by Kitty French
It reminds me of something from a movie, a book that might be purchased from a magical bookshop from a wizened old man with a hump. Or, hang on, maybe it was from a bookshop more like the one Hugh Grant owns in Notting Hill. That’s more like it. Hugh Grant trumps a humpy old man any day of the week. I indulge in a couple of lazy minutes enjoyably fantasising as I make coffee to wake my brain up. Hugh Grant is on his knees searching underneath the counter in his quaint little store, affording me a good look at his prime little ass, because he knows that he has a copy of a book I simply must read stashed under there.
I avoid looking at the book on the table as I stick a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. I’ve had one mystery on top of the other over the course of my first week as a ghostbuster, and this surprise book feels almost like one-too-many to figure out. Maybe if I just work on resolving the secrets of Scarborough House, my mysterious gift will explain itself along the way too . . .
I turn the Magic 8 Ball on the kitchen work surface and wait to find out whether I should head across to Scarborough House alone this morning.
Without a doubt.
Well, at least it’s a decisive answer. I reach an emergency jar down from the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard, because between the antique book and an impromptu visit to Brimsdale Road, this has suddenly become an extra-crunchy peanut butter kind of day.
The path to the back door of Scarborough House is much easier to negotiate now that Artie has trampled it down. I slip inside quietly, this time making sure to lock the door behind me to prevent unwanted visitors following me in.
‘Isaac?’ I call out as I walk through the kitchen. My voice echoes around the old place, and a shiver whispers down my spine. As you might expect, I don’t spook easily, but there is something about the silence today that makes me uncomfortable, a hostility in the air that I didn’t notice on my last visit. Maybe it’s because this time, I’ve come alone.
‘This is all getting somewhat tedious now, Miss Bittersweet.’
I jump, because the low voice is directly in my ear as I step into the hallway.
‘Lloyd.’ I take a step backwards into the kitchen to put a breathable distance between us. He was definitely waiting right by the door with the sole intention of trying to scare me. I’m annoyed with myself for being startled, but I’m not frightened of him. He’s going to have to try harder than that. I’m not some unsuspecting civvy here. I’m a Bittersweet. Lloyd Scarborough has underestimated me, and, for now, I’m happy to allow him to look down his long nose at me and continue under that delusion.
‘Mr Scarborough, to you,’ he corrects frostily.
‘You don’t appreciate my being here,’ I say, leaning against the doorframe.
‘I’m a ghost and you’re a ghost-hunter, Miss Bittersweet. I think that rather sets us at odds from the outset.’
Well, I can hardly argue with that one, can I?
‘I can probably help you,’ I say.
He laughs, a hollow sound that rattles around the walls. ‘That’s exactly the problem. I neither want nor need any help from you or any of your assorted cronies.’ Resentment rolls from him in cold waves. ‘The ridiculous arrogance of youth. Douglas was always exactly the same.’
My ears perk up, and he sighs. ‘Oh, please. Permit me to express a negative opinion of my brother without automatically casting me in the role of cold-blooded murderer.’
‘Well, someone killed him,’ I say, mildly.
‘Isaac’s guilt was well documented at the time.’
‘Yet he wasn’t found guilty.’
‘That doesn’t make him innocent.’ Lloyd shrugs. ‘It’s really neither here nor there, is it? The house will be sold on soon and, from what I gather, filled with a bunch of dribbling old dears waiting for God.’
I decide that I really don’t like Lloyd Scarborough. He’s bitter and rude, and in my experience a person’s ghost is pretty much a true reflection of the person when they were alive.
‘It can’t be sold if you keep trying to frighten off any prospective buyers.’
‘It isn’t me doing the frightening, Miss Bittersweet.’
He shrugs, and then disappears into thin air, leaving me alone in the hallway.
Right then. I can either go back outside into the early-May sunshine or head on up the sweeping staircase to see what lies beyond. Most sane people would choose the sunshine. I’m not a sane person, I’m a Bittersweet with a job to do. I set my foot on the first broad, creaking step and start to climb.
