by Brigid Coady
Edie had never believed anyone saw stars but she was definitely seeing black splodges and her lungs hurt.
“Rachel,” she rasped.
She was going to die, here. Now.
And ruin Mel’s big day. Crap.
And she hadn’t made amends yet.
As her sight started to go, as she grabbed at Rachel’s hands trying to get them off, trying to breathe, she thought she heard the clanking of chain links over the sound of her heart beating frantically in her ears.
The door to the office burst open and people piled in.
And suddenly the pressure round her neck was gone.
Coughing, Edie collapsed over her desk gasping for breath and blinking the black spots away.
“I’m going to kill her! Let me at her!” Rachel shouted over the pounding in Edie’s ears as blood started to flow back.
“No one is doing any killing here.”
Jack. Yet again he had come to her rescue. Worming his way into a space in her life. Her body relaxed knowing he was there. It was so traitorous.
“Can someone call security?” he spoke to someone just outside in the corridor.
“Now Rachel, what is it that Edie’s done? Embezzled the charity funds?” he said as he held her, arms pinned, against his chest.
“Charity? That bitch wouldn’t know charity if it bit her on the bum! She’s using my poor little Timmy for her own ends. And I won’t have it!”
“Her own ends? Are you sure? It didn’t look like that twenty storeys up yesterday,” he tried to joke.
“Ha! She’s already got you fooled hasn’t she? Haven’t you Edie? You’ve got him snared, so it’s just a case of hauling him in,” Rachel said.
Edie’s head throbbed; all the emotion in the room was suffocating her.
“Rachel, I meant to help, I really did,” she whispered.
“Help? The only thing you’ve ever done for me is get me put on report and officially disciplined. Why should I believe you want to help? Timmy is the one pure, unsullied part of my life. And you know what you have done with your stunt? Well you’ve only got Rob’s ex-wife deciding she wants access and thinking maybe she’ll sue for custody for him. That is the same woman who left him when he was a few days old. That’s what your ‘help’ has done. So excuse me if I don’t do cartwheels round the office.”
Tears were streaming down Rachel’s face.
Edie watched helplessly, all the hurt and the fear that someone she loved would be taken away from her were etched on Rachel’s face. Edie knew that fear.
“I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t think,” she said. Her stomach twisted and the pain in her chest competed with the pain on her neck.
“No you didn’t think did you, you stupid cow!” Rachel yelled at her as Jack manoeuvred her out of the room and into the arms of the security guards.
What had she done? Everything she touched turned rotten. Even with the best intentions she was still mucking it up. Destroying everything and everyone around her.
“I’d be better off dead,” she whispered.
“No one is doing any dying,” Jack said.
Edie looked up to find him in the doorway of the office. His tie was askew, his hair was ruffled and his shirttails were coming un-tucked from his trousers.
He looked alive and sexy and safe. Safe? That wasn’t the normal word she thought about with him but he did. Nothing would happen to her if he was standing between her and the world.
She shivered.
But what could she do to him? Ruin him? Destroy him? Probably. For his own sake, she needed to stay away.
“No, of course not,” she backtracked. “It was the shock.”
“Look Edie, it isn’t your fault that Rachel has gone off on one. I’ve already heard from HR that she was crumbling under the pressure.”
Had she been crumbling or had Edie pushed her? HR only knew as much as Edie had told them.
“It was only a matter of time before she would have been asked to leave,” he carried on.
“They aren’t going to fire her are they?” she asked. She didn’t want that. No, she had to make this right.
Jack looked at her strangely.
“You don’t really think they are going to keep her on after she attacked you in your own office?”
This was a disaster.
“But they can’t…”
Jack came up and took her hand. It trembled and then lay still, absorbing the heat and safety that he exuded.
“Edie,” he said gently, “I know that you have been hiding a heart of gold underneath that ice queen persona but even you can see that she needs to go. She’s mentally unstable.”
Heart of gold? Her?
Mentally unstable? Rachel?
Jack had it all the wrong way round.
Edie fought the tears that threatened to spill.
Edie had a heart of stone more like. And that had been no persona he had seen, plus she was seeing Ghosts. But Rachel did have a great heart. How had it got so tangled up?
She snatched her hand away. She needed Jack to get away, far away.
“I was thinking of the potential lawsuit,” she let the ice and hauteur infuse her voice.
“Lawsuit?”
“Yes, I wouldn’t want to see the firm dragged through the courts by some emotionally unstable woman like Rachel.” Edie realised that she still found it too easy to allow the lies to slip off her tongue.
Jack recoiled; a look of distaste crossed his face before he could stop it.
Inside, Edie cringed and shrivelled, wanting to tell him she was lying. She wanted him to know that she was protecting herself, protecting him. Instead she lifted one eyebrow as she stared at him and then began to straighten her desk with steady hands.
“Thank you, once again, for coming to my aid. But I have lots of work to do, so if you wouldn’t mind?” she gestured to the door.
“You’re going to sit there and carry on working like nothing happened?” he asked.
“Yes, and your point is?”
