Turning twenty-seven myself, then, hit me harder than I’d imagined. I’d got up expecting a pretty normal sort of birthday and found myself hit with the most enormous, lung-crushing case of Oh my God, what am I doing with my life? It literally stopped me in my tracks, a great big juggernaut of fear and emotion and actual tears. I thought of my mother, and how she’d already found her love, her calling and had a child by this age. I thought of my father, the man who my mother has never gotten over losing, the man whose life ended at this point when my life has barely even got off the starting blocks.
Up until the age of twenty-six and three hundred and sixty-four days, I was a child playing at being a grown up. But on the afternoon of my twenty-seventh birthday, I metaphorically put away my childish things, and I made a list. I want a life that’s good, a life that’s full and rich with love and pride, to make things happen for myself rather than have them happen to me.
I don’t care how many failed dates it takes, I’m going to keep on kissing frogs and risking my heart until I find the man who will cup it in his hands and care for it always.
And regardless of the fact that it scares the living daylights out of me, I’m going to start my own agency, and I’d really love to do it with my mum’s blessing.
Gran comes to my rescue with an unexpected suggestion.
‘She can have Glenda in there for a couple of hours each morning, Silvana.’
Glenda Jackson is the secretary/centre of the universe at Blithe Spirits, a veritable wonder woman when it comes to organisation. She’s been at Blithe for as long as I can remember, the kind of woman who could run the world in her spare time if she chose to. Luckily for us, she concentrates all of her efforts on keeping our ship tight; far too tight to need me as an assistant, which, having given up all attempts at working as a civilian, has been my most recent job. I was entirely redundant here, to be honest. My mother and Gran are happy to devote their time and energy to individual sittings and group sessions, and Glenda has the admin and organisational side of things stitched up tighter than a kipper. It smoothes the wheels for us that she is well respected in Chapelwick, she adds an air of normality to our screwball, let’s talk to the ghosts business. She’s also the keeper of the Chapelwick jungle drums; if Glenda doesn’t know something, it’s not worth knowing.
It’s a masterstroke by Gran. Offering me Glenda’s services gives my mother a way to keep tabs on what I’m up to and gives me a way to get what I want. You don’t live in this family for as long as Gran has without learning diplomatic skills that could rival Switzerland. My mother looks a tiny bit mollified, but anyone who didn’t know her well wouldn’t have been able to spot the thaw.
She huffs her cheeks out and scowls at Gran. ‘You can’t have champagne. It’s breakfast time.’
Gran shrugs her shoulders delicately, thoroughly unrepentant. ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere, Silvana.’
Chapter Two
‘What was I thinking? I don’t have a clue how to run a business. It’s all going to be terrible and I’m doomed to be a horrible failure. Even the ghosts will laugh at me.’
I drop like a sack of spuds into the overstuffed armchair beside the fireplace in my new office and almost disappear into the cloud of dust that billows from it. It’s only been two days since I revealed my grand plan and already the nerves are kicking in hard.
‘Jesus Christ, Melody!’ Marina picks the deflated bubble gum from between her lips, and drops it in the bin rather than take it back into her mouth coated in dust. My best friend on the planet since infant school, Marina and I bonded over the fact that we both wore braces and came from families that marked us as outsiders, different no matter how hard we tri
ed to hide it. She has her grandmother’s Sicilian heritage to thank for her curvy Italian beauty, and her grandfather’s Sicilian ‘business’ skills to thank for the Malone family wealth and fearsome reputation. She’d turned nineteen before she lost her virginity, because she was a curious mix of knock out and terrifying that made teenage boys nervous.
Once the cloud of dust from the old chair clears, she looks at me steadily from her perch on the desk she’s spent the last hour patiently polishing up from grotty to usable.
‘One, it’s not going to be terrible, and you’re not doomed to failure.’
She counts on her fingers to give me a visual aid.
‘Two, so what if you don’t know how to run a business? You’re a fast learner and you’ve got Glenda Jackson for two hours every morning. That woman could run the country in her lunch hour.’