It really is a stunning old place. I mean, granted, it needs an imaginative overhaul, but it’s the most magical house. The high ceilings and grand proportions of the rooms lend it a stately air, and it was clearly decorated with flair and decent finances, because the fabrics used for the curtains and upholstery are all heavy velvets and slippery old silk; not particularly to my modern tastes but they were obviously high-end and high fashion when they were chosen. The house wears an overcoat of dust and neglect, but beneath the surface lies an exquisite party dress and jewels. It really is a crying shame that Donovan Scarborough isn’t thinking more along the lines of turning the house back into a gorgeous family home, but then I expect the presence of three inhospitable ghosts is quite a turn-off. In all honesty, I wouldn’t especially want to live here myself with the Scarborough brothers in situ, so I guess I can see why it’s being sold off. Not that Donovan seems at all regretful to see the house go; I get the impression that is very much a decision made by the head, not the heart. Sad really; every floorboard and rafter of this house is soaked in his family history, both good and bad, and it’ll all be ripped out and lost, replaced with bland corporate magnolia, cheap curtains and metal grab rails.
‘On your own, ghost-hunter?’
I turn at the lighthearted sound of Douglas Scarborough’s voice and find him lounging against the doorway to one of the bedrooms.
‘I am.’ Crap. I can feel my cheeks getting hot because he looks a bit like one of the Rat Pack, all glam and louche. I shoot him a cheery smile and hope I’m not noticeably blushing. ‘Feel like a chat?’
‘You mean you need me to talk to you,’ he grins easily. ‘There’s something I’d like in exchange first though.’
‘Am I going to regret asking you what it is?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’ He folds his arms across his chest. ‘I want to watch cricket.’
Okay. So that wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t actually know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
‘You know you can’t leave the house though, right?’
‘Do you really think you need to tell me that? I’ve been here since 1910. Believe me, if there was a way I could leave this house I’d have found it by now.’
‘So . . . you want me to arrange a cricket match . . . in the garden . . . for you to watch through the window?’ I speak slowly, forming the words at the same time as I form the thoughts. My voice takes on Aussie-style upward inflection, mainly because I can’t imagine any of the people I know making a decent fist of playing cricket. My mother? Marina? Artie? Oh my God, no . . . not me?
Thankfully, Douglas’s laugh is enough to convince me that I haven’t quite grasped the idea.
‘God no, how infernally dull would that be?’ I’m unoffended by his derision. He doesn’t know the half of it. If he’s any fan of cricket at all, watching my nearest and dearest attempt to bat, bowl or field would be enough to make any self-respecting cricket fan slit their own wrists. If they were alive in the first place, that is.
‘I want a television set. A colour one, like there used to be when Donovan’s father lived here.’
‘I don’t think they even make black and white ones anymore,’ I say, for the most part relieved I didn’t need to buy a cricket jumper, and then stalled by the logistics of buying and installing a TV here. I’m not technical, but I’m guessing that you don’t just plug it in and the picture appears, and it’s a sure fact that Scarborough House doesn’t have a Sky dish. I make a note to
check out the aerial situation on the roof when I leave.
‘Let me have a think for a couple of days,’ I say. ‘I can’t promise, but I’ll try.’
Douglas pushes himself off the doorframe and nods. ‘Jolly good then. Until the next time, Melody.’ He inclines his head and saunters away, leaving me with the strong impression that his lips are sealed until such a time as he’s able to hear the thwack of leather against willow. Or is it beech? And when would you ever use the word thwack in any other circumstance? God, I hope Artie is a cricket fan, but somehow I doubt it.
‘Is Isaac around?’ I call out before Douglas disappears.
His gaze flickers towards the slender staircase that leads up towards the attics. ‘He’s usually up there brooding.’
