Melody Bittersweet and the Girls' Ghostbusting Agency

by Kitty French

  ‘I’d hardly call having a fifteen-minute spot on morning television being a big-shot.’ I wrinkle my nose at the decidedly tart, too-warm fizz.

  ‘Not like a two-hour Saturday morning phone-in on the radio for the last three years and a People’s Favourite Award,’ my mother sniffs. It’s difficult to tell, but I think she’s feeling a smidgen of professional jealousy. Not that she needs to; she could wipe the floor with Leo Dark if she wanted to, and with me for that matter. Her skills are finely honed and powerful; our gift is something that only increases with age. How else do you think my gran has managed to keep my Grandpa Duke around, despite the fact that he died during a night of over-zealous sex almost twenty years ago? She had to call the emergency services to come and lift his stiff (in every sense) corpse off her, and from that day to this, his ghost has been tethered to their bedroom and is as randy as a sailor on leave. Theirs is a love story that refuses to end, and, by all accounts, a sex life that refuses to end too.

  ‘Not even close,’ I agree, on my mother’s side just as she is always on mine, even if she does show it by making barbed comments to my ex-boyfriend that make me look like a lovesick fool.

  She places the jug of flowers on the shelf behind the polished counter that runs along the back of the shop and looks at me over her shoulder. ‘Will you stay away from the house on Friday as he asked?’

  I consider my options. ‘Probably. Antagonising him won’t help me solve the case, and it was never part of my business plan to ruin Leo.’

  ‘You have a business plan?’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ I say haughtily, crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping that she doesn’t ask to see it, because it’s in my head rather than my shiny new filing cabinet.

  ‘Look at us, three generations of Bittersweet business women.’ Gran refills her own glass and pauses with the bottle midair. ‘More fizzy cat piss, darling?’

  I put my hand over my still half-full flute and grimace at her accurate description. ‘I won’t.’

  My mother pulls a similarly disgusted face and refuses more too.

  ‘Fletcher Gunn is poking around the Brimsdale Road case,’ I say, nibbling my deep-grey-polished thumbnail. Why did I even mention him? I know exactly how my mother is going to react, and she doesn’t disappoint me.

  ‘Gah! What is that boy’s problem?’ She changes her mind about the champagne, knocks the contents of her glass back in one go, and reaches for the bottle.

  ‘Boy’ isn’t a word that comes to my mind when I think of our least favourite reporter. He’s got a few years on me and has satisfyingly broad shoulders that say ‘lean on me, I’m dependable’. Who knew shoulders could lie? His most certainly do. I wouldn’t depend on him to save me if I was clinging by my fingertips to a cliff edge; in fact, I wouldn’t put it past him to stamp on my poor, scrambling hands. Like that big, bad lion in The Lion King whose name I can’t think of, but who I do know had startlingly green eyes. Fletcher Gunn has startlingly green eyes, too.

  Right, so I think it’s more than time I headed back down to my own end of the building; standing around here drinking lukewarm cat piddle is sending my mind towards paths I’d rather not stray down.

  As I head for the door, my mother calls me back.

  ‘You forgot this.’ She presses Leo’s tissue-wrapped gift into my palm.

  Fletcher Gunn and Leo Dark have more in common than they probably realise, despite the fact that they hate each other’s guts. They’re both alpha males, both sexy and they know it, and for different reasons they’re both intent on hampering my ability to make a success of the agency.

  I close my fingers over the little bundle and head off down the hallway, too far away to hear my grandmother’s next words.

  ‘Where exactly is Brimsdale Road, Silvana?’

  ‘Nonna made cannoli to mark our first successful week in business,’ Marina says as she breezes into the office on Friday morning.

  ‘Why don’t you put them in the fridge?’ I gesticulate grandly towards the under-counter model in the corner.

  ‘It’s working then? I thought it might have exploded in a fit of righteousness when you plugged it in.’

