Owen turned an enquiring gaze towards me, catching me in full-on stare mode. All thoughts of Nico melted away as I felt the beginnings of a ruby tide creeping up my neck. I looked away fast and tried to remember what the question had been. ‘No, they’re not all like you. But I’ve never been scared – I didn’t even realise they were ghosts at first. There was a girl called Poppy who haunted our flat in Edinburgh. My mum thought I was playing with an imaginary friend when I mentioned her.’
Mum had put up with my childish babblings about my ‘pretend friend’ with good grace, even when I insisted she swapped seats because Poppy wanted to sit next to me. That all changed the day Celestine came to visit, though, and told Mum she could see Poppy, too. We’d moved shortly afterwards and I never saw Poppy again. I wondered about her often, whether she’d understood why I’d abandoned her and found peace. I hoped she had.
Owen threw me a bemused look. ‘You really are the weirdest girl I’ve ever met.’
I shrugged. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. Weird might as well be my middle name.’
‘That would be – uh – weird,’ he agreed. ‘In every sense of the word.’
I felt a goofy smile threatening to take over my face and cleared my throat. ‘Don’t think you’re going to distract me, by the way. You promised to tell me anything I wanted to know.’
The smile faded from his face. ‘So I did. I’m going to regret that, aren’t I?’
We were nearing the north-east boundary of the park, where a small crowd was gathered at Speakers’ Corner, listening to an elderly man ranting about the little green men who’d stolen his mobility scooter. I gestured to some trees not far away. ‘Shall we head that way? This mobile phone earpiece thing gives me some protection but I don’t want to end up looking as loony as that bloke.’
Owen nodded and we changed direction. Once we reached the trees, I spread my jacket on the grass and Owen settled down beside me.
‘Go on, then,’ he said, and I couldn’t decide if his grim tone was put on or not. ‘What do you want to know?’
I opened my mouth to ask about his scar and closed it again. Maybe he didn’t want me to know. He hadn’t seemed especially sensitive about it the day before but that could have been bravado. Perhaps he wasn’t as OK with it as I’d thought. Besides, another question was oiling its way around my brain and distracting me with its beguiling whisper. I tried to squash it but it was too slippery and had escaped through my mouth before I could stop it. ‘Did you have a girlfriend before you died?’
My cheeks flooded with heat and I shut my eyes in mortified horror. Maybe I hadn’t really just said that out loud. I opened one eye to see Owen watching me, eyebrows raised in surprise. Oh God, I had.
‘That wasn’t what I was expecting,’ he said, lips quirking into a smile. ‘But since you ask, I didn’t. Girls tended to be scared off by this, believe it or not.’
He pointed to his scar and I felt my face go even redder. He probably thought I was making fun of him. ‘Only the shallow ones would have let it bother them,’ I said, the words tumbling out, ‘and they weren’t worthy of your attention.’
Great, now I sounded like his doting grandmother. I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands and groan.
‘Thank you,’ Owen said gravely. ‘I wouldn’t have minded a shallow girlfriend. Then at least I would have known what it was like to kiss someone before I died.’
I looked up at him and our eyes met. For a split second something flashed between us and I actually considered leaning forwards and closing the gap between us. Then common sense came crashing in like a tsunami and I clutched at the only support I could find – reality. ‘So tell me how you got it.’
Owen eased back a little and grimaced. ‘You have to promise not to tell anyone.’ He shook his head at me. ‘I mean really promise. Only my family know the truth.’
Selfishly glad that we seemed to have moved past my embarrassment and onto his, I nodded. ‘Psychic’s honour.’
He sighed. ‘OK. Like I said yesterday, it was about six years ago. Cerys had seen some advert on TV and been bugging Mum and Dad for a pogo stick. So, for her eighth birthday, they got her one. It was pink and played the Go Go Bunnies when you hopped.’
I could practically see it now. And whatever had happened to the Go Go Bunnies? One minute they’d been the world’s best-known girlband, the next they’d vanished into pop oblivion, with only a pogo stick to remind the world they’d ever existed. I might have danced along to them myself six years ago, although screaming banshees wouldn’t have dragged the confession out of me now.
