Page 5 of Crazy Spooky Love
“Two, so what if you don’t know how to run a business? You’re a fast learner and you’ve got Glenda Jackson helping out every morning. That woman could run Microsoft in her lunch hour.” I’m slightly bolstered, because that is actually a fact. Back when we were in school, Glenda oversaw our revision timetables with a beadier eye than Anna Wintour keeps on her junior staff. We both aced our exams, and it was entirely because we were terrified of her.
“And three,” Marina cracks open a fresh pack of gum and holds up three fingers, “who gives a fuck if the ghosts laugh at you? They’re dead and you’re not, so you automatically win. Besides, they won’t be laughing when you suck them up with your ghost hoover, or whatever it is you’re gonna use.”
I laugh despite myself. “It’s not that, but thank you.” I wish I could wake up with even a fifth of Marina’s couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude. “Do you think I should get my hair cut into something that says serious businesswoman?” I ask, and she shoots me a look that says “have you lost your freakin’ mind?”
“You’ve had the same hairstyle since we were in high school,” she laughs. “Youownthat bob, Melody. It’s way too late to change the system now.”
“The system?”
She wafts her hand at me. “You’re always going to be the short, cute one with big brown eyes and cherry-flavored lip gloss, and I’m always going to be the slightly slutty one with too much hair, red lipstick, and a bad attitude. We go together. You cannot cut your hair; it would fuck with the system.”
The system is new to me, but when I consider it, she’s right. It’s taken us a decade to perfect our look, and for that we’ve earned theright to rock it for as long as we damn well choose. Besides, there’s no way I can go through life without cherry lip gloss. It keeps me going in between sugar fixes. The bob stays.
I might not be changing my look, but the office has had a complete overhaul and even if I do say so myself, it’s looking pretty swish. With the obvious oversight of the grubby chair I’m sitting on, it’s been mopped, polished, and vacuumed to within an inch of its life, and my start-up budget had run as far as a new swivel chair for my clients to sit in and one of those fancy slatted blinds that all offices need to have in order to be considered professional. I’ve avoided the obvious; no coat stand or tired yucca plant, no heavy glass ashtrays from the ’70s. This place is functional, with what I’d like to call a feminine touch, right down to the jug of fresh tulips on the coffee table in the relaxation area. The relaxation area! I know! Get me and my areas! It’s actually just a little gray flop-out sofa and an old wingback chair grouped around the fireplace and TV, but it counts as relaxing, right? I’m aiming for urban chic, or at the very least something that doesn’t scream boho ghost hunter. There will be no incense burning in this office.
“Maybe you should get an incense burner.” Marina grins, and I let my middle finger do the talking forme.
She shrugs and slides from the desk, blowing me a kiss as she makes to leave.
“Gotta shoot. Places to be.” I know that means she needs to get back to take over caring for her elderly grandpa while her mother works. Marina’s folks are big on family loyalty.
“You’ll come back on Monday though?”
“You think I’d be late for my first morning at work?” She rolls her eyes. “Nine o’clock. You and me. Ghost-busting girls are a go. It’s gonna be bloody brilliant.”
She throws me a wink as she skips out the door, calling “I’ll bring donuts,” over her shoulder as she disappears. I listen to her fast footsteps recede on the cobbles and send up a silent thank-you to her last boss for firing her a couple of weeks back. I don’t know the fulldetails, but this isn’t the first time she’s been let go. I expect Marina is one of those people who doesn’t do so well with being bossed around, even if the person giving the orders is her boss and supposed to tell her what to do. She wasn’t especially distressed about being fired; she doesn’t work because she needs the money as much as because she needs to get out of the family nest. She practically invited herself to come and work at the agency, and boy was I going to be glad of the company and the support.
So that makes three. Marina, Glenda Jackson, and me. I know Glenda’s doing only a couple of hours a day, but believe me when I say that there’s no need to count that as part-time where Glenda’s concerned.
God, I’m knackered. This chair might be dusty but it’s pretty comfortable, and I lean my head against the side wing and close my eyes. I’m just drifting pleasantly into a dream where RobertDowneyJr.—suited up as Iron Man, naturally—is on one knee proposing to me, when someone coughs pointedly. I haven’t heard the door open, so I keep my eyes firmly closed and sigh.
“Unless you’re devastatingly handsome with eyes like hazelnut espresso and a rapier-sharp wit, and hopelessly in love with me, go away.”
There’s silence, and then “I’m bald, sixty-two, and I died three weeks ago in a freak barrel accident, but I’ll give it a go if it means you’ll sit up and listen.”
I groan and open my eyes to see an aging bald guy standing by the fireplace in a hi-vis jacket. He has ruddy cheeks for a dead man; probably a beer drinker when he was alive. “You had me atfreak accident,” I grumble. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“Arthur Elliott.” He extends his hand and we both stare at it, and then he slowly withdraws it when he realizes that I can’t shakeit.
“Rookie mistake,” I tell him. “What was the freak accident?”
Arthur shakes his head and studies his scuffed steel toe–cap boots. “Worked for the brewery. Barrel fell on my head in the yard.”
That explains the hi-vis vest, then. I hold back from asking himif he’d been drinking the barrel’s contents at the time. “Okay, so that covers how you came to be dead. What it doesn’t tell me is what you’re doing in my new office.”
He looks around the room, nodding with approval. “Very nice it is too.”
I’ve met enough ghosts to know that they usually want something, so his attempt at flattery doesn’t get him far with me. I fold my arms across my chest and eye him steadily.
“Fine,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his shiny head. “I went up front first off to speak to Dicey and she suggested I come talk to you.”
“My gran sent you?”
What is she playing at? It’s not part of my business plan for her to send ghosts my way if she can’t be bothered to pass their messages on herself.
Arthur nods. “It’s about my lad, Arthur, see?”
“You and your son are both called ‘Arthur’?” I say, distracted. “Wasn’t that confusing at home?”
