by Nell Dixon
My mobile rang before I’d reached the checkout with my macaroni cheese for one.
“Hello, this is Brian. We can come this Saturday night. There’ll be myself, a couple of mediums who I usually work with and Beaner himself is coming too.” He spoke as if I was being granted some high honour.
“Yes, that would be great. Um, I may have a few friends here. Will that be all right?”
“It is a serious investigation, so they can't get in the way,” Brian warned.
“They won’t.” Lou would want to come and Mike was quite sensible. “Beaner has some family connections with your cottage so it’ll be interesting to see what we find.”
My heart gave a little leap. “Oh, I’m researching the families who’ve lived here to try and find...um” I was the only customer around but I felt embarrassed talking about ghosts in the middle of the corner shop.
“He’s got a rare talent has Beaner. He only accompanies us on exceptional cases as he has so many demands for his services.”
“Yes, of course.” I was desperate to know more.
“See you on Saturday.” Brian rang off and I went and paid for my supper.
I wondered what Beaner’s family connection with the cottage was. Whatever it might be it would have to wait till Saturday.
The next day started badly. Nasreen made sure she mentioned that she intended going to Steve and Chloe’s gig at least seven times to other people whenever I was in earshot. In the end even Jo lost her patience with her and moved her to work in one of the offices so we didn’t have to keep hearing her.
As soon as I had the chance I called the estate agent’s office listed on Mum’s details. I’m not terribly good at fibbing so perhaps it was as well that I was fishing via phone rather than visiting them in person.
“Morris, Gilbert and Smith, how may I help you?” The estate agent on the other end of the line sounded brisk and efficient. I crossed my fingers and took a deep breath.
“I saw a cottage listed for sale a few weeks ago that I was quite interested in and wondered if it was still on the market. Seacliffe, I believe it came with an acre or so of land?” I held my breath.
“Ah yes, a delightful house with extensive seaviews. There have been quite a few people interested in purchasing.” The agent sounded a little friendlier. No doubt the price tag of the cottage would ensure a nice commission for whoever sold it.
“I live outside the area at the moment and plan to relocate. I'm considering a visit soon to look at a number of properties. I thought I’d check that Seacliffe would still be available if I were to include it in my list?” I held my breath. This was the agent’s cue to say that it was under offer.
“We have a couple interested in the property but at the moment it is still available. Would you like an appointment to view?”
I almost dropped my mobile. Chuck was supposed to have paid a deposit with Mum’s money so the house should be off the market.
“Er… I’ll have to get back to you when I’m coming down.” I gave her my mobile number in case there had been some mix-up in the office and she was unaware of Mum’s offer.
I finished the call and debated texting Lou. A quick glance at the clock on the staff room wall though told me she was probably in the maternity unit with mum right now. I decided to wait until we met up for our evening class.
Jo let me finish work five minutes before Nasreen so I could make my escape without being subjected to more of her snide remarks. When I switched my mobile on I saw I’d got one text and one message. The text was from Lou.
‘Gud news, not having twins. Baby ok, see you ltr.’
Lou’s text made me smile even if it didn’t mention which of the baby’s potential daddies was in the frame.
The message was from Steve.
“Bloody Po-faced Poole turned up today and went nuts about the window.
Lots of problems. I’ll see you when you get home.” My spirits sank. Steve sounded both angry and upset. I wasn’t surprised that Mr Poole had been angry about the window; I only hoped that we weren’t going to get a massive fine.
I stashed my phone back in my bag and drove off. On impulse I called in at the supermarket on my way back to the cottage and picked up a couple of bottles of Steve’s favourite German wheat beer. Since he’d sounded so upset on the phone and he’d given me my lovely and expensive bath products, I wanted to do something nice for him in return.
He was sitting out on the patio when I walked along the garden path, a can of lager open in front of him.
“Bad day?” I took a seat opposite. “Got you a present.”
I fished in the carrier and presented him with the beer.
“Thanks, Kate.” He flashed me a brief smile.
“What happened when Mr Poole came?”
Steve raked his hand through his hair and sighed. “He went loco when he saw the boards over the bathroom window and found out the frame was smashed.”
“You did tell him we’d got the glass though?” It didn’t seem a good time to say ‘I told you so.’
He nodded. “Yes, I told him. And I assured him we had a good carpenter.”
“And?”
Steve studied the table top, disposing of a stray ant that had come to explore.
“He wasn’t impressed. He wanted to stop all the work.”
“Could he do that?” I didn’t know why I asked. I felt sick. Stopping all the renovations would cripple us. Every delay or setback meant we would be later going on the market eating up our profit margins.
Steve lifted his head. “Yeah, he could do that. It took me almost an hour to persuade him not to.”
I relaxed back in my seat. “Then we’re okay?”
He didn’t reply straight away.
“Steve?” My anxiety flooded back. “He isn’t going to fine us is he?”
Steve shook his head. “He’s going to be visiting every week. We can’t start anything new without his express permission and he’s going to double check every item of work we complete that could potentially affect the listed status.” He scuffed the soles of his work boots against the surface of the patio sending a small stone flying into the buddleia bush.
