Melody Bittersweet and The Girls' Ghostbusting Agency: A laugh out loud romantic comedy of Love, Life and ... Ghosts? (11 page)

Gran lifts a hand in a close approximation of the royal wave as she disappears off in the direction of Blithe Spirits. From the back she looks like a good-time girl doing the walk of shame after coming home on the back of a milk cart unsuitably dressed for the time of the day.

‘I should probably head off,’ Marina says, looking at the time on her mobile. ‘Mum called and asked if I could get home early to watch Grandpa.’ She hugs me briefly. ‘Well, that’s our first successful week in business done.’

‘High-five for us.’ I grin as I step away and look at my own watch. ‘You may as well knock off too, Artie, it’s after three. We’re not going to get much else done today.’

He nods, rolling his shoulders. I hope he’s not checking to see if they’re broken after his rocket-ship-style ride in the back of Babs.

‘I’ll give you a lift if you like,’ Marina offers, digging around in her bag for her car keys. ‘I’m going that way.’

I watch them stroll away towards the High Street. ‘Hey, Artie. Make sure you come back on Monday,’ I call. He turns around and gives me his goofy laugh. He’ll be back.

* * *

A
ll quiet at last
, I settle behind my desk for an hour before I clock out with the last two of Nonna Malone’s cannoli and the case file for Scarborough House. One week down. It’s certainly been interesting and Artie is turning out to be a bit of a revelation, but I really didn’t expect to have to solve a murder enquiry in my first week of business.

I fill my face with cannoli and sigh in the silence, trying not to dwell on the fact that right now, Marina’s suggestion of consulting my Magic 8 Ball to see who killed Douglas Scarborough feels like a viable suggestion. Please, please let me sort this out, I pray, to no God in particular. I’m not the religious kind, unless there happens to be a Goddess of sweet things, because if there is I’ll fall down on my knees and swear allegiance right now. I’d happily swallow a holy sugar lump and beg for divine assistance. Please help me, Candy Goddess, because I’m twenty-seven now, and despite my optimism and wise-cracking to get through each day, I mostly feel like a kid terrified that I’m going to screw up. Starting the agency has been brilliant in so many ways, I don’t have enough fingers to count them, but it’s also scary as hell. I’m scared of letting Marina and Artie down, of letting the Scarborough’s down, and of letting myself down. I was never lucky enough to know my dad, but I’m scared of letting him down too.

This whole thing really, really needs to work.

I
t’s
Saturday morning and I hope for their sake that whoever is banging on my door has a damn good reason. I was in the middle of one of my favourite recurring dreams, one where Thor comes and rescues me from the ice palace I’m trapped in for no discernible reason. What? So superheroes factor highly in my dreams. We all have our oddities, and that’s one of mine. If a man can fly, turn green or smash things with an improbably big sledgehammer, I’m forever his girl. It strikes me momentarily that Leo is the only man I know in real life who is game enough to wear a cape, but I dismiss the thought as quickly as it arrived and haul my ass out of bed to answer the door.

‘Melody Bittersweet?’ Dwayne, my postman, queries even though I went to school with his sister and he knows perfectly well who I am.

‘I am she.’ I hold my hand out and accept the package, frowning. I haven’t ordered anything I can think of.

‘Feels like a book to me,’ Dwayne says, looking it over as if he expects me to open it on the doorstep to satisfy his curiosity.

‘Is it your policy to feel everyone’s mail, or just mine?’

His face cracks into a grin that is anything but innocent. ‘Oh, I’m selective these days. Got caught out handling a woman off the estate’s sex toys a while back.’ The smile falls from his face and he leans a little closer. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but they were second hand off eBay.’ He shudders. ‘Not even bubble wrapped. I mean, who does that?’

‘I honestly don’t want to know,’ I say, closing the door. I gave up Thor for this.

It is a book, but not one I’ve ordered. The postmark tells me that it was sent from Hay-on-Wye, which is odd because I don’t know anyone there, and there is no accompanying note, which is even odder. Why would someone send me an anonymous gift? I turn the book over in my hands and study the embossed gold title. One thing’s for sure, this hasn’t been delivered to me by accident.

Twenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost-Hunter
by Elliott O’ Donnell. It’s old; battered, emerald-green leather with gilt-edged pages and is quite hefty. I peep inside at the date of publication; 1917.

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.

* * *

T
he 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.

* * *

‘
I
saac
?’

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.