Chapter 8
The bike ride home was bracing and just what she needed.
She liked having the roads almost to herself.
The quiet gave her time to think. She felt freer at this time of the day than any other, perhaps because she was less likely to bump into anyone.
This early in the morning the foxes were still brave enough to wander the streets like they owned them, and the occasional barn owl would swoop down into one of the fields in the hopes of snagging itself a mousy breakfast. The tops of cars twinkled with frost in the lamplight.
In half an hour the sun would begin to rise, and the day would begin proper.
Already the sky was beginning to look rinsed out.
The milkman gave her a cheery wave as she passed him; there’d be two pints of semi-skimmed waiting outside Nate’s front door, one for him and one for her.
She turned onto a smaller street of independent local shops, and she slowed and bumped her bike up onto the empty pavement.
As she reached the bakery, she slowed down further and held out her arm.
Mark stepped out of the Flour Power Bakery smiling, a paper bag in his hand, the handles of which he hooked over Casey’s outstretched arm.
The smell of the warm fresh loaves inside made her stomach growl.
“Thanks, Mark.” She smiled as she pulled away.
“Same again tomorrow?” he called after her.
“Please! Have a great day!”
“You too! Tell your brother I’ll see him on the pitch on Monday night for practice, no more excuses!”
“Will do!” she called back, waving goodbye with her bread-free arm. It all felt so normal she could almost convince herself that there wasn’t a spirit loose at her place of work.
Ten minutes later she was pulling onto the drive of her brother’s house: a 1930s detached property on a quiet tree-lined avenue.
She wheeled her bike through the gate at the side of the garage and into a generous back garden, where she rested her bike against the shed and went to the French doors, pressing her face against the glass.
Inside, her niece and nephew were sat on beanbags in their jammies watching the TV.
Conner—seven years old, dinosaur obsessed, two missing front teeth—saw her first. “Aunty Casey!” He jumped up to greet her as she used her key to let herself in.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she said, kissing first his head then Ellory’s. “Is Daddy still asleep?”
“Yeah,” said Ellory—five years going on thirty, dragon and butterfly enthusiast, prolific biscuit thief. “Come snuggle with us.”
Saturdays were Nate’s only chance for an albeit modest lie-in and when Casey’s shift fell just right, she minded the kids until he got up.
“Who wants bread and jam?” she asked, and two sets of arms shot into the air.
Casey brought the milk in from the front doorstep and set about making a breakfast of warm buttery bread with Nate’s homemade black currant jam and glasses of cold milk.
She tucked a clean tea towel around the neck of each child and armed herself with wet wipes before they settled onto the crimson velvet sofa strewn with so many cushions in clashing fabrics that they looked like the spoils of a haberdashery heist. As they began to eat, The Polar Express playing on the TV, she wondered if children could see spirits and what they’d make of Margo.
The open-plan kitchen was part of an extension her brother had designed.
The units were modern, with all the gadgets an enthusiastic chef could want, including a proving drawer, two ovens, and a tap that provided instant boiling water—Casey was mistrustful of the tap, preferring to use the kettle for her tea as God intended.
The kitchen might have been all mod cons, but that was where the sleekness ended.
The rest of the space was painted a rich forest green and covered in photographs of their little family and pictures painted by local artists, all housed in mismatched frames.
Nate’s many trailing houseplants tumbled down through bookcases and shelving units in a waterfall of verdant leaves.
The reclaimed parquet flooring had come from a house renovation Nate had overseen and lent the space a settled-in feeling.
Her brother was an architect, a good one, the best in Casey’s biased opinion. Luckily, he could work mostly from home, but still, being a widower was tough. Casey helped where she could, and his late wife’s parents were super hands-on. The kids’ other grandparents…not so much.
She looked out through the French doors.
A lone robin hopped across the lawn and stopped, looking in to where they sat, its beady eyes alert, its chest a beacon in the gray morning.
She’d read somewhere that robins acted as a connection between the physical and spiritual world.
Up until now she had surmised that this was simply the wishful thinking of the grief-stricken, but after her recent brush with the otherworldly, she wondered if this little bird was a sign that her sister-in-law, Grace, was watching over her babies.
She hoped so. She smiled at the robin, and though she could have imagined it in her warm, sleep-deprived condition, she thought the robin nodded its head before it flew up into the bare branches of the apple tree.
At eight o’clock, Nate came downstairs, showered and dressed.
“Thanks, sis,” he said, smiling at her. Ellory and Conner gave him a cursory wave, engrossed as they were in the TV. “How was work?” he asked, pulling down two large jars of damson vodka that he’d been brewing since September, and shaking them before replacing them on their high shelf.
“Good. Quiet,” she lied. Just me and the Spirit of Christmas Present, but who’s counting?
“I think you should look around for a new job.”
“I think you should look around for a new personality,” she teased.
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Seriously, there must be something less dangerous you could do for a living.”