“At least he didn’t stop the work completely or hit us with a huge financial penalty.”
He took a sip from his lager tin. “Yeah, I suppose it could have been worse.
How was your day? Heard anything yet from Lou?”
I showed him Lou’s text and told him our suspicions about Chuck and the results of my conversation with the estate agency.
“Is the agency on the level? Or are they hoping to get the seller a better deal?”
“I looked them up on the web and they seem very reputable.”
Steve frowned. “Perhaps the agent made a mistake if she wasn’t the one who dealt with it?”
“I’ve left my mobile number and thought I’d call again next week. I am worried though, Ste. It doesn’t sound right to me and with Chuck going away I’m wondering if he plans to come back.”
“All you can do is wait and see what happens.”
“I know, you’re right.” It didn’t make me feel any better though. “I’d better go and make supper, I’m meeting Lou for our evening class.” I picked up my bag.
“Is that the one with the spooky people?” He made the question sound teasing but there was a definite undercurrent of some other emotion I couldn’t quite work out.
“No, it’s the history class with Mike. The paranormal team are coming on Saturday night to do the vigil. Do you want to take part?” Part of me wanted him to refuse. The other, scaredy-cat, part of me would feel a lot less frightened if he was there.
“Who else will be there?” He traced his finger around the top of his can.
“Mike is coming and I expect Lou will want to be there. Brian, the paranormal team man, says we have to take it seriously.”
“Is it still on then, between you and Mike?” Steve’s question startled me. We had deliberately avoided asking one anot
her about people we might be dating. The surprised look on my face must have given him his answer.
“Forget I said anything, after all it’s none of my business, is it?” He stood abruptly and strode away towards his caravan.
I’d arranged to pick Lou up from her flat. I barely had time to pull the car to a halt outside the block before Lou wrenched the door open and slipped inside the car.
“Do you want to see your niece or nephew?” She brandished a brown envelope at me.
I took the envelope from her and extracted some black and white pictures.
“I’ll explain.” Lou snatched them back and began to twist them round. “Look, here’s the head, and the bone in the top of its leg.” She pointed at various white and grey splodges while I tried to recognise what I was looking at.
“They aren’t very good pictures because it wouldn’t keep still. But, Kate, I saw the heart beat and everything.” Lou’s eyes shone with excitement and emotion.
“It’ll be a beautiful baby.” I slid the pictures back carefully inside the envelope and handed them back to her.
“I kept thinking while the woman started the scan that I’d feel stupid if there was nothing there. You know, if I’d misread the pregnancy tests or I’d been having a phantom pregnancy.” She dashed her hand across her eyes. “Then she turned the screen towards me and Mum and said, ‘there’s the heartbeat’, and we started crying.”
Lou sniffed. “I really am having a baby, Kate.”
“I know.” I grinned back at her. My own eyes had become a bit blurry with tears.
“Anybody seeing us will think we’re both daft, laughing and crying at the same time.” She pulled a tissue from her bag and blew her nose.
“Did they work your dates out?” She still hadn’t mentioned who the father might be.
She tucked her tissue and the envelope with the scan pictures away inside her bag. “Yes, they were pretty much what the doctor and the midwife had said.”
“So?”
“So, it could still be either Gary or Jamie. I can have a paternity test done when the baby's born if I want to.”
I sat and silently digested this piece of information.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s my baby. I don’t want to share it with one of them.” Her lower lip trembled.
“But one day the baby will want to know who its daddy is.” My heart squeezed as I looked at my pretty, stubborn little sister.
“I know, that’s what Mum said too.” She reached for her seatbelt and clipped it into place. “I’ll cross that bridge later on.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The traffic was unusually heavy for a Wednesday evening. Consequently we were ten minutes late sneaking in to take our customary seats at the back of the class.
Mike gave us a nod of acknowledgement and carried on with his lecture.
It seemed that tonight’s class was mainly going to be about looking for the architectural details you could use to date various parts of your home. On the screen behind him appeared a selection of slides about bricks. My hand automatically made notes while my mind strayed to wondering about Steve and his gig.
He’d been happy to put the music side of his life on the back burner while we’d been together. He’d always said he was glad to be out of the music industry. I think he’d seen too much of the darker underbelly of fame to want to go back there again. Too many of his friends had fallen prey to drugs or alcohol or seen their money vanish into the pockets of dodgy managers or dodgy contracts.
He still played his guitar and sang but he hadn’t written any new music for a long time. The band days had been behind him when we’d met so I’d never actually had to cope with too many problems from jealous fans or attention from the paparazzi. Unless Nasreen counted as a jealous fan. I smiled to myself imagining posters of Steve on her bedroom wall.
“What’s so funny about drainpipes?” Lou whispered, jolting me back to the present.
“Nothing.” I made a few more notes and went back to my reverie.
