DEAD GOOD (21 page)

‘Sir, yes sir!’ Amber does a stupid salute at my retreating back and just before I leave the room I hover over Leo’s body and tell him not to try anything silly with a sweet innocent girl in the room.

‘Ooh, Maddie!’ she twitters at me, wafting me away. ‘We’ll be fine, won’t we Le-o?’

He gives me a fake scared smile as I throw him a glare and leave them to it.

Mum virtually drags me into the living room when I get to the bottom of the stairs.

‘You haven’t said anything to Amber have you?’ she says in a strangulated whisper, pulling me onto the sofa. ‘I mean, if it got out that we were living with a family of ghosts in a haunted house, then it might not exactly be the best thing to happen to you because of school and everything. Some children can be very cruel, Madeline, I remember when I was at school there was this one girl…,’ and she’s off with her reminiscing. Not Tom’s but Alison Brown’s Schooldays – that was her maiden name. So. How best to play this I wonder? Tell her that, actually yes, Amber was in on it even before she and Dad were? That I told her the minute I saw the shadowy figure on the landing the first night we were here? Or should I just play it safe and pretend that Amber knows nothing. That best friends are not what they used to be – that these days all we discuss are school work, the weather, National Discovery Channel documentaries and the state of the British economy? What would she believe? I know what she wants me to say – but it’s not true. Should I lie? Oh, why is it so hard to know how to please a parent?

‘Um….’ Is my incredibly clever response to her query. Which bides me more time. Which therefore does make it quite clever if you really think about it.

‘Only your father and I think that if we can keep a lid on this whole situation then once we get it sorted out, we can probably forget it ever happened. You know?’

I frown. Forget it ever happened? What is she – in denial or something? How could you forget something this massive – this spectacularly supernatural ever happened? How?

‘Well – if and when it all goes away and stops, then we can move on from it – that’s all I mean.’ She widens her pleading eyes and I wonder how loud my internal query actually was.

I can’t believe she’s saying these things. I thought she was going to embarrass the hell out of me by telling me that boys and girls were different because their extras parts were at contrasting altitudes on their bodies or something. My god, this is far worse!

‘Um…’ I’m really getting the hang of this biding my time thing and I wish Mum wasn’t staring so intently right into my eyes and waiting for some kind of sensible, coherent reply to her earnest question. ‘Well, she thinks there’s something up,’ I hedge. Which isn’t a total lie. ‘But I’m not sure she knows the full story. Unless you told her?’ I love that little trick of deflection. It should take the onus away from me for a little while at least. Mum frowns.

‘Hmm,’ she puts on her pondering face. ‘Well, I don’t think we should be filling her in on any of the latest developments. We need to keep this as close to home as possible – until we can work out what to do for the best. There’s no point in turning it into a circus, is there?’

Mum presses my hands together with hers and nods happily. ‘Helping him with his accounts and things. So we might make some headway with finding out a reason for their family still being…here,’ she whispers the last word – as if Amber has sonar or something.

Bloody hell, really? Dad’s going to be working with Leo’s Uncle? That’s… well, it’s good, right? Isn’t it? I mean… well…I wonder if Leo…

Suddenly there is an ear-piercing shriek from upstairs and a banging of feet.

Mum and I race to the bottom of the stairs and we stare as Amber stands breathless at the top, waving something madly in her hand, yelling at the top of her voice:

“YES! Yes! Yes! He did it! He did it!’

My mum’s face turns slowly to mine and I hope and pray mine isn’t burning as much as it feels it is.

‘Mario Kart,’ I tell my mother’s shocked face in a flash of inspiration. ‘She was Yoshi….didn’t think she could do it. Woo hoo! Well done, Amber!’ I yell back up at her excited, flushed face.

twenty-eight

‘You realise you might not remember me – us – this whole thing if our plan works and you manage to escape from the house – go into The Light, to Heaven, or wherever it is dead people end up…?’ I say to Leo as we walk back from Amber’s house at half ten. Slightly late for a school night but what the heck. ‘I mean, if you get to open the door, leave the house, then you won’t ever have haunted Ferndale Way, will you? You’ll be the tragedy in the newspaper, but not the ongoing troubled spirits that roam the scene… it’ll be bizarre. You won’t remember anything because it won’t have happened. Although I’ll remember it because I helped you escape it. ’ My insides twist a little at this realisation and I don’t want to look at Leo’s face.

‘I’ve been thinking that too,’ he says, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. ‘It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Knowing that – if it works, of course - it will have been you lot who helped us escape the jaws of eternal limbo and everything – but not realising how we were helped.’

‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘But then it’s probably the least of our worries right now.’

Leo turns to me, his dull eyes shining as much as a dead pair can and he smiles.

‘We need to make sure you know where the key is when the house starts to reconstruct again. Maybe it should be in the hallway, near the front door?’

Now it’s Leo’s turn to sigh. ‘The only problem with that is that I never seem to be able to make it out the bedroom door. I’m too overcome with smoke fumes. You’ve seen me, sprawled out trying to reach the doorway – no, it’ll have to be left in my…I mean your room somewhere. I just hope that I see it and realise what I’ve got to do.’

‘How about I leave it on the bedside table?’ I suggest. ‘You’re bound to see it there.’

‘I like that, he says. ‘My bedside table was in the same place. Our bedrooms are laid out virtually the same, you know.’

