Chapter Twenty-Six
Ulysses panicked. He hadn’t realised Pixie was in trance.
He hadn’t meant to disturb her. He’d simply come in to ask about the letter.
Now she was on the floor, having a fit, and he didn’t know what to do.
A nasty sense of déjà vu came over him. He’d been here before, when Zach interrupted her at St Sidwell.
Quickly, he knelt beside her and put his hands on her shoulders to pacify her. What if she swallowed her tongue?
‘Pix, it’s me, Ulysses. Come back!’ He tried to hold her steady, but she was writhing about like an electric eel, eyes wide open but unseeing, mouth agape in a silent scream.
It was terrifying to see her like that, possessed.
‘Please don’t die, Pixie. Please don’t die. Just don’t die on me, please!’
Suddenly, she closed her eyes and went limp. He stared at her in horror.
‘Please don’t die,’ he whimpered again. ‘Pixie, please don’t die. Not on my watch. Come on, Pix. Come back!’
For a terrible moment it appeared as if she wouldn’t. But then two pink stains spread into her white cheeks.
Pixie opened her eyes to see Ulysses’ staring down at her.
She blinked hard, not sure where she was.
Ulysses’ ashen face flushed with colour.
‘You’re alive!’ he exclaimed and cupped her face with hot, sweaty hands.
‘Ah, gracas ao Senhor!’ When a tear landed on Pixie’s forehead, she was fully roused out of her fit.
‘What the hell?’ she muttered, pushing herself into a sitting position and wiping her forehead.
Ulysses flopped onto the floor beside her with relief. ‘Oh my God, you terrified the hell out of me, Pixie!’
‘What happened?’ she asked, taking in the room. Returning fully to the present.
‘I didn’t know you were in trance! You might have warned me. I came in to find out what the letter said …’
She put her fingers to her lips. ‘Cavill,’ she whispered, feeling the remains of his kiss, now cold. ‘The letter!’
The letter had fallen beside her chair. She reached to pick it up. Then she gave it to Ulysses to read.
They sat side by side, in silence. Ulysses engrossed in the letter, Pixie in Cavill and the miracle that had just taken place.
She had been given the opportunity to say good-bye, but how fleeting it had been.
‘Wow,’ Ulysses exclaimed when he had finished. ‘So, you went back one last time?’
‘I did,’ she replied.
‘And?’
‘It was beautiful.’ She smiled softly at the memory of that final meeting. She couldn’t begin to explain how she had reunited Cavill and Eddie, so she didn’t bother. That story was one she would keep to herself.
‘So, is it over?’ he asked, handing back the letter.
Pixie could only nod. Her vision misted with tears. She pressed a hand to her heart, which felt confusingly full and broken at the same time.
Ulysses understood. She needed a moment. He drew her into his arms and held her close.
‘I think we should leave now,’ she said at last, slipping the letter back into the envelope and getting up.
‘What are you going to do about Felix Fairhaven?’ he asked, pushing himself off the floor.
‘I’ll tell him the truth.’
Ulysses looked at her in surprise as he opened the door. ‘You’re actually going to tell a total stranger that you timeslide?’
She shrugged, and grinned. ‘Yes. And I have a funny feeling that he’ll believe me.’
Emma, Leila, Lezli and Isadora were still in the lobby. Now they had been joined by Joseph.
‘We’re dying to know what’s in the letter,’ said Emma eagerly.
‘We’ve brought Joey up to date,’ said Isadora. ‘And I’ve told him that I’m not going to let Nessa Blunt win.’
Ulysses chuckled. ‘Good luck with that, Isadora. Personally, I wouldn’t want to have a fight with a ghost!’
Isadora smiled. ‘I’ve fought with people all my life. This is nothing I can’t handle.’
‘The letter?’ Emma said, her eyes dropping to the envelope Pixie still held in her hand.