I’m slightly bolstered, because that is actually a fact. Back when we were in school, Glenda oversaw our revision timetables with a beadier eye than Anna Wintour keeps on her junior staff. We both aced our exams, and it was entirely because we were terrified of her.
‘And three,’ Marina chews on a fresh stick of gum and holds up three fingers.
‘Who gives a fuck if the ghosts laugh at you? They’re dead and you’re not, so you automatically win. Besides, they won’t be laughing when you suck them up with your ghost hoover, or whatever it is you’re gonna use.’
I laugh despite myself. ‘It’s not that, but thank you.’ I wish I could wake up with even a fifth of Marina’s couldn’t give a stuff attitude. ‘Do you think I should get my hair cut into something that says serious businesswoman?’ I ask, and she shoots me a look that says ‘have you lost your mind?’
‘You’ve had the same hairstyle since we were in school,’ she laughs. ‘You own that bob, Melody. It’s way too late to change the system now.’
‘The system?’
She wafts her hand at me. ‘You’re always going to be the short, cute-as-a-button one with big brown eyes and cherry flavoured lip gloss, and I’m always going to be the slightly slutty one with too much hair, red lipstick and a bad attitude. We go together. You cannot cut your hair, it would fuck with the system.’
The system is new to me, but when I consider it she’s right. It’s taken us a decade to perfect our look, and for that we’ve earned the right to rock it for as long as we damn well choose. Besides, there’s no way I can go through life without cherry lip gloss. It keeps me going in between sugar fixes. The bob stays.
I might not be changing my look, but the office has had a complete overhaul and even if I do say so myself, it’s looking pretty swish. With the obvious oversight of the grubby chair I’m sitting on, it’s been mopped, polished and vacuumed to within an inch of its life, and my start-up budget had run as far as a new magenta swivel chair for my clients to sit in and one of those fancy slatted blinds that all offices have to have in order to be considered professional. I’ve avoided the obvious; no Columbo-style mac stand or yucca plant skimming the ceiling, no heavy glass ashtrays overflowing with cigar stubs. This place is functional, with what I’d like to call a feminine touch, right down to the jug of fresh tulips on the coffee table in the relaxation area. The relaxation area! I know! Get me and my areas! It’s actually just a little grey flop-out sofa and an old wingback chair grouped around the fireplace and TV, but it counts as relaxing, right? I’m aiming for urban chic, or at the very least something that doesn’t scream boho ghost hunter. There will be no hippy dippy incense burning in this office.
‘Maybe you should get an incense burner,’ Marina grins, and I let my middle finger do the talking for me.
She shrugs and slides from the desk, blowing me a kiss as she makes to leave.
‘Gotta shoot. Places to be.’ I know that means she needs to get back to take over caring for her elderly grandpa while her mother works. Marina’s family is big on family loyalty.
‘You’ll come back on Monday morning though?’
‘You think I’d be late for my first morning at work?’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Nine o’clock. You and me. Ghostbusting girls are a go. It’s gonna be bloody brilliant.’
She throws me a wink as she skips out the door, calling ‘I’ll bring donuts,’ over her shoulder as she disappears. I listen to her fast footsteps recede over the cobbles and send up a silent thank you to her last boss for firing her a couple of weeks back. I don’t know the full details because this isn’t the first time she’s been let go, I expect Marina is one of those people who doesn’t do so well with being bossed around, even if the person giving the orders is her boss and supposed to tell her what to do. She wasn’t especially distressed about being let go; she doesn’t work because she needs the money as much as because she needs to get out of the family nest. She practically invited herself to come and work at the agency, and boy was I going to be glad of the company and the support.
So that makes three. Marina, Glenda Jackson, and me. I know Glenda’s only doing a couple of hours a day but believe me when I say that there’s no need to count that as part-time where Glenda’s concerned.
God, I’m knackered. This chair might be dusty but it’s pretty comfortable and I lean my head against the side wing and close my eyes. I’m just drifting pleasantly into a dream where Robert Downey Jr. – suited up as iron man – is on his knees proposing to me, when someone coughs pointedly. I haven’t heard the door open, so I keep my eyes firmly closed and sigh.
