Chapter 16
‘But like Polly said, there are reasons…’
‘What am I supposed to do at this Halloween event, eh? Did you even think about that when you gave her your promise?’
‘Of course I did! And so did she. That’s why she gave me the list of other ghosts who have agreed to be mentioned.’
‘And a more boring bunch I’ve yet to hear about,’ she said scornfully.
‘They’re not boring! Look at Walter! I don’t care what you say, people will be fascinated that Shakespeare’s favourite tutor – the man who inspired him and guided him and set him on the path to literary greatness – is right here in Rowan Vale.’
‘And how do we know that’s true?’ she demanded. ‘People know about Shakespeare. What if there’s a record of all his tutors somewhere and Walter Tasker is nowhere to be found?’
‘According to Polly, it’s been officially verified. He was definitely a schoolmaster at Shakespeare’s old school in Stratford-upon-Avon.’
I thought it best not to mention that Walter suffered from delusions of grandeur, according to Polly, and they only had his word for how much influence he’d ever had over young Will – if any.
‘Even if all that were true, like I’ve said before, who cares? Now, if you had Shakespeare himself strutting around Rowan Vale that would be a different story. That would be the scoop of the century!’ She gave me a hopeful look. ‘I suppose he definitely isn’t here, is he?’
‘Of course not,’ I said.
‘No. Thought not.’ Her wistful sigh trailed off and she snapped back to her more familiar scathing self.
‘So, who am I going to fascinate the crowds with then? Let me guess. You’ve got the ghost of a woman who once sewed a button on Vivien Leigh’s dress, and the man who used to wipe Henry the Eighth’s bum for him! ’
Despite her anger I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Did somebody actually do that?’
‘Well… There was a job called Groom of the Stool.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘What a way to earn a living.’
We both stood for a moment, contemplating that horrendous thought, then Melissa shook her head and said, ‘Are you seriously asking me to fill an hour talking about a baker who had a stone thrown at his head?’
‘By his wife,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s a human-interest story, isn’t it?
There he was, trapped in the village pillory, with villagers chucking rotten fruit and veg at him, and his wife lobbed a rock at him because she was so furious with him for being drunk when he should have been in church.
She was a very pious woman, apparently.’
‘Very pious – chucking a rock at her husband’s head. And that killed him?’
‘It did.’
‘I mean…’ Melissa shrugged helplessly, ‘it’s all right, I suppose. Mildly amusing. Well, it is for us, it probably wasn’t for him. But even so, compared with unmasking Polly Herron’s murderer live on television…’
‘You can’t do that, Mel,’ I said. ‘Polly begged me. She has family in the village right now, and they just want the whole thing to stay buried. And Brooke and Danny haven’t been spirits for that long.
Their families are alive and well and believe the two of them have passed over and are resting in peace. You can’t take that away from them.’
‘So I swap tragic young lovers in fancy dress, a lonely Hollywood star roaming the streets, and a juicy murder reveal for a baker with a bad-tempered wife, a fat old bloke who still believes he’s the landlord of the pub, and two World War One soldiers who didn’t even get a medal but fell off a station platform scrapping over some girl. ’
‘And the Edwardian station porter,’ I reminded her. ‘Polly says he’s lovely. Callie calls him Perks because he looks like the porter in the film, The Railway Children.’
‘Wow,’ she said flatly. ‘Stop. You’re spoiling me.’
I gave her a pleading look as she folded her arms, considering. Then my heart sank as she shook her head.
‘No, sorry. Can’t be done. This is my one chance to make a splash and prove to everyone that I’ve still got the gift. I’m not going to waste it.’
I tried to keep my temper but something inside me burst. ‘But you haven’t still got the gift,’ I pointed out sharply. ‘It’s me who talks to ghosts, not you. Those days are gone and they’re not coming back. When are you going to admit it?’
Melissa turned pale and dropped into her chair. ‘How can you say that? You know I’m just going through some minor difficulties. My channels keep getting blocked because of my hormones, but that will right itself. As soon as I’m through the menopause, I’ll be back to my old self and—’
‘Like Mum?’ I sat beside her, desperate for her to finally face the facts.
