Chapter 16
‘Where can we go?’ I asked, looking around.
‘You can come to my flat,’ she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Honestly, this day just kept getting stranger by the minute!
‘Your flat? Are you serious?’
‘What did you expect? That I’d be living in a graveyard?’
‘Well…’ I hadn’t given it any thought, but now that I was, I suppose a graveyard would have been my first guess, yes. ‘Sorry. I’ve never met a real live ghost before.’
‘Is that supposed to be funny?’
I winced. ‘Sorry again. Oh, come on Brooke, you know what I mean. This is beyond weird, isn’t it?’
‘You’re not kidding. I can’t believe you’re here in my village of all places.’
‘Yeah. That’s the weird part,’ I said, rolling my eyes.
‘You’re taking it very well,’ she said, as she turned away. ‘I should have thought you’d be a screaming, hysterical mess by now. I’m sure I would have been if the positions were reversed. But then, you always were pretty unemotional, weren’t you?’
I didn’t have time to ask her what she meant by that because she’d vanished. I stared, open-mouthed, wondering where she’d popped off to. So ghosts really could just appear and disappear like on the films? Well, how was I supposed to follow her to her flat if I couldn’t see her?
Suddenly I jumped, scared out of my wits, as a head appeared in front of me.
‘Brooke!’
She was peering at me from the closed door of the hairdressing salon. Evidently she’d walked straight through it and had popped her head back out to see where I was.
‘Are you coming, or what?’
‘Into a salon?’
‘Our— my flat’s above the shop. You can’t just go up so you’ll have to ask the stylists for permission.’
‘What am I supposed to say? My dead cousin has invited me up to her flat?’
‘Exactly that,’ she said. ‘I told you. Most people round here know about the ghosts. They won’t be surprised.’
‘Okay. If you say so.’
I reached for the handle and she said quickly, ‘I forgot to mention. Make sure you specify that you’re here for Brooke. I have a flatmate you see.’
I immediately felt nervous. ‘A flatmate? Will she mind me being in her flat?’
‘Er, she’s not in. She’s, er, out this afternoon. Think she’s got choir practice.’
I almost laughed but decided, on balance, that perhaps I’d better not. ‘Fine. I’ll be sure to make it clear.’
In the event I had no problem at all. There were three stylists milling around the salon, which was laid out just like the ones I’d seen on retro jigsaws or nostalgia calendars.
One was busy backcombing a customer’s hair into an enormous beehive.
Another was sweeping up hair from the floor, and a third was taking payment from another customer at the till.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to the one with the sweeping brush. ‘Sorry to bother you, but is it okay if I go up to Brooke’s flat?’
‘Brooke?’ she asked, clearly surprised. ‘And you are…?’
‘Her cousin.’
‘Oh, right. Well, that’s a turn-up for the books. She’s never had a living visitor before. Aw, that’s nice for her. She’s a lovely lass by all accounts. I’ll show you the way.’
‘No need,’ I said, nodding towards a door marked Private. ‘Brooke’s waiting for me. I can follow her. I just needed your permission to go through, that’s all.’
‘Oh, fair enough. Hey, good job I wasn’t saying anything bad about her, wasn’t it?’ She giggled and went back to sweeping up hair.
Brooke shook her head slightly and walked straight through the door. I followed, though sadly I had to actually open the thing first.
The flat upstairs was fairly compact and basic but much better than I’d expected.
All the doors were closed, which I supposed was no problem for Brooke and her flatmate, and I didn’t like to pry, but she told me it had a bathroom which was completely redundant, and a kitchen which was also of no use whatsoever to them.
‘But the bedrooms are useful so we can get away from each other and the beds are comfy—’
‘The beds are comfy? You sleep on beds?’
‘Where did you expect us to sleep? Did you think we each had a sarcophagus in our room or something?’
‘Well, I thought maybe a coffin. Sorry. Bad joke. It’s just…’ I frowned, trying to puzzle it out. ‘How can you walk through doors yet lie on beds without falling through them?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s one of life’s mysteries. Or the afterlife’s mysteries. How should I know? I didn’t make the rules, did I?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
She walked through another door, and I opened it and followed her into a living room. There was a decent-sized window which gave views over the street below. The room was furnished quite basically, with a carpet, a three-piece suite, a coffee table and a television set.
‘You watch TV?’
‘Not much,’ she said wistfully. ‘We have to rely on the girls downstairs, you see. They’re pretty good in their way.
They come up every morning and open the curtains and turn the light and the television off.
And then, before they leave at night, they close the curtains and put the light and the telly on.
They take it in turns to pop in on Sundays and do the same thing, and they come up on Saturdays to dust and vacuum the place. We can’t complain.’
‘It’s warm enough, though. You have the central heating on? Can you feel it?’
‘No, but the flat needs to be maintained, doesn’t it?
Hence the heating on cold days and the windows open on warm ones.
