by Brigid Coady
Yes, it was the stress from the wedding that was getting to her. That was probably why she'd dreamt of Jessica. Really it was funny when she thought about it, how her subconscious was playing tricks on her. And everyone knew you shouldn't read into dreams.
Then a memory tickled the back of her mind and as it poked a bit harder at her, a black cloud of dread appeared on her horizon, it loomed and crept closer. It was something to do with the wedding… the clouds gathered into a storm and closed in. There was a sinking feeling in her stomach, her recently stretched shoulders tightened.
What was it?
And simultaneously at the exact point she could put a name to her dread, a calendar reminder on her computer bleeped and named it for her.
Mel’s Hen Weekend – 1 day
The hen weekend.
Her vision of a blessed free weekend was winked out in the flip of a binary switch, the production of a calendar reminder. This time tomorrow she would be in the midst of the most hellish endurance sport known to womankind… the hen party. And as maid of honour there was no way she could miss it or even leave early. She was in for the duration, no time off for good behaviour.
And even she wouldn't back out and blame work. She might hate weddings but she really did love Mel. She owed her for making her teen years at least partly bearable. For giving her a refuge from the coldness at home.
But Edie knew that every one of the other hens were card-carrying members of the ‘happily ever after’ clan.
Her phone rang, thankfully distracting her from the need to think any further about the hen night. She lunged for it without checking the caller ID.
“Edie Dickens,” she answered.
“Edie! It’s a disaster!” a voice squealed out of the earpiece.
She should've checked. Edie frowned as she moved the earpiece further away from her ear.
“Hi Mel,” she said, “What is it this time? The caterers have run out of pink icing? Barry has run off with the best man?”
And of course the other point of being maid of honour and best friend to the bride was that you were supposed to be available to calm down any nerves and last minute panics. It was a bit of a stretch because all the advice Edie had was to tell her to cancel the whole thing, run very fast in the opposite direction and use the money for something more sensible… like taking a course in underwater basket weaving.
“No! As if! Although now you say that I think I’ll just give the caterers a quick ring after we’ve chatted… just in case. God wouldn’t it be awful if they didn’t have pink icing for the cupcake cake? It would blow the entire colour scheme!”
Edie looked upwards in disgust. This was why she didn’t do weddings. And to think she wouldn’t even have Jessica to take the piss out of it with her.
Jessica.
She hadn’t really visited last night had she? She couldn’t have done. All that funny stuff about contracts and loving unconditionally… it was a load of bunkum obviously drawn from some weird and wonderful part of her mind and mixed with dodgy meat.
“Anyway what I phoned about is my bloody parents,” Mel had obviously finished worrying about the caterers.
“What’s up with Maggie and Doug?”
Mel’s parents were the only married couple that disproved Edie's theory. They had been together for thirty-nine years and even though Doug was a workaholic surgeon and was away working more than at home, they would be together for thirty-nine years more. They were safe and solid and completely unlike her own parents. When she was a teenager she used to wish they’d adopt her, that she could be part of their normal family. In fact she'd spent almost all her time round at their house. It was more of a home than the one she'd shared with her mum.
“They are acting like five-year-olds. They are squabbling in low, angry voices and whenever I ask them what’s wrong they both clam up and say there is nothing to worry about. You don’t think there is a problem with paying for it all, do you? Maybe they forgot to pay the deposit on the golf club? Oh God, I hope Dad isn’t going to be completely inappropriate during the speeches.”
Edie sighed. It was nothing startling then, no world-shattering event, Mel just needing to vent to the one person who had to listen. Her maid of honour.
“I’m sure your parents are fine,” Edie spoke absently as she opened her emails at the same time. “Doug probably brought up some surgical procedure at one of their charity dinners or something and put everyone off their scallops.”
“Yeah. Of course. You are so right Edie. I don’t know where my head is at.”
I know, thought Edie, your brain is on Planet Wedding and it has sucked any sense out of you.
But she didn’t say it. She also didn’t say she thought Mel had lost a fair few IQ points ever since she got engaged. Hell, who was she kidding? Ever since she fell in love. Why couldn’t Barry have run off with the best man? It would solve all manner of things. For once Edie kept her opinion to herself, Mel meant too much to her.
“OK, well I’ll see you at mine at eleven am, and no ducking out of anything. You promised.” Mel carried on.
“I’ll be there.” Edie promised as she said goodbye.
She even had to drive herself to her own execution. A three-hour car journey with the blushing bride before they even got to the hen weekend; if Edie’s body wasn’t so well disciplined her shoulders would have been round her ears, her back bent and she would be wringing her hands. Instead she picked at the chipped varnish on her thumbnail.
At six thirty, Edie repacked her briefcase with less work than she would have liked. She turned off her computer and left the pale and red eyed Rachel still at her desk.
“Oh, are you off?” Rachel sounded surprised.
Edie knew it was earlier than normal but if a hen night called then she would need to make sure she hit the gym that night instead of tomorrow.
“Good night, Rachel,” she said repressively. There was no need for her to keep Rachel up to date with her social life.
