Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter
Twenty-Five
“Are you sure about this?” Marina asks, winding her ponytail around her hand.
It’s half past five in the afternoon and we’re conducting a crucial business meeting in Babs because the castle is absolutely overrun with caterers, musicians, waitstaff, and any number of other nameless people who’ve been drafted in to make sure the ball runs like clockwork tomorrow.
It’s only to be expected on the eve of such a big event, but all the same, it’s meant my own plans have had to go on ice until midnight.
I’d hoped to be out of here before dark, but it looks as if there’s one last night shift in the cards for me.
“Of course I’m not sure about it,” I sigh.
It sounded plausible in my head, but when I outlined it to Marina and Artie, it sounded vaguely ridiculous.
They didn’t say so, of course, but I could see in their faces that they weren’t entirely sure.
“But it’s the best plan I’ve got, so I’m running with it. ”
I’m working on pure instinct now, trusting my gut to lead me in the right direction, and I’m depending on Leo to turn up and play a crucial part in the proceedings too.
I haven’t told him exactly what he’s going to need to do yet, because if he has very long to think about it he’ll try to change the plan or attempt to do things differently to change the outcome.
I know stuff he doesn’t know though; Britannia trusted me last night with her secrets and her hidden heartache and she’s the one I’ve engineered this whole plan around.
Leo’s still young; he has his whole life ahead of him.
Britannia doesn’t have that luxury, but I think I know how we can at least give her a few brilliant minutes, and I can only hope they’ll have been worth waiting for.
“Do you know if Fletch is coming over later?”
I look at Artie sharply. “Why do you ask that?”
I don’t mean to snap at him. It’s just that I woke up this morning and remembered my late-night phone call with Fletch and now I feel like I operate some kind of sex line.
I’ve had my phone turned off for most of the day as a precaution in case he tries to send me a dick-pic or anything.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I don’t think that’s Fletch’s style at all.
He’s a words-rather-than-pictures kind of guy, and judging by the things he whispered into my ear last night, he knows all the words and exactly how to use them to their greatest effect.
“No,” I say. “He’s not coming over later, for the exact same reasons you’re not staying.”
I can’t think of anyone less appropriate to be in the ballroom tonight, and if all goes according to plan, our days of playing house are over.
I packed up all of my belongings from the Princess Suite earlier and flung them into the back of Babs, along with the carryall Fletch left in the Knight Suite.
I figure it won’t kill me to be neighborly and return it to him at his grotty flat on the High Street.
Artie looks crestfallen, so I throw him a bone. “I think Lois has invited Fletch to the ball, but I’m not sure if he’s planning to attend or not.”
“You mean he hasn’t asked you to be his date?” Marina says, leaning forward in her seat to peer around Artie at me.
I pull an “as-if” face. “Fletch and I don’t date.”
She makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.
“What?” I look her directly in the eyes.
She shrugs, then lifts her knee to her chin so she can deliver a sharp jab with her heel to Babs’s glove box.
“You’ll dent the paintwork doing that,” I moan, even though the glove box is already a mass of dings and kinks from a lifetime of being opened by brute force.
She ignores me and passes me my Magic 8 Ball.
“Check if you should ask Fletch to be your date.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I bark. “There’s no way on this entire bloody earth that I’m asking Fletcher Gunn to the ball.”
I’m glad that I haven’t told Marina about last night. She’d just make more of it than there is. I make a mental note that I should probably think about a date for tomorrow and refuse to take the Magic 8 Ball when she holds it out across Artie’s lap.
“Shall I do it?” he asks, taking it from Marina and giving it a few turns. After it’s cleared, he looks at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Your magic ball says, ‘Yes, definitely.’ ”
Marina takes it from his hands with a nod of self-appreciation. “See? Your ball, your rules, Melody. Make the call.”
“Am I the only one whose mind is on the actual job at hand here?” I snap. “I’m more worried about helping Britannia Lovell tonight than about which dress to wear tomorrow night.”
Marina looks at me. “Which dress are you wearing tomorrow night?”
“I’m not sure,” I say with a saccharine smile. “Would you like me to ask the Magic 8 Ball that too?”
She grins and slams it back into the glove box.