‘Anyway, Cerys couldn’t get the hang of pogo-ing and soon gave up,’ Owen went on. ‘Which was when I made my first mistake.’
I was starting to get a sick feeling in my stomach. ‘You didn’t.’
He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘I couldn’t resist it. Before long, I was hopping around the garden and it didn’t matter that Shake That Bunny Booty blasted out with every bounce.’
It was a hysterical mental image but I knew something horrific was coming next. ‘Please tell me it wasn’t an iron railing,’ I whispered, recalling an episode of Casualty where someone had impaled their chin on a spiked fence. It hadn’t ended well.
Owen pulled a face. ‘No, it wasn’t that. In fact, I think I’d have been all right if I’d stayed on the grass. But I thought I’d get better air-time if I went onto the concrete. Unfortunately, that’s where my dad’s greenhouse was.’
I squealed and covered my face. ‘Don’t. Just don’t.’
He puffed out his cheeks. ‘I was in hospital for weeks. At one point they were talking about doing a skin graft from my bum. Can you imagine how that would have gone down at school?’
The nicknames didn’t bear thinking about. Lowering my hands, I regarded him in sympathy. ‘So what did you tell them?’
‘That I walked into a glass door. Embarrassing enough but nothing like as bad as it could have been.’ He shifted awkwardly on the grass. ‘So now maybe you understand why I didn’t tell everyone I met?’
I did. ‘Thanks for trusting me.’
Owen’s smile was both rueful and sad. ‘No worries. Who are you going to tell, anyway?’
He was right, of course; who could I tell? Celestine, maybe, but I didn’t want her to know about Owen yet. Glancing around the park, I noticed the gathering shadows for the first time. ‘I have to go. I’m working at the Dearly D tonight.’
His forehead wrinkled. ‘The Dearly D?’
‘The Church of the Dearly Departed,’ I explained. ‘I mentioned it earlier. My aunt is a psychic there and I go along every now and then, to help out with the ghosts.’
He looked away. ‘Right. Sounds like fun.’
‘It’s not as bad as it sounds,’ I said, stung by the faint hint of scorn I thought I picked up. ‘I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow, if you like?’
His eyes met mine. ‘You’re coming back, then?’
I smirked. ‘Of course. If you think for one minute I’m letting you off without at least one chorus of Shake That Bunny Booty then you’re sadly mistaken.’
He groaned but I thought I caught a glimpse of pleasure in his expression.
‘Come on,’ I said, clambering to my feet. ‘I’ll walk you back to the lake. Unless you’d rather bunny hop?’
He rose and shook his head with a mournful expression. ‘See? I knew I should have kept my mouth shut.’
Cutting across the park to the tube station, I ran the afternoon’s events through my mind. It didn’t make entirely comfortable viewing. OK, I’d met Owen’s sister and he’d really opened up to me but I’d also come within a cat’s whisker of attempting to snog a ghost. Surely that was an abuse of psychic power or something? Celestine would be singularly unimpressed if she knew I was getting emotionally involved with a ghost. My job was to move them on, not give them a reason to stay. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and hurried towards the tube station, fanning my burning cheeks. I’d ju
st have to make sure no one ever found out about my shameful little fantasy, Owen included. Because one thing was for sure, it wasn’t the kind of thing normal psychics went around doing. Even amongst my own kind, I was warped. Weird was beginning to sound like the understatement of the year.
Chapter 6
‘Have you seen my history textbook? I left it on the dining-room table.’
It was Sunday evening and I was in full-on end-of-holiday panic mode. At the back of my mind was the knowledge that I’d be doing my best not to see Nico at school, but right now I was more concerned with wondering why the contents of my school bag had evaporated the moment I dropped it in the hallway at the end of term. At least I’d finished the witchcraft trials coursework I had to hand in, no thanks to Mary. Muttering dark curses, she’d tried to tip coffee over an illustration of Matthew Hopkins in my history textbook on crime and punishment. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover its torn-out pages stuffed down the toilet. I supposed I couldn’t blame her. If I’d been tried as a witch, I’d have been pretty sore at the Witchfinder General, too.