Marching out of her office she headed for the lift, thinking as she walked that she would do a quick five miles on the treadmill and then some weights.
Pressing the button, the chipped varnish on her thumbnail where she'd been picking at it caught her eye; she wondered whether the manicurist could fit her in tomorrow morning.
“We must stop meeting like this.” The deep voice from this morning spoke from somewhere behind her.
Her back tensed.
It was bad enough that she was haunted in her dreams now it felt as if she was being haunted in real life.
She ignored him.
“Tough day at the coalface, huh? So tired and drained from saving people’s marriages that you can’t speak?” the bass voice rumbled on.
Really. Saving people’s marriages? What kind of divorce lawyer did he think she was? It was in the title ‘divorce.’ Hilary Satis had taught her that when she’d been her mother’s lawyer and then again when Edie had come to work for her.
“I think you’ll find, Mr Twist, that saving marriages is for marriage counsellors. Not for lawyers.”
The lift arrived and she marched in. Turning to press the ground floor button, she got a good look at her nemesis as he followed her in, grinning.
She had forgotten how tall he was; she only came up to his chin. His face was square and saved from beauty by a broken nose, a scar through his left eyebrow and another just below his lower lip. Although the scar brought attention to a bottom lip that begged to be kissed.
What?
She caught herself from thinking further about his lips.
She looked up and caught hazel eyes glinting, laughing at her.
“Well, I believe we will have to agree to differ then,” he said following her in. “Ms Dickens, isn’t it? Your reputation precedes you,” he continued.
The way he emphasised ‘reputation’ caused Edie to go on alert.
She knew his type. They were always trying to convince people that if they just worked at it they could get
back together or at least come to an equable settlement. As if. That wasn’t what the job was about.
“I take it you believe mediation is the panacea for the masses then? All the touchy feely new age stuff,” she said.
As Edie said ‘mediation’ a shiver went up her spine.
Mediation.
Wasn’t that what Jessica had said she should be pushing her clients towards?
“New age? If you want to call it that, then yes, Ms Dickens I’m one of those touchy feely new age types. But maybe you’d care to tell me where I’m going wrong over a drink tonight. Dispense your theories. Maybe take pity on the prodigal son returning to the fold.”
His hands were held out in supplication. They were as rough and battered as his face. One of them could've easily held both of hers.
Where were these thoughts coming from?
And what was this prodigal son stuff? Did he think she had nothing better to do than gossip about her colleagues? A drink? As if.
She opened her mouth to tell him and as she did a faint shimmer of pink glitter fluttered out of thin air and landed on his shoulder. The few specks winked in the fluorescent lighting.
Pink glitter.
Just like the glitter she had found all over the end of her bed that morning.
The same pink glitter that had wound a path from her bedroom window to disappear somewhere in the middle of her living room.
It hadn’t been a dream.
Edie felt the blood drain out of her face. The cerise lining of Jack Twist's suit went grey. She put a hand out to steady herself.
It hit solid muscle; muscle clad in cotton and wool.
“Whoa there. I know I’m not much of a catch but you don’t need to faint to get out of it. A simple no would have been fine,” Jack Twist joked as he grasped her arms to hold her steady.
He smelt of coffee, shampoo, laundry detergent and something citrusy. Clean. Normal. Not the sort of man who would have ghosts haunting him. Well of course he wouldn’t, he was the saintly sort who believed in mediation.
And yet there was the glitter.
It winked and blinked at her, a warning light.
Stop.
Wait.
Go.
Go, she had to go.
“Excuse me please,” she said.
Wrenching her arm away she staggered to the lift doors and as soon as they were at the ground floor and opening she slipped through the gap.
“Edie! At least let me get you a cab,” his voice called loudly causing everyone in the lobby to look and see what was happening but she ignored it. She ran out of the building and bumped and careened her way through the commuters on the street.
Chapter 4
Edie lay in her solitary but very well appointed bed. She had spent a quarter of an hour smoothing the sheets before she got in, trying to make herself calm.
Then she'd gone through all her yoga relaxation exercises and when that hadn't helped she'd used the self-hypnosis sleep app on her phone. But she was still awake. Every time she heard the sound of Big Ben chime the quarter hour, her body tensed and she found herself grasping the duvet.
She was being silly. The whole thing with Jessica had been down to dodgy meat; she knew that. She did. That glitter on Jack Twist’s shoulder in the lift was just something left over from whatever birthday celebration was happening this week, there was always one. Not that she was ever invited to them. He'd obviously brushed up against a banner or a card. It had taken her running almost halfway to the bus stop before she had thought logically about that one.
So there was no ghost coming.
Why she was allowing some bad dream to dictate her life? She'd never let anyone else dictate it before. And she wasn’t about to start tonight.
No, she was being silly. Now she'd thought it through logically, she would sleep. And setting her formidable mind and iron willpower to it, she drifted off to sleep.