  ‘Like a dream,’ I grin. We snagged the fridge going cheap on eBay yesterday, from a local church having a kitchen refit. We rolled up onto the church car park to collect it, earning ourselves sour looks and pursed lips from the good people at the committee meeting as we shoved it wilfully into the back of the loudly protesting Babs. I imagine it must have been rather like watching a bovine birth in reverse. Throw in the fact that our sign now proudly and loudly announces we’re ghostbusters and I think it’s safe to say they were glad to see us backfire our way off their car park. I can still picture them, all lined up across the tarmac with their arms folded over their chests like a human chain of holy bouncers.

  ‘I reckon they thought we were Satanists.’ Marina slides the tin of cannoli into the otherwise empty fridge, and then reaches for the milk Artie left out five minutes ago and puts that back inside too.

  ‘That’d be why the woman in the flowery apron whispered “Save yourself” to me then.’ Artie sips his tea and winces at his burnt lip.

  ‘Cheeky mare. It’s too late for you, Artie my boy, you’ve joined the dark side,’ Marina laughs, flicking the kettle on. ‘You’re one of our gang now.’

  He flushes, a gang member for no doubt the first time in his life.

  Marina makes coffee and flops into the swivel chair behind the smaller second desk. ‘So what’s the plan for today, boss?’

  I open the green, slowly thickening case file and click the end of my pen. ‘I thought we’d have a meeting to go over everything we know about Scarborough House so far, then take a cannoli break to watch Leo’s TV spot for research purposes. If he’s found anything out he won’t be able to stop himself from crowing about it to the nation.’

  ‘It’s on in two minutes.’ Marina flicks the volume up on the TV and we all listen to Rylan extol the virtues of cosmetic dentistry. I bare my teeth at my reflection on my black computer screen and try to decide if a new set of gnashers would enhance my hit rate with the opposite sex. I don’t think so, frankly. My teeth are perfectly decent, it’s my ‘other skills and attributes’ box that tends to make for awkward reading on online dating applications. ‘I see dead people’ tends to weird people out, and the fact that I now have to list ‘proprietor of a ghost-hunting agency’ in the occupation box is definitely going to attract the wrong sort of guys.

  ‘Grab the cannoli, Artie?’

  He comes back with the tin and lifts the lid, then stares into it in surprise.

  ‘I thought cannelloni had meat in it?’

  Marina flicks her eyes towards me as if she’s considering murdering him.

  ‘Forgive him, he’s young and he knows no better,’ I whisper, placing my hand over my heart as I make the case for his survival.

  ‘He’s lucky he’s got you in his corner, lady.’ Her growl-whisper is full of Clint Eastwood menace.

  ‘Leo Dark’s segment is on,’ Artie says, carefully carrying hot coffee for us and tea for him in the ‘I love My Python’ mug he’s brought from home. The handle is a snake that winds around the cup and rears up over the edge, nearly poking him in the eye each time he takes a drink. He must really love his python to risk retinal perforation every time he fancies a cuppa.

  We all swivel to look at the TV from our respective perches; me behind my desk, Marina from behind the desk that she’ll share with Glenda Jackson from Monday, and Artie from the wing back chair I was snoozing in when his father came to visit me. The day might come when I share the details of that meeting with Artie, but not until such a time as he really needs to hear it.

  ‘Jesus, will you look at him,’ Marina sneers as Scarborough House comes into shot and Leo practically swashbuckles onto the screen. ‘What sort of man wears knee-high boots?’

  ‘TV wardrobe?’ I suggest, trying to make sense of his jodhpur-style attire in t
he context of a man who is clearly not riding his horse.

  ‘Gok Wan wouldn’t approve,’ Artie says, then stuffs his mouth full of one of Nonna’s cannoli. I want to question him on his knowledge of Gok Wan, but there’s a cannoli with my name on it in front of me and I’m distracted. I don’t know how Nonna makes these things, but they are high up there on my food heaven list. Most of the entries in my food heaven list would be made by Nonna, to be honest, and cannoli are definitely in the top three.

  ‘She dipped them in chocolate just for you,’ Marina says, watching me as I close my eyes and bite into it.

  ‘Can I come and live with you?’ I mumble, blissed-out on the crispy, cinnamon infused shell and creamy, sweet filling. There’s a hint of orange in there somewhere, and the chocolate tips it over from delicious to histrionic.