‘I realise it’s probably a bio-chemical hazard but have you looked in your room?’ Jeremy flicked the page of his magazine over and studied the contents. ‘I think Celestine took some stuff upstairs earlier when Mary threatened to douse it in candle-wax and burn it like they burned her.’
Eek, I didn’t want to think about how I’d explain that one to Miss Pointer at school. I’d already made some ill-advised comments in class and didn’t need to draw any more attention to myself. And what did he mean, ‘a bio-chemical hazard’? My room might work the lived-in look but it wasn’t a landfill site. ‘OK, I’ll look. Any chance of a lift in the morning?’
Usually, I took the bus but if I was running late then Jeremy dropped me off outside the school gates. Well, I say outside; it depended on who was walking past at the time. Sometimes, I ducked down in my seat and made him drive around the corner so no one saw me getting out of his battered old car.
He shifted on the sofa and threw me an uncomfortable look. ‘Sure, if you don’t mind taking the scenic route – I’m avoiding Hornsey Lane at the moment.’
I didn’t blame him. A few months ago he’d taken me to school and got himself an admirer in the shape of another ghost he could actually see – the suicidal ghost who haunted the bridge on the lane. Despite his best efforts, Isobel had refused to accept that he wasn’t interested and now spent most of her time trying to get his attention. Luckily for Jeremy, Mary turned completely hormonal whenever another ghost so much as groaned near our house and Isobel was too scared to come inside, otherwise I had no doubt she’d have stalked him right into the shower. Celestine was being her usual understanding self but even I could see she was rattled by Isobel’s misplaced affection. I’d tried everything, from outing Jeremy’s secret Barbra Streisand habit to reminding her that his dress sense left a lot to be desired; nothing could persuade her that Jeremy wasn’t the one for her and the small fact that he was living and she was dead wasn’t going to get in her way.
‘I’ve been thinking about your little problem, actually,’ I said.
I had, too, ever since my treacherous subconscious had planted the idea of snogging Owen in my mind. If I needed any more evidence that a living-dead romance was a bad idea, I only had to think of Isobel.
Jeremy looked up. ‘Oh?’
‘What if she fell for someone else?’
He stared at me. ‘Like who? It’s not as though she can sign up to Dates-R-Us, is it?’
‘No, but there are plenty of single male ghosts at the Dearly D. Didn’t you say your friend Lucy had met her soulmate after she’d died? Why can’t Isobel?’
I knew that Lucy had passed across to the astral plane with her ghostly boyfriend, Ryan. Maybe a broken heart was all that was keeping Isobel here; if we fixed that, we’d solve all our problems.
Jeremy opened and closed his mouth several times, as though searching for the downside. Then he said, ‘That’s not a bad idea. Who did you have in mind?’
Mentally, I flipped through the Dearly D regulars. Isobel was thirty-six and had – well – unusual taste in men, if Jeremy was anything to go by. The church was teeming with male ghosts searching for the meaning of their afterlife – surely one of them would catch Isobel’s eye? For one brief second, I considered introducing her to Gawjus George, then dismissed the thought immediately. I couldn’t do that to her, no matter how annoying she got; George was older than God and had serious oral hygiene issues. How about Tony, the Elvis impersonator? The white sequinned suit didn’t do it for me but he had a good heart and his fake tan wasn’t the most orange I’d ever seen.
‘I’m still working on that part,’ I admitted. ‘There must be someone better for her than you, though.’
‘Thanks,’ Jeremy said, in a dry tone. ‘That gives me a real confidence boost.’
Replaying the sentence in my head, I batted him on the arm fondly. ‘You know what I mean.’
The corners of his eyes crinkled. ‘I do. Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ I said, sliding onto the sofa and reaching for the laptop. ‘I’ve always fancied myself as a match-maker.’