Steve hadn’t mentioned the gig or that he had started writing music again to me at all. There was no reason he should have but even so, I felt a little hurt that he hadn’t. Nas had said he was in a band with Jamie and her. Even if I’d been brave enough to take a peep I don’t think I could have stood seeing Chloe and Steve singing together.
A huge sigh escaped me causing Lou to frown and poke me in the ribs with her pencil. I’d been so busy over the last few months convincing myself that I had no feelings left for Steve, that I disliked him. Then we’d fallen into bed together again.
Now I wasn’t sure how I felt.
Lou had said she thought he was still in love with me, but if he was he wouldn’t be seeing Chloe. Even if he was still in love with me it changed nothing. He hadn’t been in love enough with me to give me the foreverness that I wanted. We’d simply been drifting along in a comfortable rut and.
He’d said he loved me. We’d lived together, shared a house – lots of houses, a bank account and a cat but while I’d dreamed of a wedding and babies we’d never talked about them. It had been an unspoken assumption by everyone that knew us, me included, that that was where our relationship had been headed.
Dimly, I realised that Mike had finished talking and the rest of the class was busy helping themselves to cups of tea and chocolate biscuits. Lou plonked herself back down and deposited a stack of five biscuits onto the table in front of her. I gave her a questioning look.
“What? I’m eating for two, remember? Besides you’ve been miles away all through that talk. You’d better go and get a drink if you want one before he kicks off for the second half.” Lou crunched into her biscuit, spilling crumbs down her top.
“I bet there aren’t any biscuits left.”
She smiled sweetly and took another large bite of biscuit.
“How is the ghost hunt going? Have you found out anything else about your cottage?” Mavis, of the matching tee shirts asked, as I took the last Jammy Dodger from the plate next to the urn.
“Brian is coming on Saturday night with the paranormal team. He said someone called Beaner was coming as he knew more about the house.”
“Ooh, Beaner himself is coming? He only goes to the houses that he thinks have real psychic energy. You’re very lucky.” She looked impressed.
“What does he do then, this Beaner?”
Mavis’s eyes rounded. “He’s extremely well known in psychic circles. He can see things other people can’t see. If anyone can tell you about your ghost it’ll be Beaner. How exciting for you.”
I wasn’t sure if I was excited. Scared, maybe. Mike gave a polite cough at the front of the class to indicate that we should all get back to our seats so I couldn’t ask her anything else.
Mike had organised a picture quiz for the second half of his lecture to test us on our ability to identify architectural features so I had little opportunity to daydream or worry for the next hour. Instead I had to focus on bricks, plasterwork and downpipes.
Finally class was finished and we all packed our things away.
“We didn’t think you were coming tonight when you were late,” Mavis remarked as I stowed my notes into my folder.
“We got held up in the traffic,” Lou replied.
“It’s busy out. Somebody said there was some kind of concert on at one of the clubs and everybody was going there.” Mavis’s matching half joined us.
Lou exchanged a meaningful look with me. It sounded as if Steve’s secret gig wasn’t exactly secret. The rest of the class filed out leaving Lou and I to be last as usual.
“Fancy a drink tonight, ladies?” Mike asked.
“Why not?” I didn’t fancy going back to the cottage on my own yet. I knew I would keep thinking about Steve and his gig.
We walked across the street to our usual post-class pub.
“It’s quiet in here tonight.” Mike remarked as he handed our drinks to us.
“I think everyone is at Benny’s Bar,” Lo
u said.
He looked puzzled.
“Steve is playing there tonight apparently. It’s his first live performance in years. It was supposed to be a secret gig except I think the word got out.” I took a gulp of my juice and wished I wasn’t driving. I could have done with something stronger.
Mike’s face cleared. “Ah, I see.”
Lou gave me a look that clearly indicated she didn’t think he did see. I didn’t want to be drawn into any kind of discussion about Steve and his group so I told Lou and Mike what Mavis had said about Beaner.
“It sounds scary to me. I might need to bring Jamie along to hold my hand.”
Lou gave an exaggerated shudder as she spoke.
I wondered if Steve would hold my hand if I got scared.
“I’ll be interested to see if there is any historical or scientific data that emerges from the experience,” Mike mused.
A warm feeling of affection swept through me. Mike was so very down-to-earth, why couldn’t I have fallen for him instead of someone like Steve? We stayed in the pub for a while chatting about ghosts whilst Mike told us all the different ways he thought people could fake psychic phenomena and apparitions.
Eventually however Lou started to droop, so we said goodbye to Mike and I drove my sister back to her flat.
“How do you think Steve’s gig will have gone?”
I’d hoped Lou wouldn’t ask me that. I’d spent the last hour or so trying to avoid thinking about it.
“If it’s what he wants then I hope it went well.” My words didn’t sound convincing even to me.
I did wish him well. It wasn’t as if I wanted him to be unhappy. It was simply that I’d wanted him to be happy with me. Lou nibbled on her lower lip as if she wanted to say something more but she didn’t.
“When do you plan to talk to Jamie and Gary about the baby? You can’t leave it much longer, you’ll be starting to show soon.”