  ‘You practically do, remember?’

  It’s a fact that Marina and I spent most of our formative years in and out of each other’s houses, a fact I’m glad of at this moment because Nonna’s chocolate-dipped cannoli are keeping me from getting up and putting my fist through the TV screen as Leo bangs on about his startling discoveries inside Scarborough House.

  ‘Just go inside already.’ Marina chucks a pencil sharpener at the screen and it bounces off Leo’s artfully lit nose. ‘Ooh, that’s quite satisfying. Have a go, it’s like playing paper-toss with the added advantage of taking Leo Dark’s eye out.’

  ‘Behave,’ I chide, and she just shrugs, thoroughly unapologetic as we watch Leo’s ass bounce down the hallway of Scarborough House and into the same room we’d sat in a couple of days previously.

  ‘As you can see,’ Leo whispers into the mike, as if he’s David Attenborough entering a rare baboon colony. They’ve gone for a Blair Witch style of hand-held filming, presumably to add atmosphere, and the lighting isn’t great, which again is clearly for effect because I know for a fact that the living room is flooded with natural light from the windows at the far end.

  ‘Do you remember there being a suit of armour in there?’ Artie frowns at the screen.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I murmur, listening to Leo give the same potted history of the house that we’d unearthed within five minutes of research.

  ‘He’s trying to hide the fact that he knows bugger all,’ Marina says, offering me a second cannoli. I’m about to take one when Artie leans towards the TV and squints.

  ‘That suit of armour just moved. I’m sure of it.’

  We all stare hard at it, and sure enough, the arm raises up slowly, more than enough to be clearly noticeable. It’s behind Leo, out of his line of sight, but the camera man has certainly noticed it because his Blair Witch-shake has suddenly become decidedly more distinct and I think I can hear him heavy-breathing.

  Leo is talking about Isaac Scarborough, but his big brown eyes keep flicking distractedly away from the lens, presumably to the face of the terrified cameraman in front of him.

  ‘What the . . .’ I say, getting up and walking closer to the screen to get a good look.

  ‘It’s a set up for TV ratings,’ Marina says. ‘Even I know that much.’

  I’m not so sure. ‘You reckon? It makes him look a bit of a joke though, don’t you think?’

  Suddenly, there’s an almighty commotion on the screen as the suit of armour keels over and scatters to the floor, and the camera appears to fall dramatically from the operator’s hand before the picture cuts hastily back to an agog Rylan in the Morning TV studio.

  We all look at each other open-mouthed, and I wish we’d invested in a TV with rewind, because as the camera dropped and swung wildly around, I’m sure I caught a flash of pink spandex and golden Hollywood pin curls. In a panic, I open my desk drawer to check that the backdoor key to Scarborough House is still there. Oh shitballs.

  I screech Babs to a halt along Brimsdale Road twenty minutes later and find a pantomime going on in the front garden of Scarborough House, with Leo prancing around like a buccaneer and Gran smoking a Gauloise in her purple kimono, pink spandex leggings and kitten-heeled fluffy Hollywood slippers.

  Snatches of Leo’s rant carry on the wind to us as we pile out of the van.

  ‘Laughing stock . . . made a fool of . . . discrediting our profession . . . ought to be ashamed . . .’ He’s laying it on thick as he paces the unkempt front lawn like a disappointed father, and she is taking a drag from her ebony cigarette holder and looking into the middle distance like a bored teenager. She rarely smokes, only at times like this when she wants to use it for dramatic visual effect, and only ever Gauloise. I think she’s had the same box of twenty for at least the last decade.

  Leo looks up and catches sight of us as I open the garden gate. He marches over with his chest thrust out like a peacock, his voluminous white shirt untucked from his skinny jodhpurs and billowing in the breeze. He looks more like he’s stepped from the set of a costume drama than a daytime TV broadcast.

  ‘I take it you put her up to this?’

  I catch my gran’s eye over his shoulder for a second. Family loyalty almost suggests that I should lie to cover her bony ass, but to do that would be professional suicide, but doing that in the first week of business would be pretty fast work, even for me. Gran saves me the bother of having to decide whether to cover her backside or my own by stepping forward and waving her cigarette holder imperiously in the air.