“I wish you’d let us stick around tonight,” she says, changing the conversational tone from jokey to deadly serious. “I could make some calls, rearrange Nonno’s care?”
Both Marina and Artie protested when I told them that my plan called for a closed ballroom; it’s just me and Leo once all of the caterers and party planners have cleared out of the castle tonight.
If I’m right, then what happens in there is going to be pretty intimate, and I want to afford Britannia as much privacy as possible.
Marina knows there is little point in pressing when I’ve made up my mind.
“Text me as soon as you’re done?”
“Me too,” Artie says. “Although I’ll have to put my phone on silent because my mum’s a light sleeper and I’m a heavy sleeper so I might not feel it vibrate.”
“It’s good to know you’re just at the other end of the line if I really need you,” I say, and he nods as if he thinks I’m being perfectly genuine.
Marina reaches into her bag and pulls out a Mars Bar. “Emergency sugar supply,” she says, pressing it into my hand. “Be brave, Grasshopper.”
I tuck the chocolate into the side pocket of the door and she fist-bumps me.
“Come on then, Chewbacca.” Marina rolls the passenger door open and digs her car keys from her bag. “We need to get out of here.”
I watch them climb into Marina’s little Vauxhall and pull away, and I feel as if she’s packed all of my bravado and certainty into her backseat and taken it with her.
Everything is riding on this. I called Lois earlier and pretty much gave her my cast iron guarantee of success.
Failure is not an option. I breathe deeply.
In and out. In and out. I tell myself I’ve got this, that I’m the best damn ghost buster in town, that my business is going from strength to strength, that my plan is solid gold rather than built on ever-shifting sands.
It’s going to be just fine. Better than fine.
Fine and dandy. I give myself the pep talk of all pep talks, and then I go and ruin it all by wolfing down Marina’s emergency Mars Bar in three giant bites, then lying down on the front bench seat for a panic-induced nap.
Someone’s tapping on my window. I struggle awake and stretch awkwardly across the seats, then remember where I am and grab my phone to check the time in case I’ve slept past midnight.
Half past eleven. God! I must have zonked right out, probably my onboard self-preservation system kicking in to protect me from having an attack of the vapors. Still, it’s just about right.
Whoever is outside taps again and I look up to see Leo standing there with his jacket collar turned up even though it’s summertime. I give him a bleary-eyed thumbs-up and roll down the window.
“Feeling okay?” I say, a tiny bit awkward and aware that I probably have the lined imprint of Babs’s pleather seat across my face.
He shrugs. “Hard to say, seeing as you haven’t told me what we’re doing.”
All I’ve told Leo is that we both need to be in the ballroom at midnight to watch Britannia and Dino perform, as they do every night at midnight.
They usually have a maximum audience of one: Bohemia.
Tonight there will be three of us, and if my plan works, then I’m very much hoping that this will be their final performance at Maplemead Castle.
The castle door is locked and I let us in with the key I’m due to hand back in tomorrow.
Barty and Lois are spending their final night down in the village with the newly arrived cast and crew of the movie, and tomorrow they will return here in the full hope and expectation of it being the safe, ghost-free castle they thought they had bought unseen over the internet.
I can only cross my fingers and hope for the same outcome.
It’s so incredibly still in here at night; that is, when the ghosts aren’t making their presence known. Moonlight guides our way along the shaded passage, our echoing footsteps the only sound.
Outside the ballroom door, I pause and turn to Leo.
“Listen,” I say quietly. “I know this goes against the grain for you, but please, can you do exactly as I say when we’re in here?”
His brow furrows, as if he might protest, and I put my hand on his arm. “Trust me on this one, okay?”
Our eyes meet in the shadows, and after a few seconds, he nods slowly. “I do.”
The irony of our conversation doesn’t escape me; there’s no reason he shouldn’t trust me. I didn’t break his heart.
Turning the door handle, I push the door open and step inside the dark ballroom.
“You’re a regular Girl Guide,” he says a couple of minutes later when I pull a lighter from my pocket and walk from deep stone window sill to window sill, lighting the creamy fat candles Marina and Artie helped me gather from around the castle earlier on.
I’m extra glad now that I insisted they couldn’t stay for this; it feels right that it’s just Leo and me.