Melody Bittersweet and The Girls' Ghostbusting Agency: A laugh out loud romantic comedy of Love, Life and ... Ghosts? (18 page)

‘Don’t come in, Melody,’ Leo murmurs, putting his arm out to the side to shield me. It’s an instinctive, protective gesture, and I’m momentarily thrown straight back into the fantasy where our babies are rolling on the green striped lawn and he’s sitting behind me on a swing-seat braiding my hair. I shake my head to clear out the rose-tinted image and step inside the room.

‘Isaac,’ I say, even as he reaches for another book. Leo instinctively moves in front of me, but I lean around him and look calmly, steadily, at the furious ghost.

‘Isaac, please. It’s me, Melody.’

Isaac stills with the book raised, his eyes finally fixed on me.

‘I read your mother’s diary, Isaac,’ I say. ‘I need to talk to you about Charles.’

The change in the room is electric. Isaac stiffens as if we’re playing statues, then lowers his arm and stares at me slack-jawed, his face a slow study of emotion. He cycles through rage to shock and then to grief. I stare at him, my heart racing, and then just when it seems that he might be about to speak, he disappears in a blink, like a light being abruptly switched off.

My shoulders sag and I feel like my knees might go from under me, so I drop down on the edge of the bed.

‘Clear the room,’ Leo says softly. ‘You’re safe to leave now.’

Donovan Scarborough charges in and helps his buyers to their feet, shooting Leo a filthy look.

‘You’re fired,’ he jabs his finger almost in Leo’s chest. Then he swings and points towards me. ‘You. Sort this out. You’ve got one more week.’

‘
W
hat was that all about
?’ Leo asks when we’re alone in the bedroom a few minutes later. He’s sitting next to me on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. He held my dreams in those hands for a while, and he didn’t take good enough care of them. ‘Who’s Charles?’ he asks. ‘The old boy won’t tell me a thing, just stares at me as if he’s taken the Fifth Amendment every time I ask him anything.’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ I say, aware I’m being evasive but at the end of the day we are not on the same team anymore. For a couple of moments back there it felt as if we were, but the reality is that he’d trample me into the dust when it comes to business, and that’s what this is.

‘Maybe . . . we could pool resources on this one?’ he says. ‘For old time’s sake?’

Oh, he so very nearly had me. Nostalgia had kicked in hard, a weird mix of seeing him wearing a shirt I gave him, adrenalin coursing like quicksilver through my blood, and the way he’d automatically covered me when he thought I was in danger. There is undeniable history between us, and we might always care enough to instinctively defend each other from the odd flying book, but
for old time’s sake
? Really? What else would he like to do for old time’s sake, I wonder? A drink? A quick tumble on the bedroom rug after we’ve straightened up? He’s trying to charm success out of my fingertips any way he can, and I’m afraid this lady’s not for fleecing.

‘I think you just got fired from the job,’ I point out, but he shakes his head.

‘Scarborough loves being on TV too much to fire me. He’ll come around, he’s due on the show himself next week. He won’t blow it off.’

I sigh heavily. It takes one vain man to understand another. The scales are falling quickly from my eyes again as far as Leo goes, I don’t know quite what came over me.

A thought strikes me. ‘No twins today?’

He looks evasive. ‘They’re busy at the weekend.’

I’d almost forgotten it’s Saturday. ‘Community service?’ I’m joking of course, but Marina will enjoy it when I tell her. She’s still sore that we didn’t tell Leo about the weird incident in the cellar.

He shoots me a sideways glance like he’s checking if I know something I shouldn’t. ‘Something like that.’

I don’t know what to make of that. ‘Are they local?’

He shakes his head, and I hear him swallow in the quiet room. ‘They moved here from up north to work for me.’

‘Wow,’ I say, surprised. It seems a huge commitment. ‘How did that come about?’

‘Twitter.’

I can’t help but feel he’s being deliberately vague. ‘You met them on Twitter and they moved here to work for you?’

‘They’re Darkling One and Two. They founded the group, and then they moved here to work with me.’

I process this. ‘You mean they started your fan club?’

Leo scrubs his hands over his face and grins. ‘I can’t help it if women find me irresistible, Mels.’