‘It’s a long story,’ Pixie replied. ‘But let’s just say it’s concluded a beautiful relationship.’ With those words Pixie felt a surge of enthusiasm and positivity, as if she’d shed something heavy that she had been carrying for many months. She felt light, and free.
Pixie turned to Joseph. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to move Nessa on. It’s a first for me, honestly. I’ve never not been able to solve a case. But this spirit simply doesn’t want to leave.’
Joseph didn’t care much about the ghost. In spite of his wife’s explanation, he still refused to believe it.
He just wanted these two to leave, so he could get back to his job.
‘You did your best,’ he said with a smile.
‘That’s all anyone can ever ask. Thank you for coming. Emma will drive you to the station.’
Leila insisted on accompanying them. She didn’t want to miss a moment, in case Pixie revealed something Emma would later forget to share.
The four of them stood on the platform while they waited for the train.
‘Madge will be happy you failed to move Nessa on,’ Leila said, putting her hands in her pockets to warm them.
‘Now I know why she talks to herself all the time. She’s talking to Nessa. ’
‘That’s the silver lining,’ said Ulysses with a laugh.
‘Will she eventually find her way home?’ Emma asked.
‘She will,’ Pixie replied. ‘In her own time. What I failed to realise is that she’s not lost at all. She knows exactly where to go. And she’ll go when she’s ready.’
The train came at speed down the track, pulling up alongside the platform in a great gust of cold wind. Emma put her hand on Pixie’s arm. ‘I feel bad not paying you for your time,’ she said.
Pixie smiled. ‘I promise you, I got more out of this assignment than you can possibly imagine. More than money could ever buy.’
Emma frowned, longing for her to elaborate. ‘Really?’
Pixie embraced her. ‘Really.’ She embraced Leila, too. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you, both.’ But neither knew quite how grateful she was, or what she was grateful for.
Pixie and Ulysses waved as the train moved out of the station.
‘This assignment was never about Nessa,’ said Ulysses thoughtfully. ‘It was about you.’
‘It was,’ said Pixie.
‘Poor Isadora,’ he added. ‘She’s going to get a nasty surprise tonight.’
Pixie looked doubtful. ‘Actually, I have a feeling it’s going to be the other way round.’
Pixie pulled Felix Fairhaven’s business card out of her pocket and looked at it.
‘The Universe moves in extraordinary ways,’ said Ulysses, grinning mischievously.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Henry lives in New York. Felix lives in New York. I like Henry. You will like Felix. Just saying. Coincidence? I think not. The Universe brought him to you. You should say thank you.’
Pixie laughed. ‘You’re always running with the ball,’ she said.
‘But what a ball!’
‘What a ball,’ she agreed, turning her eyes to the window. ‘What a ball,’ she repeated. ‘Why don’t you listen to your music while I try and make sense of it.’
Ulysses put his AirPods into his ears and nodded. ‘I don’t think you need to be a time-travelling genius to work it out, Pix. Even I can do that.’
But she needed time. It was a lot to take in. As the train whizzed through the English countryside, she closed her eyes and slowly began to review all the remarkable things that had happened.
Isadora sat at the mirror in her dressing room.
She was made up and ready to go on stage.
While Lezli had been fussing over her, she had thought of nothing but Nessa Blunt and her great-grandmother, Gilda Garrett.
Having dismissed the spirit as a ludicrous figment of the imagination, she was now convinced that Pixie was, after all, right.
The ghost of Nessa Blunt did haunt the theatre, and was, most certainly, tormenting her.
But, in a moment of rare clarity, Isadora believed that there might be a way to stop her.
If her great-grandmother had started it, perhaps it was up to Isadora to finish it.
‘Lezli, would you leave me for a moment, please?’
Lezli frowned in surprise. Not because she’d been asked to leave, but because Isadora had said ‘please’. ‘Sure,’ she replied, and left the room.
Isadora remained in her chair. She placed her elbows on the dressing table and knitted her fingers in prayer.
