Page 7 of A Very Happy Halloween

“Washing won’t work. It was gloss paint. The door needs sanding down and repainting, the doorstep too. Plus he’ll need to use his allowance to buy a new doormat.”

More money that I didn’t have. I bit back a groan. “We’ll go to the hardware store first. Will eleven-ish work?”

“Eleven is fine.”

“Thanks for being so understanding about all this, uh… I didn’t get your name?”

“You can call me Chip.”

“Chip?”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“Uh, no? No problem.” The name didn’t match the voice, that was all. With that gravelly timbre, he sounded like the hero from a romance novel, and romance-novel heroes weren’t called Chip. Maybe that was why his voice seemed familiar? I did listen to a lot of audiobooks. “Where do you live? I mean, where should we come to paint the door?”

“Your son can give you the answer to that question.”

Harry would tell me? Great. One more difficulty on top of the eleventy million I was already dealing with, but Chip didn’t strike me as the type of man who would bend in an argument.

“Wish me luck.”

“What should I call you?”

“Janie. I’m Janie. And I guess we’ll see you tomorrow.”

His soft chuckle sent a ripple of something dark and sinful through me.

“Good luck, Janie.”

Four

“Harry sucks, Harry sucks, Harry got told off,” Alfie sang as he rode around the hardware store on the trolley. I didn’t particularly like him riding on the trolley, but if I made him walk, he’d only wander off. Harry was dragging his heels behind us with a face like a winter thundercloud.

“Alfie, don’t be rude to your brother.”

“Why not? It’s his fault we have to paint stuff at the creepy haunted house. I want to watch a movie. You said I could have popcorn.”

The discussion with Harry had gone about as well as I’d figured it would. At first, he’d denied everything, which was a trick he’d probably learned from Shawn, who’d learned it from his mother. When I arrived to pick Harry up last night, I’d broached the subject of the boys’ excursion with her while Harry used the loo, and she’d flat-out denied it had happened. Even when I showed her the video, she’d assured me that “Shawn would never do something like that.” Shawn had stood behind her, smirking in his royal-blue sweatshirt, and I realised I needed to find a backup babysitter, fast.

“If you both behave, we can go to the cinema next week.”

“Why can’t I go to Dad’s house? I don’t want to watch Harry paint stuff.”

“Dad’s helping Luisa to fix a water leak at the salon today.”

There, that sounded better than “Dad’s helping Luisa to find her tonsils and doesn’t want to be interrupted.” I didn’t believe the water leak excuse at all. Not only was Steven useless at DIY, but Luisa’s cousin was also a plumber.

“I don’t like Luisa. She flushed Harry down the loo.”

“She did what?” I turned to Harry. “Is this true?”

“He means Harry the woodlouse,” Harry the human said. “Alfie was keeping him in the plastic thingy from a Kinder egg.”

“I made air holes,” Alfie said indignantly. “And I gave him pencil shavings to eat.”

“Alfie cried for, like, an hour.”

“I did not!”

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