After a quick Skype call to my mum, I logged onto Facebook to see whether Megan was online. Over a week had passed since our dip in the Serpentine and, although she’d been given a clean bill of health and discharged from hospital, I wouldn’t put it past her to use it to escape the first day back at school after the holidays. I’d have probably tried it myself if I thought I could get away with it.
The Friend Request icon in the corner of the screen glowed red at me. I clicked on it, unsurprised when I saw it was from Nico. He’d sent a few requests in recent weeks and I’d ignored them all; it was hard but our break-up had been painful and I wasn’t about to risk getting hurt again. Especially since I’d found out the hard way that his love only went as deep as my psychic ability.
Megan wasn’t online but she’d messaged me to say she couldn’t wait to see Charlie again, which meant nothing short of an earthquake would keep her away from school in the morning. I logged off the laptop, deep in thought. Depending on how my match-making went with Isobel, I might try my hand at getting Megan and Charlie together. Maybe the good karma would bounce back on me and I’d meet a regular boy for a change, someone who wasn’t in league with Count Dracula or not breathing any more.
Leaving Jeremy engrossed in his magazine, I trundled up the stairs to look for the history textbook and passed Mary on the landing. She threw me a suspicious look before floating through the ceiling into the attic where she rested. Who was I trying to kid, I asked myself as I closed my bedroom door and surveyed the cluttered floor gloomily. I’d spent the last fourteen years talking to people no one else could see; normal wasn’t something that came as standard.
Megan looked like the WAG who’d bagged the footballer when I saw her by the school gates the next morning.
‘You’re cheerful, considering we’ve got history this morning,’ I commented. ‘Did you bang your head when you were underneath that boat?’
She fired a zillion-watt smile in my direction and tucked her arm through mine. ‘I don’t care. A miracle of epic proportions has happened and not even Miss Pointer’s droning voice can burst my bubble of joyfulness today.’
‘Wow,’ I said, impressed at her level of optimism. ‘You really did bang your head.’
Eyes sparkling, she stopped walking and dragged me towards the bushes at the edge of the playground. ‘Charlie asked me out!’
Ah. That explained everything. A big grin crossed my face. ‘That’s awesome! When?’
‘Last night. His mum called round to see mine and Charlie came too. We were talking about what movies we wanted to see and I said I liked the look of that new action film that’s just come out. So he asked if I wanted to go.’ She paused meaningfully. ‘With him. As in a date. This weekend.’
I ignored the odd looks her excited squeals were attracting. ‘Didn’
t you tell me you hated the look of that new action movie?’ I said, once Megan’s noise had subsided. ‘I think your exact words were that you’d rather eat live cockroaches than watch it.’
She threw me a mischievous smile. ‘Times change. If that’s what it takes to get a date with Charlie, then I’m up for the sacrifice. I might even get scared and bury my face in his shoulder and then he can slip his arm around me.’
When it came to romance, Megan was old school, I recalled as we walked to our classroom. I didn’t know whether she’d been raised on a diet of Mills and Boon and old films but, in her world, love conquered everything. Even though she’d seen how hurt I was, it had taken a serious amount of persuasion to convince her that Nico and I weren’t Highgate’s answer to Romeo and Juliet. If I’d told her the truth behind our split, she’d have only been even more convinced we were a pair of starcrossed lovers. I almost felt sorry for Charlie; he had no idea what he’d let himself in for.
* * *
Registration was every bit as dull as always. Ellie MacCauley and her friends sat whispering and firing daggers around the class. Mr Exton droned through the register and tried to stop us from talking, but he might as well have tried to stop the sun from shining. Megan was telling anyone who’d listen about our dramatic afternoon in Hyde Park and I was only mildly miffed when she clasped her hands to her chest and announced that Charlie had saved her life. It was almost a relief to leave her behind and head to my maths class.
The irritation had gone by the time she caught up with me on my way to history. ‘You survived maths then?’ she said, bouncing along beside me with customary cheerfulness.
We turned the corner into the humanities block and Megan’s gaze flickered towards the queue of kids lining the corridor ahead of us.
My So-Called Phantom Love Life Page 4