‘She went through the same thing, remember? When she started the perimenopause, she lost her ability to see and hear ghosts, just like you did. But years after her menopause that ability hadn’t come back.
When she died, she hadn’t seen a ghost in years. ’
‘I’m not our mum,’ Melissa said, her voice sounding distinctly shaky.
‘It seems to be what happens in our family,’ I said gently.
‘It will no doubt happen to me, too. This ability I have that comes so easily and naturally to me will probably fade away when my hormones change again, and I’ll be left just like you and Mum.
I’ve accepted it. She accepted it. It’s time you accepted it, too. ’
‘And what would I do with the rest of my life if that were the case?’ Melissa demanded.
‘Find something else to do. Think about it! All the discomfort, unease and fear of being found out that you’re experiencing now will be over. You can be free to be yourself. No more lying or pretending or covering up. Your stress levels would flatten overnight!’
As I said it, it dawned on me that perhaps that was why Melissa had changed so much.
She used to be fun on occasions, and far kinder to me than she had been over the last decade.
She’d always been jealous of my relationship with our mother because she’d spent so long being the only child that it was hard for her when I came along, but even so, we’d had a bond of sorts.
But when she got the job on It’s Haunted!
she’d changed. The programme might have brought her more money and fame, but it had clearly given her a lot of stress.
All that pressure to perform – to come up with the goods every week when sometimes ghosts just didn’t show up to talk or weren’t there at all.
I’d felt it when I’d done the ghost whispering for her – that fear that I wouldn’t find anyone to talk to.
Heck, I’d felt it enough in the last couple of days.
Imagine having ten years of that! At least I wasn’t in the spotlight like she’d been.
For the first time I felt genuinely sorry for my sister.
‘I can’t give this up,’ she said. ‘You can’t expect me to. And anyway, you may have promised Polly Herron that I wouldn’t say anything, but I gave no such promise. I’m sorry, Verity, but I must reveal what I know about her. I have no choice.’
‘You do have a choice,’ I said hotly. ‘But that’s you all over, isn’t it? Only interested in what’s best for Melissa Deighton – sorry, Madam Mariska.’
‘How dare you? I’ve given up everything to take care of you!’
I noticed Honey slinking under the table, taking cover from our war of words. She clearly recognised Melissa’s anger and was wisely getting out of the way.
‘“Given up everything”?’ I couldn’t help but laugh.
‘You gave up nothing! In fact, you gained quite a lot. When Mum died, I was packed off back to boarding school and left to cope with the grief on my own while you divided your time between shopping and therapy sessions. You sold our family home without even consulting me because you fancied moving to Marlington. All those memories! The only home I’d ever known, gone. You gave me no say in that at all.’
‘Mum wanted me to make all the decisions on your behalf,’ she said angrily. ‘You were just a child!’
‘I was eighteen by then!’ I cried. ‘Old enough to be consulted. Old enough to have my say. It’s always been about what you want.
You’ve used your guardianship of me to justify spending Mum’s money – our money – on whatever you wanted.
The new house, holidays abroad – never with me, of course – clothes, cars…
Meanwhile I cook and clean and taxi you around and sort out your paperwork like some sort of skivvy. ’
‘Well, I like that! You’re hardly bloody Cinderella,’ she snapped. ‘You live in the lap of luxury. And have you forgotten that you have that trust fund that Mum put aside for you? I didn’t get a trust fund, did I? I just got a bunch of instructions to take care of Mummy’s Little Princess.’
‘And access to her entire fortune,’ I said hotly.
‘Not that it was ever about the money. Not for me, anyway. Don’t you get it?
I was fourteen, Melissa. Fourteen! I’d lost my dad over two years prior to that, and then I lost Mum.
All I had in the world was you, and you were so busy building up your career, desperate to be a star, that you didn’t even notice how unhappy or lonely I was. Or if you did, you just didn’t care.’
‘I lost my mum, too!’ she yelled. ‘And she was mine long before she was yours. I was twenty-two when you were born. Twenty-two! I had all those years with her, when it was just me and her. We did everything together. I loved her so much. And then you came along and it was all Baby Verity this and Baby Verity that. I couldn’t stand it.