When Edie woke up, it was so dark that, staring round she could scarcely distinguish the window from the walls of her bedroom. She was still squinting trying to see, when the chimes of Big Ben struck the four quarters, she listened for the hour. She reckoned it must be about three o'clock.
The heavy bell went past three and struck twelve; then stopped. Twelve. But it had been past twelve when eventually she'd closed her eyes and gone to sleep. The clock was wrong. A damn pigeon must have got into the works. Twelve. This was going to be all over the news and she'd have to listen to everyone witter on about it for weeks until something equally as trivial occupied them.
There was no way time moved backwards.
She reached to her bedside table and checked her mobile phone. Twelve. Frowning, she looked at her radio-controlled clock. It lit up and confirmed the time.
Twelve.
"This isn’t happening," she said, "there is no way I’ve slept the day away… no way. Someone would have called."
But maybe she had.
No, her, Edwina Charlotte Dickens sleeping in and missing a day? Never. It would never, could never happen. And on the few occasions she was sick she’d always phoned in and then worked from her bed. But this wasn’t work she was missing, but a hen night.
She could see herself subconsciously sleeping through it. But there was no way that Mel would allow her to miss it. And she wouldn't let Mel down. Edie had promised to do this for her. And she didn’t break promises.
Edie scrambled out of her bed, and groped towards the window. Which was frosted. In June.
She rubbed the frost off with the sleeve of her pyjamas; nothing unusual. It was just very foggy and extremely cold. Global warming? Freak weather? Time standing still? But the street was silent; no hysterical people running round like headless chickens so probably not a major global catastrophe.
Then she must have got the time she went to sleep wrong. Mustn’t she? She hated this feeling of being out of control, of doubting her own mind. Her mind was the one thing that had never let her down
Her stomach clenching in trepidation, Edie climbed back into bed again, her mind spinning. Thoughts racing; too many strange things were happening.
“There must be some logical explanation,” she said to herself.
Jessica's ghost bothered her the most. Although she had spent most of the day ignoring the memory, it still festered there in the back of her mind.
And another Spirit was due…if Jessica was to be believed. Had it really come to this? She was taking the word of a see-through former person?
Big Ben chimed again.
Edie checked her phone, it shone and showed 00:15. Forty-five minutes to go and logic said Edie would be left alone. It was the twenty-first century… people didn’t get haunted the way they used to. It just wasn’t done.
She lay on her side in bed, knees curled protectively towards her chest.
"Ding dong!"
"Half past," she muttered as she reached out and checked her phone yet again.
"Ding dong!"
"A quarter to," Edie whispered into her pillow, her hands clutching it tightly.
"Ding dong!"
"One o’clock," she said out loud, her body relaxing, “and not a strange visitor in sight!"
Edie didn’t bother looking at her phone; the quarter chimes of Big Ben were good enough for her. And once the hour bell had sounded, she would be getting some sleep.
How stupid had she been? Believing some dream she had last night.
“Terms and conditions. I mean, really.”
Edie bashed her pillow into shape and pulled the duvet up to her chin as the hour bell sounded a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy one.
As the sound ended, light erupted in the room, as if a thousand camera flashes were going off at once.
With a small scream, Edie catapulted upright in bed. Her eyes were blinded by the flash of light. Rubbing them she tried to rid herself of the black spots. Opening them again, she was confronted with a visitor.
She rubbed her eyes again.
Opening them still sh
owed the same visitor.
What was a six-year-old flower girl doing in her bedroom?
The child was dressed in a pink dress; the bodice heavy with embroidered flowers and seed pearls, the skirt fell in folds like a fairy princess. On her blonde and curly hair sat a circlet of sweet peas and roses with bits of baby’s breath, gypsophila, peeking out here and there.
Clutched in her hands was a flower basket but instead of flowers the basket held the light that had blinded Edie earlier. It lit the whole room, a blue white light shooting up from the basket to hit the ceiling like a thousand spotlights. Nothing could hide from that light, it illuminated all shadows.
Solemn blue eyes stared at Edie. Eyes too old for a six year old and like the light, they scorched bright. They tore through Edie’s outer layers and the mask she showed the world to see what was hidden beneath. Edie’s soul shrank and tried to hide but found its darkest corners exposed.
“Erm…” Edie’s voice faltered and faded under the child’s stare. Why did it have to be a child? Edie never knew what to say to them.
“So little girl, are you the Ghost that Ms Marley told me about?” Edie tried to smile encouragingly at the youngster, but it felt more like a grimace.
The child raised an eyebrow, shook her head and sighed.
“I might look like a six-year-old but you don’t have to talk to me like I’m stupid,” the child Wraith replied.
Just my luck, thought Edie, I’m being haunted by a precocious poltergeist.
“But yes, I am the Ghost that Jessica Marley told you about.”
The Ghost had a soft voice and low but it echoed as if it were at a distance.
“And who and what are you exactly?” Edie asked her body tense for the next shock heading her way.
"I am the Ghost of Weddings Past."
"Like history past?" inquired Edie. It was bad enough going to weddings but to have to go through some sort of history lesson as well.