“I’m a stock replenisher. I hang up granny knickers and plump cushions—I am hardly putting my life on the line.”
“You know what I mean,” he said snappishly. “I was up half the night worrying about you.”
She waved away his concern. “Well, you shouldn’t have.
I was fine.” This latest example was just one in a long and varied list of safety concerns over which he fretted, and she was finding it increasingly frustrating.
At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if he suggested getting the whole family microchipped.
Nate hmmed. “Isn’t there anyone who can cover while Nigel’s off?”
She tried not to grit her teeth. “If there is, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.”
“It’s ridiculous,” he muttered. “Anything could happen…”
She placed her hand to her ear. “Can you hear that whirring noise? Oh wait, no, it’s just the sound of your helicopter brothering.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “One of us has to take your safety into consideration.”
“Seriously,” she said as sternly as she could without alerting the children. “I don’t need you to worry about me. You need to chill out. I’m not five.”
“I’m five!” Ellory piped up.
“You certainly are,” Casey replied. “And how old am I?”
“Really old,” Ellory replied without missing a beat. “You’re a grown-up lady.”
Casey eyed her brother. “See? I’m really old, so you need to give me a break.” And yourself, she thought; she didn’t want to be an added weight of responsibility in his already hefty load.
“All right, all right!” He held his hands up in surrender. “Consider my helicopter landed.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you. Right, I’m off,” she said, untangling herself from her bed-headed nephew and niece. “See ya later, stinkers.” They waved absently. “Oh, and Mark wants to see you on the pitch on Monday evening,” she added to Nate.
“I might have to work late Monday,” he replied, busying himself at the sink. “You working again tonight?”
“Yup. My schedule’s on the pinboard,” she said, knowing full well he’d memorized it. Everything about the household—the kids’ clubs, parent evenings, school trips, playdates, shopping deliveries, meetings—was pinned to the wall next to the fridge, and still he checked everything twice.
“Yeah, I know but…”
“You want to make sure nothing’s changed,” she said before he did.
He smiled. “Mock me if you will, but preparedness is the key to a stress-free life.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatevs, square bear.”
He threw a cushion at her, which missed and thudded against the wooden toybox below the window.
She grinned and called, “See you later!” as she let herself back out into the cold and began to wander along the stepping-stone path, down the garden to the log cabin that Nate had originally designed and built for her to use as a writing space and that she now called home.
When her sister-in-law, Grace, died suddenly nearly two years ago, the fabric of her brother’s existence was ripped apart.
In an instant, he became a widower with two children under the age of six.
Casey was living twenty miles away in neighboring Kent, but she’d taken a couple of weeks compassionate leave from her barista job and come to stay with Nate as his young family adjusted to life without Grace.
Around the same time, Sam appeared in the reality show Cupid Cabin and laid on a sob story about his unrequited love for Casey that was so cloying it was a wonder it hadn’t clogged the airwaves.
Media curiosity around the unfeeling hussy in the meme blew up again with renewed ferocity.
When her boss called to tell her that journalists were staking out the café, it seemed like the sensible thing to simply pack up and move to Weaverston, where nobody knew her.
Nate was still vulnerable, and she temporarily moved in to help with the children and the day-to-day things until he found his feet.
She’d lived in the writing cabin ever since.
Clutching a bottle of milk in one hand, she let herself in.
The cabin was small but perfectly formed.
The front was mostly glass, leading out onto decking with planters and a set of garden furniture covered over with a tarp for winter.
Her writing desk sat in front of the window so that she looked out over the long garden and up toward the house.
The garden was broken up into sections: Nearest to the house were the children’s climbing frame and swing set and a goal post set against a fence panel.
Beyond that, the raised vegetable beds and fruit trees, and after those, just ahead of her log cabin, they’d planted a meadow area.
There were worse views to have. Although even they hadn’t helped her writer’s block.
When she’d got the job at Coopers & Co., she’d saved hard and bought herself a set of good second-hand Shaker-style kitchen cabinets, which Nate and Nigel helped her to fit and she painted sage green.
A wood burner sat beside the TV, and she set about laying a fire using the logs in the basket.
On the far wall was her squishy two-seater sofa and a small chest filled with blankets.
She’d left the wood cladding on the walls untouched but for her bookshelves, which ran around the top of each wall and were reached by a custom-made ladder.
The other room was her bedroom—equally as cozy—and en suite bathroom, which was where she headed after putting the milk in the fridge.
After brushing her teeth, she took off her uniform and lay it neatly on the back of a chair, pulled on her pj’s, climbed into bed, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
She hoped the spirit was right and that nobody else would be able to see her or her mess.
And then she thought about the deal she had negotiated and a laugh escaped her, loud in the peaceful cabin.
Okay, so she had swapped a metaphorical haunting for a literal one, but Margo would be gone by Boxing Day, and she would get a do-over at life. It was dizzying.