Why do you think I married those two losers?
I just wanted to get out of that bloody house and my mother’s adoration for her new favourite.
I just wanted to be the most important person to someone again. ’
‘But, like you said, you had her for twenty-two years before I came along,’ I said, wanting her to see my point of view. ‘Thirty-six years in total. I only had her for fourteen. Have you ever thought about that?’
She dabbed at her eyes, and we both sat in stunned silence.
I don’t know what Melissa was thinking but I was remembering her rushed and ill-fated marriages to both Sebastian and Tristan.
They were idiots and Mum had despised them both.
Neither marriage had lasted more than a year.
I’d never figured out why my sister had gone through with them, so her revelation came as quite a shock to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know how badly you felt. You deserved better than Sebastian and Tristan.’
‘Too bloody right I did,’ she said fiercely. ‘Never again, I’ll tell you that much.’
I tilted my head, watching her, wondering if she had the faintest idea that there was someone who’d very much like the chance to step up and prove to her that not all marriages were bad.
‘Not even with Diccon?’ I asked. Well, if he wasn’t going to pluck up the courage to tell her, maybe I’d have to do it for him.
Melissa burst out laughing. ‘Diccon? Are you insane? Diccon’s my agent!’
She said it as if being an agent totally ruled him out of possessing any romantic feelings.
‘He’s also in love with you,’ I said firmly. ‘And how you haven’t noticed that after all these years is beyond me.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, but her cheeks flushed pink. ‘It’s just business, that’s all.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. If that’s how you want to play it.
’ I’d leave it with her. If I pushed, she’d only dig her heels in, whereas if I left it at that she’d start to think things over in her own time, and just maybe she’d remember all the little things he’d done for her that he’d never dream of doing for his other clients. Maybe.
She twirled a strand of her hair around her fingers, looking bemused.
‘So,’ I said, taking advantage of the lull in hostilities. ‘Will you?’
‘Will I what?’ she said, sounding dazed. Then she blinked and let go of her hair. ‘No! I’m not giving up this chance, Verity. I didn’t promise Polly Herron I’d say nothing, and you had no right to promise on my behalf.’
‘But Mel—’
‘I said no!’ She got to her feet. ‘That’s the end of it. I have preparation to do so why don’t you go out and take the dog for another walk?’
‘Because we’ve only just come back from one, and I’m not here to be at your beck and call every minute of the day,’ I said furiously. ‘In fact, there’ll be no more of me skivvying for you. When we get home things are going to be very different.’
‘Really?’ Melissa said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Well, maybe in that case, you’d prefer to find your own place to live?’
‘Maybe I would,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t think I want to share my home with a person who doesn’t see ghosts as real people with feelings.
All these years various spirits have come forward to talk to you, to tell you their stories, and you’ve made a career out of them.
You’d be nothing without their help and co-operation.
And now, when some ghosts are begging you to consider their feelings and the feelings of their families, you don’t care. It’s all about you.’
Melissa tutted but didn’t reply.
‘You ought to think about how you’d feel if some medium contacted Mum and she spilled all our family secrets live on air,’ I said bitterly.
Her lips tightened and she folded her arms but seemed to have no intention of backing down.
‘Fine!’ I cried, exasperated. ‘Well, you can forget asking me to help you with the ghost whispering ever again, because I shan’t do it.
So good luck with tonight because it will be the last time you ever use any information you’ve got from me.
And don’t think I’ll be there because I shan’t be. You’re on your own.’
‘Good!’ she yelled, finally jerked out of her silence. ‘I don’t need you anyway. You’ve been a millstone round my neck for long enough. I’ll be glad to see the back of you. I shall make tonight a success whether you’re there or not. You just wait and see.’
I stormed into my bedroom and slammed the door behind me, not wanting to spend another moment in her company. At that moment, I felt as if I truly hated her. I’d be more than happy to find somewhere else to live and never set eyes on my selfish half-sister ever again.
But that didn’t solve my other problem, did it? How was I going to explain to Polly Herron and the other ghosts that I hadn’t managed to talk Melissa out of betraying their secrets?