“You’ve been attacked. Surely you could take the day off and go home. Relax.”
Go home? Have a day off? And do what? Look at the four walls of her flat and realise that she had no one. No one who cared for her enough to attack someone on her behalf.
“I don’t know what gave you the idea that I was a delicate flower that needed protecting. I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.” She forced herself to look down at the file in front of her. She couldn’t look up again to see the distaste she knew was on Jack’s face.
“Maybe that ice queen act isn’t so much a persona then?” he said. "Last night I thought you were like this because of your mum and that Satis woman, but this really is you."
Edie ignored him. The words on the page were blurring and tumbling as she stared hard at them.
Go. Go. Go. She thought hard at him.
She could see his legs out of the corner of her eye. The silence stretched between them. The tension screamed through Edie, her fingers twitched and her knee bounced under the desk.
And then he left.
Edie slumped in her chair, bought her hands to her mouth and bit her nails.
She was a horrible person. She knew it, the Ghosts knew it and now Jack knew it.
Edie needed to get out. She walked blindly through the office, not caring about the whispers she could hear in her wake.
Don't let the bastards see you cry. She repeated it until it turned into the rhythm of her steps. She’d do anything to stop the tears.
She waited for the lift and repeatedly pressed the button. She needed to get out, now. She clutched the locket with her hand, tugging at it to see if it could help her breathe better.
Edie could feel phantom hands around her neck.
She gasped as she felt her throat close in memory.
Maybe Jack should’ve let Rachel kill her. It would be easier for everyone.
The lift arrived and Edie hardly waited for the doors to open before she r
ushed into it and collapsed in the corner.
Edie had driven Rachel to breaking point.
She'd pushed Jack away.
She was holding Maggie and Doug together through sheer force of will but she knew it wouldn’t last.
She was being haunted tonight.
She was damned. How could she ever get it right?
Leaving the building, she headed for the café, needing a coffee and maybe a pastry. Screw the diet and healthy eating. She craved sweetness, the melting sugar hit and caffeine kick.
Needing comfort that she couldn't ask from someone else.
As she pushed open the door, the bell above it rang and the guy behind the counter looked up. The smile on his face froze and then fractured and fell when he saw her.
Crap. She wanted to turn and walk away.
She wasn't even welcome here.
She hovered in the doorway.
Maybe she should go? She thought.
But then she thought of the office she’d just left. The whispers. Jack's disgusted face.
No, she needed this. Pastry didn’t judge you, only the people who served it to you did.
She straightened her shoulders and carried on and joined the queue.
The woman in front of her seemed familiar as she dug in her change purse, frantically looking for money. A key chain with a cube of photos of grinning children swung from it.
This woman had a family, thought Edie jealously. People who cared whether she lived or died. No one would call her an ice queen or a borg.
"I know I have it, sorry," the woman said and looked over her shoulder and smiled at Edie.
Edie smiled back.
But the woman went white when she saw Edie. Edie tried to make her smile bigger and encouraging in return.
Tears started to form in the woman's eyes. Edie could see them welling and starting to dissolve the woman’s mascara.
Edie frowned. What was wrong? She was pretty sure she’d seen her before.
Edie couldn't stand it any longer. The tension, the impending tears. It made her even shakier than she’d been before.
She took her purse out.
"I'll get this for her," she said.
There is sometimes a quality to silence that has weight, and this one packed a hell of a punch. Edie felt as if the world had frozen. The man behind the counter stopped chopping, his knife held in mid air and his mouth ajar. The woman stood stock still, a tear balanced on her bottom eyelashes. Even the espresso machine stopped hissing.
Edie offered the money to the man, pushing through the silence and breaking it.
"Are you sure?" the woman whispered.
Edie could feel herself heat up.
"It's fine."
"I can pay you back." The woman went back to digging in her purse.
Edie put a hand over hers.
"Use it to buy something for the kids." She turned again to shop owner who was looking at the money like it was going to spontaneously combust.
"Latte and a pain au chocolate." she said it quickly. She wanted to get out fast. Everyone was staring at her like she'd grown a second head. Or as if she was going to turn and bite them.
"Please." she added. That spurred him into action. As he made her the coffee, he kept turning around as if to check she was real.
The woman collected her tea and sandwich leaving the café in a flurry of thanks and more tears.
Edie eventually managed to leave the shop clutching the coffee and the pastry.
She went and sat in a small park near the office. It was a carved out place of quietness in the city. It used to be a graveyard, Edie realised. She'd never bothered to come in before, had often walked past it. A cemetery, it made sense for her life at the moment.
She took the pain au chocolat from the bag. She stared at the icing sugar dusting, the flaking pastry. Inhaling the smell, she had a half remembered memory flash through her head.
There was laughter and her mother with a sugar coated nose and a man she supposed was her father trying to lick it off. And her stomach ached from the remembered laughter.
Edie shook her head and the memory fractured. Had it been real?
She bit into the sweet stickiness.
Tonight she'd see the last Ghost and she didn't know how to stop it.