No one else has ever called me that. He coined it, and I kind of liked it when I was his girl. I’m not his girl anymore, and I’m not sure I like how it makes me feel to hear him say it now. It infers intimacy, and it establishes that the closeness that used to exist between us is still there, to some degree at least. I don’t have many exes, and Leo is definitely the only man I ever reached the stage of thinking forever-thoughts about.

It’s quite cosmopolitan to remain friends afterwards, isn’t it? All the celebs do it, boff each other, ditch each other, and then get snapped months later sharing a sandwich in Regent’s Park or a mocha chocca coconut latte frappuccino in a café in Camden. Granted, Shropshire is a long way from Camden and our coffee is more likely to be instant, but the intention is the same. I’m not hot-headed enough to tear photos in half or burn his clothes, and given the fact that Leo’s wearing a shirt I gave him, he isn’t either. I’m through wasting my energy hating him for choosing the bright lights of London over me; it hurt me hugely at the time but was probably sweetened by the fact that he was back within the year because one fifteen-minute spot a week wasn’t paying his exorbitant rent.

What we’re left as now is uneasy friends who’ve seen each other naked, and every now and then he says or does something that makes me think he regrets breaking us up. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say I’m ninety percent over Leo Dark, and the ten percent that feels nostalgically romantic towards him will never be big enough to let him near to my heart again.

‘I should probably go and find Lestat,’ I say, standing up. ‘This was . . .’ I search for the most appropriate way to describe the events of the morning. ‘Eventful.’

On the landing I change my mind about finding Lestat and head up the slim staircase to the attic expecting to find Isaac, but his chair is empty. The whole room is, and even though I widen my search around the house, there’s no trace of him anywhere. Maybe he found this morning just as stressful as I did and needs some time to lick his wounds. Or maybe he’s actively avoiding me because he doesn’t want to talk. Either way there’s little point in hanging around, so I extract Lestat from the sitting room sofa and head back to Babs, frustrated. That really didn’t go to plan at all. As I reach the garden gate, I hear Donovan Scarborough yelling from inside the house.

‘Who put a bloody TV in here?’

I break into a run.

‘
M
elody
, darling, I’m having a dinner party tonight and Rose just cancelled at the last minute. You’re not too busy to fill in, are you? You know how much an unbalanced table upsets me.’

‘Yes, I absolutely am too busy.’ I followed my nose into my mother’s kitchen when I came back from Scarborough House a little while back, and now I know why she’s cooking up such a storm; she’s having one of her many dinner parties. Pulling her empty mixing bowl towards me when she turns to slide the cake tin into the oven, I run my finger around the rim to scoop up any spare cake mix. I doubt my mother ever even asked Rose, one of her radio colleagues. She’s not catching me out like that again in a hurry. ‘Ask Gran to do it.’

‘I’m already coming.’ Gran is head-to-toe in cherry-red yoga spandex on the kitchen rug and looks at me upside down from between her knees.

‘So ask . . . I don’t know, somebody else. Anyone else. Just not me.’

‘It’s 4.00 p.m. on Saturday. Who am I going to be able to ask at such short notice?’ She looks pained. ‘I’m making paella. You said it was marvellous.’

‘It was. It is. Save me a doggy bag. Sorry, Mamma, I really do have something on this evening.’

She sighs grumpily. ‘What’s so important that you can’t cancel it to help your own mother?’

I say the only thing that will possibly keep me out of her bad books. ‘I have a date.’

‘A date?’ Her bad mood dissolves instantly. ‘Tell me more! Who with? Where?’

Oh crap, I should have thought this through. ‘It’s a blind date,’ I say. ‘At . . . the movies. Marina set it up.’

Some of the animation leaves my mother’s face.

‘Marina set it up?’ She loves Marina almost more than she loves me, but that also means that she knows my best friend’s limitations as well as I do. Any date Marina sets up should be approached with a good degree of caution. Her romantic history is even more chequered than mine, mostly because she terrifies men senseless.

‘A visiting second cousin, I think she said.’ I’m a terrible liar. Why did I say that?

My mother looks horrified. ‘From Sicily? But I don’t want you to up sticks and move to Italy, darling!’

This isn’t going very well; I’d probably have been better off just eating paella and making small talk. I wish I’d never mentioned the movies; I know full well she’ll grill me on what we saw in the morning. ‘He’s from Solihull, not Sicily. Calm down, will you? It’s just popcorn at the pictures, not an arranged marriage.’