There is a weariness behind Douglas’s eternally youthful voice, and I suddenly feel desperately sorry for him being trapped here for all of these years. He died way back in 1910 and he’s remained stuck here ever since, unable to communicate with any of the various inhabitants of Scarborough House until Isaac’s ghostly arrival in 1968, followed swiftly by Lloyd gatecrashing the party in 1971. Douglas is, or was, so very young when one of his brothers, quite literally, stabbed him in the back and let him plunge down the staircase to his death. I wonder if he ever knew the agonies and ecstasies of falling in love, if he had serious girlfriends. At twenty-one he probably didn’t die a virgin, but I wonder if he ever got to make love. I hope so. He seems to me to be a man who would have been easy to love and have loved generously in return. God, if all the guy wants is to watch the sodding test match, I’m going to make sure he gets his wish, even if I have to climb on the roof and twiddle with the bloody aerial myself.
‘Isaac?’
The paint is peeling on the blue door at the top of the attic stairs, and as I push it wide it complains loudly.
‘Isaac?’ I call again, a little louder this time as I step inside the room, squinting because the curtains are drawn. They’re deep blood red, and the sunlight straining to break through behind them seeps the whole room in a warm rosy glow. It reminds me of a scene from a low-rent movie where they bathe a place in red lights to summon the spirits. It’s airless up here, really stuffy. I can’t see Isaac, so I cross to the window set into the sloping roof and reach out to open the curtains.
‘I prefer them closed.’
I swing around and spy Isaac sitting in an armchair, a book open on his lap. It’s a mass of eaves and supporting struts up here, I hadn’t noticed him tucked away behind there.
‘What are you reading?’ I ask, hoping that a spot of general chitchat might oil the wheels a bit.
He holds the book up for my inspection. Jackie Collins, Hollywood Wives.
Well, that was unexpected.
‘I’ve read every book in the building ten times over, child. This is by no means the worst of them.’
A thought strikes me. ‘I could bring you some new ones, if you like?’
‘I thought you were supposed to be getting rid of me, not entertaining me.’ He closes the book and lays it to one side. ‘I prefer thrillers. And perhaps a newspaper.’
I make a mental note to ask Gran for book recommendations; she loves a good thriller, the more scare-your-pants-off the better. Given our unusual ability, us Bittersweet women are slightly less easy to scare than most so we have to steal our thrills where we can.
‘I want to help you, Isaac, and if for now that just means a couple of the latest thrillers, then so be it. We’ll get to the bigger stuff along the way.’
‘I presume you mean who killed Douglas,’ he says cutting keenly to the point. ‘I’ll tell you something, Melody. I think that the murder weapon is still hidden in this house somewhere.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Because neither Lloyd nor I left the house on the days following the discovery of Douglas’s body, and it’s a well-known fact that murderers like to keep trophies and mementos of their kill.’
‘Right,’ I say slowly, backtracking on my thoughts about bringing Isaac a fresh stock of grizzly novels. Maybe I’ll throw a few light romances in there too. ‘But surely the house was thoroughly searched?’
He shrugs one shoulder. ‘It was 1910, Melody. They searched it, of course, but policing today is very different to how it was back then. Forensics were a long way off.’ He has a point. I’ve watched enough episodes of CSI Miami to know that forensics are an essential part of any modern murder case.
‘And you couldn’t search here when you were alive, Isaac, because the family had cut you off,’ I say, remembering his gangrenous limb comment as I worked through his theory in my mind. I privately acknowledge the possibility that Isaac himself is the killer and trying to send me on a wild goose chase, but only quietly at the back of my mind. If I had to say which of the brothers is a more likely murderer I’d definitely err towards Lloyd. But without either a motive or a weapon, I fail to see how I’m going to come up with any cast-iron proof.
‘And as much as I’ve mastered the rudimentary ghostly art of holding objects and opening and closing doors, detailed searching or heavy lifting is beyond my capabilities,’ Isaac explains, shaking his head.
‘Can you manage a pen to write?’ He knows this house better than I ever could, I’m hoping he’ll be able to draw up a list of potential places to look.
‘Until that damn fool appeared and used up every precious pen in the house in the space of six months, yes.’
‘I take it you mean Lloyd?’