She’d failed. She licked her lips, trying to get every last crumb of comfort she could.
And then tomorrow would be the wedding.
She had a flash of her worlds colliding and exploding.
Maggie and Doug, her mum, Tom, Jack. If she didn't love Mel so much, she would be tempted to run away. All those people who saw different versions of her. The girl she'd been and then the woman she'd become.
Could she learn to change again?
She took a drink of the coffee. She wasn't sure she had a heart big enough or brave enough to try.
She stared at the ground and watched a small glimmer of pink in the dust.
Using her finger she dug into the corner of the paper bag the pain au chocolat had come in, each crumb as small as the piece of glitter that was in the dust. And each one a tiny explosion of memories.
Had her mum really been that laughing woman in her mind?
Her phone rang.
Work, she thought, but glanced at the screen anyway.
And as if she had conjured her up from those tiny flakes of pastry, it said it was her mother.
Edie’s finger hovered over the screen.
Did she accept? Could she handle having to listen to her mum’s side of the story when she was still trying to deal with what her Mimi had told her?
But the memories were on her tongue.
And the glitter flashed a warning at her.
Maybe there was something she could do today…
One small step in the right direction.
She pressed the button.
“Hi Mum,” she said, her voice still husky from Rachel’s assault on her throat.
“Oh Edie, are you OK? Beattie says she saw your name in the paper this morning. And that one of those celebrity Internet site wotsits are saying you threw yourself off a roof with a rugby player? It wasn’t because of what I said is it, about your dad? I didn’t mean it.”
Edie’s mum was talking at high speed, upset.
“Mum.” Edie said cutting through the words. “Mum, I’m OK. I was abseiling for charity. I’m absolutely fine,” she said.
“Oh,” she could feel her mum taking big gulping breaths.
“Mum, thank you.” Edie said, gripping the phone tighter.
“What for?” her mum sounded suspicious.
Edie had to do this.
“For giving me my grandmother’s address. I know this is hard for you, I know you were only doing your best. But I have to do this. I need to speak to Dad, make my own relationship with him.” Edie wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but they felt as if they needed to be said.
Would she listen? Edie waited chewing her thumbnail, the last few tastes of her pastry melting in her mouth.
“Oh Edie…” it was a voice she didn’t usually hear from her mum. Softer and less aggressive.
Warmer.
“OK Mum?” Edie asked.
“OK,” her mum said.
Edie sat with the phone pressed to her ear for a moment. The picture she had of her mum in her head with a sugar coated nose made her smile slightly.
“See you tomorrow,” she said.
“Bye,” her mum replied, and hung up.
Edie leaned back on the bench and she crumpled up the paper bag.
Chapter 21
Edie stared at the TV screen.
There was sound and light coming out of it. And she was sitting in front of it, bathed in the bright light and she knew the sound was in her ears but she couldn’t make any sense of what she saw or heard.
It could've been in Korean for all she understood. Her mind wouldn't process it. Or couldn’t.
“I’m glad you’ve come and stayed.” Mel had said when
Edie had arrived on her doorstep two hours earlier.
“Where else would the maid of honour stay the night before the wedding?” Edie had replied through gritted teeth. All she really wanted to do was curl up in a ball on her own bed and wait for the end of time.
She might have made up with her mum but every other part of life was going to hell in a hand basket. And she didn’t know how to fix it.
In less than twenty-four hours the wedding would be over and so would Edie’s haunting. But would she be chain-less?
Of course the last Ghost did still have to find her at Mel’s.
Edie had felt a smaller flicker of excitement at that thought.
She’d never get that lucky. They probably had her micro chipped like a pet or at least the psychic equivalent of it. She wasn’t getting away with anything, she realised that now.
She had to pay.
Music burst from the screen, jolting her out of her thoughts.
What were they doing? She watched as the two figures on the screen prance round in a pond or something.
The film was Mel’s choice. Some romcom to get them into the right mood for the wedding.
“I want to wallow in my final night of freedom,” Mel said as she’d put on the DVD.
Edie was just glad that the other bridesmaids weren’t invited. This was the last time she’d have Mel to herself and she’d happily watch any kind of film she wanted to. Or so she’d thought.
But the mood in the house probably wasn’t the one Mel had expected when she'd made her plans. There should've been giggling and reminiscing. Looking at photos of them as bridesmaids as kids, although Edie had seen quite enough of that in real life recently.
“I told you we should have hired a professional DJ! But no, you wanted your mate Dave to do it and look what has happened!” Mel was screaming down her phone whilst pacing back and forth in the kitchen.
Edie flinched. Nope, no giggling at all.
“Don’t you dare tell me I am overreacting. You have done nothing. Not one tiny little thing towards this wedding. I’ve done everything.”
There was a crash as if Mel had thrown something and then there was quiet, which made Edie feel queasy.
Back down, Barry, Edie pleaded in her head. He could do it if he just tried…
“No, I will not calm down, you patronising shit. If this is what you are going to be like when we are married then maybe we shouldn’t be getting married at all.”