Gran contorts herself into the lotus position on the rug then smiles at me serenely. ‘Put the TV on, would you, darling? My programme’s about to start.’

Relieved, I leave them to it and head back to my flat to check out the cinema listings.

* * *

W
e’re quite
lucky in Chapelwick, we have an old art deco cinema on the High Street that’s managed to survive the onslaught of the multiplex at the huge shopping centre a few miles away. The Regal only has two screens and the sound system is out of the arc, but it’s kind of cool and kitsch, one of the most beloved and protected features of the town. I’ve decided to hold my imaginary date there, mostly because I can walk to it and take my own wine. They don’t mind at all; in fact, they’ll give you a glass when you buy your ticket as long as you hand it in again afterwards.

Inside the foyer, I fold down my soaked brolly and shove it in the special wet-umbrella bucket by the revolving doors to collect at the end. You don’t get that kind of service in the multiplex, do you? As I shrug off my coat and hang it, I study the boards behind the booth attendant’s head to see what my film choice is. An advance screening of the brand new Scarlett Johansson blockbuster romantic comedy or, what do you know, another romance, only that one looks a bit more serious and stars Anthony Hopkins. Why couldn’t it have been a special showing of
Silence of the Lambs
instead? I’d far rather see him threaten to eat someone’s liver with a nice bottle of chianti than fall awkwardly in love with his nurse and then probably die, slumped in his meals-on-wheels dinner, as the poster seems to suggest. I sigh inwardly. A good old rom-com for one it is, then.

It’s quiet at least; it seems that most of the good people of Chapelwick are as put off by the sheeting rain as I would normally have been.

‘On your own, Ghostbuster?’

Oh crappola.
Really?
I’ve just settled myself in, popcorn on my lap, big glass of wine in my hand. I made zero effort with my appearance for my fake date, and now I sort of wish I’d gone wild with the mascara.

‘Of all the cinemas in the all the world, you have to choose to come to this one,’ I say, surreptitiously checking if Fletch has a date lurking behind him in the aisle. The only thing worse than him being here at all would be to have to endure watching him necking in the front row.

‘Work,’ he says, flashing his press pass as he drops into the seat next to mine. ‘Someone has to file the movie reviews.’

‘You can’t sit there,’ I say.

He crosses his long legs and peers into his popcorn. ‘Because?’

‘Because my date is due to arrive any minute. Pick someone else to harass.’

‘Your date?’ he grins. ‘I don’t think so.’

I’m incensed. It doesn’t matter that I’m lying, the fact that he instantly assumes I won’t have a date pisses me off.

‘You won’t be saying that when he arrives.’ I take a sip of wine and he just laughs and fills his face with popcorn.

He looks me over, assessing. ‘You have one glass, billy-no-mates popcorn for one, a stain on your jeans and I doubt you’ve even brushed your hair. No way are you on a date.’

‘It’s bloody windy out there, Sherlock!’ I protest, stung by the reference to my hair as I rub at the wet wine-splash on my leg.

He shrugs. ‘I didn’t say it looked a mess. The ‘just tumbled out of bed’ bird’s nest looks good on you.’

I dig a hairband out of the pocket of my jeans and fasten my hair up, silenced by the compliment-and-insult sandwich.

‘So if you’re not here on a date, why are you here?’

I could be truthful and tell him that I’m hiding out from my mother’s dinner party, but I don’t want to bring up the subject of my family because he’ll probably insult them and then I’ll throw my wine in his face and we’ll both likely be banned from The Regal. I like The Regal enough not to risk it.

‘I love romantic movies.’ God, that lie actually hurt me. It was that or express a special interest in Scarlett Johansson, which I expect would only amuse him even more.

‘Now that surprises me,’ he drawls. ‘I’d have had you down as a blood-and-guts action movie girl.’

Oh, how I want to say yes, that’s exactly what I am. Throw in a superhero and I’m practically orgasmic, but I just shake my head demurely and then down half of my glass of wine. This lying thing isn’t working out well for me today.

As the movie begins, I try really hard to concentrate on the plot, but Fletch is next to me making the odd note in his pocket book as he watches it and he’s distracting me. I don’t get what’s happening between us. I don’t like him at all, but I react to him like a daisy, spreading my petals in delight when the sun comes out. I recognise the warm leather and spice smell of him before I see him, and he sparks off a swarm of fireflies in my stomach. He detests everything about the life I lead, yet still he kissed me and bought me a pooper-scooper.