‘Unless you’re devastatingly handsome with eyes like hazelnut espresso, rapier-sharp wit, and are hopelessly in love with me, go away.’
There’s silence, and then ‘I’m bald, sixty-two and I died three weeks ago in a freak accident, but I’ll give it a go if it means you’ll sit up and listen.’
I groan and open my eyes to see an ageing bald guy standing by the fireplace in a high-vis jacket. He has ruddy cheeks for a dead man; probably a drinker when he was alive. ‘You had me at freak accident,’ I grumble. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’
‘Arthur Elliott.’ He extends his hand and we both stare at it, and then he slowly withdraws it when he realises that I can’t shake it.
‘Rookie mistake,’ I tell him. ‘What was the freak accident?’
Arthur shakes his head and studies his heavy, polished boots. ‘Worked for the brewery. Barrel fell on my head in the yard.’
That explains the high-vis vest then. I hold back from asking him if he’d been drinking the barrel’s contents at the time. ‘Okay, so that covers how you came to be dead. What it doesn’t tell me is what you’re doing in my new office.’
He looks around the room, nodding with approval. ‘Very nice it is too.’
I’ve met enough ghosts to know that they usually want something, so his attempt at flattery doesn’t get him far with me. I fold my arms across my chest and eye him steadily.
‘Fine,’ he says, stroking a hand over his bald head. ‘I went up front first off to talk to Dicey and she suggested I come talk to you.’
‘My gran sent you?’
What is she playing at? It’s not part of my business plan for her to send ghosts my way if she can’t be bothered to pass their messages on herself.
Arthur nods, ‘It’s about my lad, Arthur, see?’
‘You and your son are both called Arthur?’ I say, distracted. ‘Wasn’t that confusing at home?’
He shakes his head. ‘The wife called me Big Art and him Little Art. Worked fine until he grew to six foot two.’ He smiles sadly. ‘No need now, I don’t suppose. He’ll probably be just Art.’
I nod, sympathetic, still unsure where I fit into the story of Big Art, Little Art.
‘And you’ve come to see me about Little Art because . . . ?’ I prompt, because Big Art has gone misty-eyed and I know what’s likely to happen next if I don’t keep him on track. He’s freshly dead, which means he’s probably still getting used to the idea and prone to emotional outbursts.
‘Just Art,’ he reminds me morosely, wiping a hand across his ey
es even though he’s incapable of crying.
I nod, and mutter quickly. ‘Art.’ Call me uncharitable but there’s a slim chance that if I can hurry Big Art along, I might be able to close my eyes and catch hold of the coattails of my RDJ fantasy. Iron Man could still be on one knee waiting for my answer somewhere in my dreams, but he’s not the kind of super hero to hang around for long.
‘He needs a job, like.’
I narrow my eyes, starting to see where this is headed. I’m going to kill my gran.
‘Art needs a job?’
Big Art nods. ‘He knows nothing about ghosts, course, but he’s a good lad and his mother worries about him. We both do, matter of fact. Think that’s why I got stuck here instead of going over. Bit of a shame really, it’s my dear old mother’s birthday today and I thought I’d surprise her, seeing as I’ve not laid eyes on her for fifteen years or more. Do they have birthday parties up there?’
I try to keep the conversation on track. ‘I’m not taking on staff, I’m afraid.’
He lifts his eyebrows. ‘Your gran said you would be. Just someone to carry your bags and make tea, that kind of thing.’ Art looks at me as beseechingly as a dead alcoholic in high-vis can. ‘You won’t have to pay him much, his mother keeps him well fed. Just enough to cover his bus fare and pay for mice for his snake and he’ll be a happy lad. You won’t find anyone more willing.’
‘Look, Big Art.’ I’m practising my diplomacy skills. ‘If I was in the market for a trainee, Art would be first in the queue, but I’m not. I’ll keep him in mind for the future, okay?’
Big Art’s face falls. ‘I’ve failed him. My only son, and I’ve gone and left him, haven’t I?’
‘Try not to blame yourself,’ I reason. ‘It’s sheer bad luck to have a barrel fall on your head. You can’t predict these things.’