Isaac sighs with distaste at his brother’s name. ‘He always fancied himself a writer, when we were younger.’ He folds his hands in his lap. ‘Quite the obsessive diarist, convinced that he was going to burst onto the literary scene with his dazzling plays and prose. Our mother should never have encouraged him; it was borderline cruel.’
I don’t point out that Isaac is being borderline cruel with his scorn for Lloyd’s writing. I’m still trying to understand the dynamics between the three Scarborough brothers, both now and back when they were all alive and this house was the elegant home of their well-to-do family.
I add pens and paper to the growing list of items I need to bring on my next visit. Maybe a crossword book would go down well too. Or, actually, given the fact that ‘hangry’ and ‘awesomesauce’ are examples of additions to the Oxford English Dictionary since the brothers’ demise, maybe that’s not such a good idea. I could always teach them Sudoku.
My mother has invited me downstairs to eat with her and Gran this evening. I think it’s intended as a peace offering after Gran’s star turn as a medieval knight on daytime TV, not that Gran herself has shown much in the way of repentance.
When I let myself into their kitchen, the first thing I notice is that the table is laid with the best cutlery. The second thing I notice is that Mum’s gone to the trouble of lighting a tall candle. The third thing I notice is the bald, baby-faced stranger seated at the table beside Gran. Ah shitballs. Not this again.
Mum turns from the stove and greets me with a smile that is pure predatory wolf.
‘Right on time, darling,’ she says, sugar-sweet, which is odd given that she’ll be more than aware that I’m fantasising about wringing her neck just now. She does this every once in a while, decides to have a go at setting me up with some random man she meets at the radio station or in the shop. The last one was so awful that even she considered doing a runner, from her own flat, and I distinctly remember a late-night conversation that involved me swearing really quite badly, and her swearing solemnly that she’d never attempt to meddle in my love life again. And hey ho what do you know, here we are again.
I draw a small amount of perverse pleasure from the fact that I look like I’ve escaped from the nut house. My hair is in rags because I’m experimenting with methods to encourage the poker straight stuff on my head to curl, and Lumpy Space Princess glares out from the front of my favourite T-shirt in silent challenge. I can only agree with her sentiment. What the actual lump is my mother playing at?
<
br /> ‘Hi,’ I gush like an American chat show host, shooting our guest a smile so wide it hurts my cheeks. ‘You must be Mike. Mum’s told me all about you and just so you know, I completely, one-hundred percent approve if you become my new stepdad. I mean, who cares about age differences these days?’ I look at my mother and growl ‘cougar’ at her, rolling my r’s and shimmying my shoulders. I see blue steel flash in her eyes and yet I feel no fear. I thought we had an understanding about my love life – or lack thereof – but it seems that I thought wrong, and I’m ready to make sure that this is the very last time she ever makes this mistake again. The thing is, she and Gran are both the same in that they’re prone to meddling in my business with the best of intentions and the worst of results. You only need look at Gran clanking around in a suit of armour on live TV to know that. My mother has a particular bent towards romantic meddling, more so the older I get.
I know why, of course. She found her own true love early, sweet seventeen, and the ten years she spent being spectacularly loved by my dad have given her unrealistic expectations about love for everyone else, me most of all. Her romance goggles hang so heavy around her neck that it’s a wonder she doesn’t walk with a stoop. No one since has held a candle to my father for her, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t lived a lonely life since he died. Gran was the same with my grandpa, although of course her grief is assuaged by the fact that Grandpa’s ghost has stayed tethered to her bed for the last twenty years.
For Bittersweet women, love is big and sweeping, all-consuming and life-altering. My mother just wants me to find my life-altering man, and she isn’t averse to trying to nudge me in the right direction every now and then. You might think that knowing all of this stuff would make me more inclined to look kindly on the presence of the stranger at the dining table. It doesn’t.
Gran pours us all champagne as she silently watches proceedings, probably just glad that the heat is off her now that someone else has given me the rage. Seriously, do I have too much anger, or am I justified in getting crazy with the stunts that these guys pull on me? I may be the youngest member of this family, but I am easily the sanest.