I smile. I like that too. I like that we’re sleeping in pretty much the same position as each other – it makes me feel closer to him somehow.

‘Mind you,’ I say, still smiling, ‘there’s not a great deal you can do with a room like that, is there?’

‘How d’you mean?’ he frowns.

‘Well, just that it’s so small – there wasn’t a lot of choice in how I had it organised. In fact I had to sell my big bed ‘cos it wouldn’t fit in there. I mean, if I’d put my bed in there, there wouldn’t have been any room to even open the door, let alone … what?’

‘For the rest of that sentence. The bit where you call it the shitty, sucky place where everything is small and smelly and… well, all the rest of it.’

I open my mouth to slam something back at him but then shut it again and realise what a cow I’ve been. In thought and in words. I’ve been a mega-bitch about Leo’s old house. And he loved it. He loved living in it with his lovely, lovely family and all I’ve ever done is verbally trash it. I’m an official nasty piece of work. There. I’ve thought it. So now he knows how bad I feel about it.

‘S’okay,’ he says, lowering his head and kicking a pile of leaves. Then he looks up from under his fringe and smirks. ‘Hey, did you see that? I’m getting good at this,’ his face beams and then he places his soft, misty hand through mine like he’s holding it. ‘Come on, let’s get back home.’

My belly is still twisting and the butterflies are still fluttering about even after I’ve got back in, said my goodnights to Mum and Dad, taken my make up off in the bathroom and sighed a hundred millions times at my reflection in the mirror. Oh God, he really won’t remember me if this thing works out. Will he? How will I feel about that? I stare dismally down into the plug hole. I don’t think I’ll like it. I think I’ll like it less than Amber thinks she will. I think I’ll like it less than…oh god, less than…

‘I’m sure I’ll remember this,’ I’m shocked to find whispered right in my face, only seconds before I lift my eyes and realise that Leo is standing inside the sink right in front of me between me and the mirror. His head is bent down and his ghostly lips are a fraction of a distance away from mine. Before I’ve even had a chance to gasp with shock, I feel something warm under my hair at the back of my neck and my face is drawn to his. In a heartbeat his mouth is on mine. And I can actually feel his soft lips moving with mine. He must really want to be doing this, my head keeps telling me. That’s why he can. Because he really wants to.

‘I do really want to,’ he murmurs into my mouth. Oh god, I think I’m floating. There’s no other way to describe this feeling. My legs have disappeared, my arms are invisible and my brain has been replaced by marshmallow. My head feels so spacey that I think I might have died alongside this gorgeous ghost and I’ve gone to actual heaven with him.

I don’t want it to end but, almost as slowly and as gently as it started, Leo’s face pulls back smiling, his nose just a whisker away from mine. I smile back. I can’t help it. I think I’ve lost every cynical bone – along with every actual bone in my body. I can’t even think straight. I’m just about to try to find something meaningful to say to him when his smile just gets wider and more kissable, if that were at all possible. Then his lips brush the end of my nose and he’s gone. And I’m left standing unsteadily, staring back at my wide-smiling reflection in the mirror again, wondering if I might have to see a doctor about hallucinations. Very vivid ones. Very lovely ones. Very incredible ones that I want to keep on having over and over again.

Just as I shut my eyes and try to recapture the last few seconds of my very real-feeling figment of the imagination, there’s a small tap on the door and I leap at it. It must be Leo. He’s come back. I fling it wide open and feel my heart slump audibly in the still of the air – and gaze at nothing. At least nothing Leo-height, anyway. Then my knees are brushed by a clammy hand and Davey stares up at me with very sleepy eyes.

‘I think I need a poo,’ he says.

twenty-nine

I don’t know how we get through the whole of the next day without spontaneously combusting with anticipation. Of course Amber’s thrills can’t possibly be compared with the one I keep replaying over and over in my head from last night. And I’ve totally rewritten the ‘Bathroom Scene’ from supernatural movies. I just wish our excitement wasn’t directly linked to people dying in a burning house. But at least we have a plan. All we need now is the situation in which to put it to use.

Mum’s gone to pick up Dad from Ristorante Gardella and the house is lovely and quiet. Especially as there’s no kid brother tearing about and talking to invisible people. At least I know how to keep a lid on things – maybe I need to teach him how to be more reserved around ghosts. I’ll have to keep notes. I’m clearly going to become quite a connoisseur. Instinctively I turn to see if Leo heard me think that and he smiles sexily at me from where he’s leaning on the side of the chair, watching the computer screen.

Amber and I have just finished trawling through a whole load of homework that Mr Spicer gave us on the altruistic tendencies of the lower-middle class in Eighteenth Century England – whatever-the-hell-that-means, when Leo just disappears. He fizzles out. One minute he’s there – then he’s not.

She puts the book down on her lap but doesn’t look around like I’m doing. I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking somebody to help you find the invisible. ‘Dunno – maybe he’s gone to get something to help us – y’know, now that he can lift stuff and move stuff and things – he’s probably remembered you’ve got a really good book upstairs that references this homework – maybe - or….’ She trails off after noticing that my face is covered with frowns at her lame reasons. ‘Oh my god. D’you think…’ she says and her mouth stays open as she stares about the now silent room as if a performance is about to start. Which, okay, it probably could be.