I mean, I know what this is. We live in a small town and pickings are slim. We’re physically attracted to each other, and sometimes only another actual human will do, rather than something Ann Summers can supply you with, but why this particular human? I can well imagine my mother’s face tomorrow if I tell her I spent the evening with Fletcher Gunn. She’ll wish she hadn’t been so sniffy about Marina’s Sicilian cousin then, won’t she? Not that I’m spending the evening with Fletch. He just happens to be in the same place at the same time and in the very next seat, even though the cinema is practically empty. It’s not the same as spending the evening together.

The movie is about half way through and I’m about the same way through my bottle of wine when things up on screen suddenly take a turn towards sexy. Scarlett is all tearful and wobbly lipped, and Fletch scrawls something in his notebook and then shows it to me.

She’s probably just won an onion-chopping competition.

I laugh under my breath as Scarlett’s leading man wipes her tears away with his fingertips, then I take Fletch’s pad and pen and write my reply.

He’s probably bought her a shit gift to cheer her up.

Fletch takes the book back and reads my reply, as, on screen, Scarlett’s beau draws her into his arms and kisses her tenderly. I watch them, and horribly, it makes me want Fletch to do the same.

Should I snog your face off now?

I look up at the screen and see the guy unbuttoning Scarlett’s blouse.

Leave it to the professionals. He looks like he knows what he’s doing.

Fletch reads it, then puts his pocket book down on the chair to the other side of him, props his feet on the chair in front of him and flings his arm along the back of my seat. We watch in silence as they make out on the screen and I make headway on my third glass of wine. At around about the point where Scarlett’s bra hits the floor I become aware that Fletch’s fingertips are resting on the back of my neck, so barely-there and casual that it means nothing, but for one tiny second it means everything. It is literally all I can think about. Up there on the screen Scarlett is sighing and rolling around with pleasure while I am perfectly still and silent in my seat, yet still, I think,
I win
.

* * *

I
t’s
after 10.00 p.m. and darkness has fallen when we step outside into the rain again later. It wasn’t a bad movie as it turned out, but as is the tradition with all good rom-coms, the girl got her guy and they lived happily ever after in the end. She didn’t get squiffy on rosé, wonder if the local reporter was stroking her neck or not and then go home to bed alone.

‘Well, goodnight,’ I say as I turn to him on the pavement, doing an awkward half-smile, half-gurn. He looks as if he’s going to walk with me, so I add, ‘you really don’t need to walk me home.’

‘I wasn’t going to. My car’s on the car park at the end of the High Street. I can walk ten paces behind you if you’d rather though.’

Now who feels like a prize cock? Me, that’s who. I flail for a smart answer and come up with zilch. I’m forced to settle for a sarky scowl and start walking, my umbrella held out to shield myself from the pouring rain.

‘Hey, Melody,’ he calls from beneath the shelter of The Regal canopy. ‘Would it count as walking you home if you let me share your umbrella?’

I pause, and then sigh. It really is belting down. ‘Come on then.’

He huddles beneath the brolly, and then takes it from my fingers and holds it at a level that means he doesn’t need to walk on his knees to stay dry. We stand close through necessity and I pick up a fast pace; even Usain Bolt wouldn’t confuse this with a romantic stroll. It’s three minutes and twenty-two seconds until we reach the cobbled alleyway at the side of Blithe Sprits, not that I’m counting the seconds or anything.

‘This is me,’ I say unnecessarily, seeing as we both know that perfectly well. He steps out of the force of the rain for a second as I fold the umbrella down.

‘It is,’ he says. Rain spikes his dark lashes as he bunches his shoulders high and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. Maybe it’s the romantic movie, or maybe it’s my man-drought, or maybe it’s the bottle of wine on an empty stomach, but all of a sudden and out of nowhere, I want him with a force that knocks the breath from my body.

‘Kiss me like I’m Scarlett Johansson?’ Shit. I hope for my own sake that I forget I said that by morning.

‘Fuck, Bittersweet,’ he says, low and quiet. He sounds serious enough to be almost angry. ‘I was so close to walking away.’

Then he pushes me back against the wall and presses his body into mine, his hand flat on the wall beside my head as he kisses me in a way that Scarlett Johansson can only dream about.