  ‘I’m a lone ranger,’ she practically growls. ‘I dance to my own tune.’

  We all take a moment to stare at her, and Marina high-fives her across the garden path. ‘Kudos, Dicey.’

  ‘Your gran’s amazing,’ Artie whispers beside me, awed by his first meeting with her, as most people are. Even at her advanced age she exudes a certain feline charm and men have always been putty in her bejewelled hands, although to be honest I think that Leo is probably immune to her at this very moment in time.

  ‘What were you thinking of?’ I ask Gran, because however hard I try, I can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for her behaviour.

  ‘Just lending a hand, darling,’ she responds, as if she truly believes that she has in some bizarre way assisted me.

  ‘Gran . . . how, exactly? Why would you imagine that crashing around inside a suit of armour on live TV would help anyone, least of all me?’

  She looks at me like I’m the village idiot. ‘He said you shouldn’t come over today, and you didn’t.’

  ‘No, I didn’t, and I didn’t ask you to, either.’

  She pulls a ‘so there you go,’ face. ‘Precisely. It’s not your fault. You’re entirely blameless for the fact that your rival looks incompetent and you can swoop in and save the day. You’re a hero, Melody. You deserve your own TV show.’

  She says that last bit really loudly, and I think she expects the TV crew to elbow Leo out of the way immediately and sign me up instead. They don’t, obviously. They’re too busy wiping egg off their faces and hastily throwing their equipment into the back of their vans.

  I shift my attention to Leo, aware that Gran has just pushed me off my favourite patch of moral high ground. I feel as if I’m face down in the dirt right now with a whole shovel-load of sucking up to do.

  ‘Leo, I’m so sorry, I genuinely didn’t have a clue she was planning to embarrass you on live TV.’

  He stares at me, and I’m not entirely certain, but I think he might have just hissed. I don’t think it was intentional; at least I hope not. I’m touched by the fact that Artie takes a step closer to me, my unlikely henchman should I need him. Leo looks him up and down for a second, and then turns his derisive glance back on me.

  ‘Jealousy is a terrible thing,’ he says, clearly not in the mood to believe me. ‘Frankly, I thought better of you.’

  Okay, so he’s planning on strutting around the moral high ground I’ve recently vacated. I’m not surprised.

  ‘I didn’t realise you’d stoop so low as to involve an octogenarian though. She could have broken her brittle bones falling like that.’

  I’m fast running
out of patience with him for not believing me, he really should know me better.

  ‘Oh please, I do yoga.’ Gran rolls her eyes. ‘I’d like to see your wounded peacock, young man.’

  We all look at her, startled.

  ‘What? It’s a yoga pose. I’d show you but I’m not exactly dressed for it.’ She takes a pointed drag on her cigarette and waves her hand down in the general direction of her kimono.

  I can feel Marina laughing silently beside me, and I know it’s one of those situations I’ll probably look back on and laugh at too, but right now it feels really important to make Leo to believe I’m not trying to sabotage him. Oh, I want to win, but I want to take him down cleanly because I’m better at my job, not feel as if I’ve won by default. This is the first job the agency has taken on, hopefully the first of many. We need the confidence boost of a win. I need it, badly, because this is my twenty-seventh year, the year when my life has to change.

  ‘Pose for a picture, guys?’

  Oh, for God’s bloody sake. As if this situation could get any worse. Fletcher sodding Gunn just turned up.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘This is the story that just keeps on giving, isn’t it?’

  He’s leaning on the garden gate and is evidently more amused by the situation than I am; the only person even less pleased to see Fletch is Leo. There’s never been any love lost between these two, they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum in pretty much any way you’d care to mention. Leo has to be close to the top of Fletch’s ‘discredit before I die’ list, right below the Bittersweet family, two generations of which are currently caught here on the lawns of Scarborough House in a compromised position. He must feel like it’s his frigging birthday.

  Gran blows an elegant plume of smoke into his camera lens when he tries to direct it her way, and he shakes his head.

  ‘A pleasure as always, Paradise.’