Page 8 of Crazy Spooky Love
It might have sounded professional if she wasn’t blowing bubbles with her gum.
“Can I speak with Melanie Sweetbitter, please?”
“Melody Bittersweet,” Marina corrects. “You can’t be that interested in speaking to her if you can’t even be bothered to get her name right.”
I clear my throat and cross the room to stand beside Marina.
We watch the toweringly tall, awkward boy on the doorstep turn a painful shade of beetroot as he digs around in the inside pocket of his ill-fitting suit jacket. He pulls out a letter I recognize and shakes it open. Arthur Elliott. He looks like a much younger, skinnier version of his ruddy-cheeked father.
“Melody Bittersweet?” he says, his nervous gray eyes flickering betweenus.
Marina cocks her head toward me as I step forward and hold my hand out.
“I’m Melody.” I try to fill my voice with easy confidence as I shake his clammy hand. “You must be Arthur. Come on in.”
I move back to make room for him to step inside, and yank Marina by the arm when she stays put, blocking the doorway.
“Shouldn’t we have a password?” she hisses at me as Arthur edges uncertainly aroundus.
“Like what?” I shoot out of the corner of my mouth.
She shrugs, closing the door. “I don’t know! Donuts? Limoncello babas?”
I hold in a laugh. “Behave yourself. You’re going to scare people off.”
“Says the one who sees dead people.”
Arthur is hovering by the desk, listening to us, his eyes rounder by the second.
“Have I come at a bad time?” The panic in his whispery croak suggests he thinks he has come at a very bad time indeed and would like to leave right away.
“No, no. Come and sit down, Arthur. You’re right on time.”
“I am?” If anything, he looks even more disconcerted to hear he’s on time for an appointment he didn’t actually know he had.
Marina steps forward and swings around the swivel chair in front of the desk. He swallows hard, as if there’s a chance it might be electrified, and then lowers his long frame into it and chews his lip.
“Water?” I ask, taking my seat opposite him. The boy nods. I’m not surprised. He looks as if he’s about to pass out. “Marina, could you grab Arthur a glass of water, please?”
“Whisky in it?” she jokes, looking at him, and he shakes his head slowly.
“I only drink beer. Two cans on a Friday teatime with my dad.” His eyes suddenly fill with tears and Marina looks stricken. I lower my gaze and give him a second to gather himself.
“That water?” I prompt Marina, and she pats Arthur on the shoulder before she disappears in search of a glass. That’s the thing about Marina. She’s full of wisecracks, everybody’s funny girl, but there’s a soft, sentimental vein that runs through her to the core. She sat beside my mother and cried when Kate Winslet pulled that old dude around the swimming pool, while I stuck my fingers down my throat and fake gagged into my cuppa.
“You sent me a letter,” Arthur said, looking at his lap.
“I did. I heard that you might be the right person for a job vacancy here.”
He looks up at last, but the expression in his eyes tells me that he doesn’t believeme.
“You heard from who?”
Righto. Sticky wicket. I can hardly tell him that his dead dad came to see me in his hi-vis jacket and talked me into offering his son a job, can I?
“A…friend?” I try, and his eyes grow even more troubled.
Ah, that’s right. He doesn’t have friends. “Umm…an old teacher?”