They shut them at night and if the weather’s bad.
’ She sighed. ‘It’s nice to have a telly, of course, but frustrating as well, because of course we can’t tell them which channel we want to watch, and we can’t switch it over.
And there’s no Netflix either. What can you do? ’
‘I expect you have to rely on each other for entertainment,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you have a flatmate. Do you get on?’
Brooke folded her arms. ‘Yeah. Most of the time.’
‘What’s her name?’ I asked.
‘Er, Kylie.’
‘Kylie?’ I laughed. ‘That’s a coincidence, considering we’ve just been talking about Neighbours.’
‘Mm,’ she said, shuffling her feet. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘And how long has she been dead?’
‘Blimey, I don’t know! Forty, fifty years maybe.’
‘And she’s called Kylie? I didn’t know that name was around in this country then.’
‘What is this? Did you just come here to interrogate me?’ she demanded.
I sank onto the sofa. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling suddenly rather weak. ‘This has all been a heck of a shock. I’m struggling to process it, and I suppose I’m just trying to make things as normal as I possibly can for myself. It’s kind of a defence mechanism.’
Brooke sat down next to me. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to have a go. It’s been a bit of a shock for me, too. What are you doing here, Kirsty? Are you here on your own? Is Auntie Sheryl with you?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Mum and Dad are alive and well, though,’ I added hastily. ‘As are your parents.’
‘How are they?’ she asked softly, showing the first hint of vulnerability since we’d met. ‘And how’s Cal?’
‘They’re doing okay now,’ I said. ‘It was tough for them all at first. You can imagine. They love and miss you so much, Brooke. But Cal’s helped them,’ I added, referring to her younger brother. ‘Having him to look after got them through. He’s a good man, he really is.’
‘Man?’ Brooke’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He was just a lad when I last saw him.’
‘Eighteen,’ I said. ‘He grew up very quickly after – after the accident. But he’s thirty-six now. He got married four years ago. He’s got a baby girl, too. They gave her the middle name of Brooke, after you.’
Brooke sank back in the sofa. ‘Our Cal, a dad. I can’t believe it.’
‘I’m sorry you missed out on so much,’ I told her. ‘It must have been so hard for you.’
Without thinking, I went to take her hand, but there was nothing to hold. It was as if I was grasping at air.
‘I wish I could hug you,’ I said sadly.
‘Well, the thought was there,’ she replied. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘So what have you been doing here all this time?’ I asked her uncertainly. I wasn’t sure how much to question her, given how touchy she’d been a moment ago, but I had to know for sure. ‘Danny’s really not here? You’re positive about that?’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ she demanded.
I sighed. ‘No, of course not. I just don’t know how it all works. I mean, he might be somewhere around and you just haven’t seen him.’
‘In eighteen years? Believe me, I’ve seen every square inch of this estate. Well, except the Monastery.’ She shuddered.
‘The Monastery?’
‘It’s just a nickname for a spooky old house on the edge of the Harling Estate.
’ She waved a hand, dismissing the subject.
‘We’re bound here, you see. Can’t cross the estate boundary.
We can go anywhere we like within it but there’s no way to leave.
If Danny was here, I’d have seen him,’ she added firmly.
‘So he… what? Went on somewhere else? Ceased to exist? What happens after death?’
Bloody hell, that was a huge question! I held my breath, wondering if I was about to hear something earth-shattering, and if I was actually ready for her answer.
‘I have no idea,’ she said simply. ‘I only know what happened to us. The other ghosts that live on the estate,’ she added quickly. ‘We died and stayed here in this form. Where the others go, I have no idea. If they go anywhere. I have no insider information if that’s what you’re hoping.’
‘This is mind-blowing,’ I said. And to think, I’d poured scorn on It’s Haunted! whenever it was on television, and called Madam Mariska, the famous medium, a fraud! Maybe she was telling the truth, after all. ‘But – but that night. Can you remember it?’
‘Oh,’ she said coldly, ‘I can remember every moment.’
‘Every moment?’ I asked. ‘Even that one? The actual moment when you…’
‘Wow, you’re pretty morbid, you know that?’ Brooke said, her lip curling. ‘Fancy asking me that! You do realise you could be asking me to relive a horrific trauma? I could have post-traumatic stress disorder for all you know.’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, considering. ‘I suppose I’d know by now, wouldn’t I?’
‘It was tactless of me to ask,’ I said, ashamed. ‘I’ve never been in this position before. It’s all very confusing.’
‘It’s all right. I understand.’ Brooke sighed. ‘I don’t remember the actual accident, if it’s any consolation. One minute I was at the party, the next I was being shown to this place and told it was my new home. It was all very confusing for me, too.’
‘I expect it’s a blessing,’ I consoled her. ‘Better not to have those pictures in your head.’
‘Mm.’ Brooke sighed. ‘Much better.’