Then she closed her eyes and took a moment to steady herself, inhaling deeply and concentrating on relaxing her body, and all the muscles in it.
She spoke out loud, because she wasn’t sure that, if she simply thought the words, Nessa would hear her.
‘Nessa Blunt,’ she began quietly. ‘I know you’ve been wrecking my scenes, and that’s okay.
I probably deserve it. I haven’t exactly made friends here, so why should I expect you to be a friend?
If you’ve been trying to teach me a lesson, you’ve succeeded.
I give you that, girl. You’re a formidable opponent.
’ She took another deep breath, feeling strangely emotional suddenly.
‘For my sins, I’m Gilda Garrett’s great-granddaughter.
But you know that already, don’t you? Look, I’m sorry she stole the man you loved.
I’m sorry she locked you in her dressing room and I’m sorry that she didn’t help you when the theatre burned down.
With all my heart, Nessa, I’m sorry you had to die.
Truly, I can’t think of a more horrible way to go.
You must have suffered terribly. My great-grandmother isn’t here to apologise.
I hope, if she was, that she would say sorry and mean it.
If it’s any consolation, she died of alcohol abuse.
She can’t have been happy. Maybe she was riddled with guilt for what she did to you.
Who knows? But I’m here now, and I can say sorry on her behalf.
I hope it goes some way to making you feel better about it all.
I’d really like you to find peace in a beautiful place.
I believe there is somewhere we all go. It’s gotta be nicer than here, right?
Anyway, I felt I had to say it. I hope you can hear me.
I’m not like Pinkie, or Pixie – whatever her name was.
I’m not like her. I can’t talk to ghosts.
At least, I’ve never tried. I’d really appreciate it if you stopped wrecking my scenes.
I’d really like us to be friends. A strange kind of friendship, I know, but we could work together, rather than against each other.
’ She sat in silence for a moment. She didn’t expect to hear anything back, but oddly, she didn’t feel as if she’d been speaking to herself, either.
Just before the play began, Isadora found the three witches in the wing, waiting to go on stage.
The place was quiet, the curtain was about to go up, the warmth of the full auditorium reached them with the smell of perfume and dust burning on the footlights.
‘Girls,’ she whispered. They turned to her in surprise.
‘Listen, I’m sorry I blamed you for ruining my scenes.
I was a bitch.’ The witches stared at her in astonishment.
‘That’s okay,’ said Rebecca. ‘At least I had an opportunity to play Lady Macbeth.’
‘I hear you did a great job,’ Isadora replied. ‘I hope it goes smoothly tonight. There’s no knowing. Anyway, break a leg.’
They grinned, more in surprise than anything else. ‘Look, let’s have a drink sometime,’ said Rebecca. It was in all of their interests that they called a truce.
‘I’d like that,’ said Isadora.
When it was Isadora’s turn to go on stage she did so with a shiver of trepidation.
Would Nessa do her worst? Might Isadora’s words have made a difference?
She held the letter in her hand, lifted her chin, and recited her lines more ardently than she had ever done before.
The audience was enraptured. Not even a cough broke the silence in the auditorium.
Isadora held on to the letter, anticipating it to be whipped out of her fingers at any moment.
But it wasn’t. The chair didn’t move either. Everything was as it should be.
Emma and Leila sat in the stalls, both watching the play closely through opera glasses.
To their relief the stage was undisturbed by supernatural forces and the theatre was warm.
Joseph was relieved too. When the play ended and the audience leapt to their feet for a rapturous standing ovation, he clapped louder than he had ever clapped. It had been a triumph.
The curtain came down. The actors turned to congratulate each other. Edward Rye embraced Isadora. He had never done that before. ‘You were tremendous, Isadora,’ he gushed. ‘You gave the performance of your life.’
From the captivity of his hold, Isadora looked over his shoulder. Her eyes fell onto the chair. It stood alone at the other side of the stage. She was sure she saw it move. Very slightly. As if someone had just got up from it.