Chapter 17
Casey finished staging the farmhouse table in the food hall for Christmas dinner by placing a Hallow-Hart Christmas cracker on each place setting and harrumphed loudly.
“It’s no good sulking,” Margo chastised from where she lay across the top of a marzipan fruits chiller like a cat. Every now and then she dipped her hand down inside and plucked an almond-paste morsel from the display. “You told him you don’t date, and he respected your decision.”
Casey sidestepped Margo’s platters of flaming Christmas puddings, roast meats, and teetering bowls of clementines.
She was surprised by how quickly she had normalized working around the random gravy jugs and baked Alaska puddings that puffed in and out of existence as she replenished stock and skillfully arranged merchandise. “Yes, but now the ball’s in my court.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Margo inquired.
“Well, yes. No. Oh, I don’t know! I didn’t expect to have any balls.”
“Trust me, sugar tits, you have no balls. I’ve known field mice less skittish than you.”
“Pah! I’d like to meet one.”
Margo raised an eyebrow and bit the tip off a marzipan banana. “It’s quite simple: You either want to date him or you don’t.”
“Of course I want to date him! Anyone with a pulse would want to date Ajay. But relationships are messy and people let you down and I’ve been more than happy to avoid all that…”
“Have you, though?” Margo asked.
The question pulled her up short. Sure, she’d had to stop watching rom-coms because the pangs of longing practically strangled her.
And maybe she ugly-cried when she watched videos of lovers reuniting in airports.
But all that romance was just a smoke screen to block out the pain.
Real love hurt. Sooner or later, in one way or another, the person you’d trusted with your heart would squash it all to hell like an overripe kumquat.
“Maybe I’ll search him out when you’ve erased the meme…”
“Good plan,” said Margo. “Postpone happiness for some imaginary better time. And all the while your clock ticks steadily downward…”
“Jeez, you’re a ray of sunshine tonight.”
Margo lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out with the languid elegance of Ingrid Bergman. “You’re not the only one experiencing an existential crisis, darling.”
“No, of course not. How are you feeling about the whole ‘humans are scumbags’ thing?”
Margo sighed dramatically and took another drag. “Not all humans. Just the ones I am wont to deal with.”
“Could you ask your boss if you could change departments?” Casey asked. Surely there must be an HR team in the spirit world.
Margo huffed out a laugh. “I’m afraid that’s not how it works. My existence has but one role within the mechanics of the universe.”
“What would happen if you didn’t perform that role anymore?”
“I would cease to be of use to the cosmos, and I would be retired.”
“Oh, that’s not so bad, is it? You might enjoy retirement; you’ve certainly earned it. You could hang out in department stores all over the world…”
Margo held up her hand and said, “When a spirit retires, their energy is absorbed back into the megacosm.”
It took Casey a moment to absorb Margo’s words. “What? You mean…you wouldn’t exist anymore?”
“Not as I am, no.”
“That is harsh. Okay, well, then let’s take retirement off the table.”
“Why?” Margo asked, her curiosity sounding genuine. “It’s a viable option.” She tipped her head back and blew smoke rings at the garlands hanging from the ceiling. “I’m tired. Maybe it’s time for me to pass the torch on to someone less jaded…”
“No!” Casey stood up from where she’d been straightening decorated tins of tea. “No, absolutely not.” This was awful.
“A human dies approximately every two seconds,” Margo reasoned. “This is the decision that I came here to make.”
“You said you were on a hiding holiday. Not a ‘choose whether to live or die’ holiday!” Casey could hear the hurt in her voice.
“I am. I needed to be away from it all in order to think it through. Obviously, I hadn’t counted on you being able to see me; I’d expected rather more peace and quiet reflection time. It would have been easier if you were a numbskull but, unfortunately and to my great surprise, I rather like you.”
“Well, then, I rather like you too as it happens.” Casey was floundering. “And I’ll miss you.” She realized it was true. Margo was a giant pain in the arse, but the store would seem dreadfully quiet without her cavorting about.
Margo gave a sad smile that indicated that this decision was a bigger wrench than she was letting on.
“I was never going to be here forever,” she said kindly.
“On Christmas night, I’ll either rejoin Pam and Felicity, or I’ll move on.
The world will still turn, and if you choose to have your wish granted, there’ll be no more meme, and none of this will have happened; you won’t even know that I’ve gone because there’ll have been nothing for you to remember. ”
Casey felt her words like a blow. I won’t remember Margo. It seemed inconceivable. When she’d made her bargain, it had felt like she had everything to gain by eradicating the memes. She hadn’t counted on there being losses too.
“You know what we need?” asked Margo, her brightness returned. “A sleepover!”
Casey frowned. “I can’t sleep on the job.”
“Nobody ever sleeps on a proper sleepover—it’s all pj’s, pillow fights, and oversharing, and the occasional crazed murderer, depending on which movie you’re watching.”
“Have you ever had a sleepover?”
“Never! If I’m soon to become atomized into the universe, I’d like to get one in.”
Casey nodded. She could hardly argue, could she? “Okay. Where do you want to do it?”
“The Christmas department. That way we’ll be close to the food hall for snacks.”
“You literally puff out a smorgasbord every time you move,” Casey countered.
“Yes, but you know what it’s like—food always tastes better when someone else has prepared it for you.”
She couldn’t argue with that either.
“There’s just one thing we must do before we settle in…” Margo hopped down from the marzipan fruits chiller, grabbed Casey by the scruff of her jumper, shouted, “Ready, steady, glimpse!” into her face, and headbutted her.
—
“Ouch!” Casey clapped her hands to her forehead.
“You’re like the worst tour guide ever!” She removed her hands and looked about her.
She was in a bedroom bathed in early-morning sunlight that spilled in through a set of French doors opened wide onto a tiled balcony.
Beyond was the sea, cornflower blue against yellow sand dotted with palm trees.
“Where are we?” she asked, pulling her eyes away from the view to take in the rest of the room.
“Looks like the Seychelles to me,” said Margo.
The white walls were dotted with framed generic prints of flowers and art, the rest of the room was tidy-ish and impersonal with a wardrobe and chest of drawers, the top of which was littered with moisturizers, deodorant, and makeup, and two empty wineglasses.
A chair in the corner was hidden by hastily discarded clothes.
The place was lived-in, certainly, but it didn’t hold any feeling of a home.
An open bottle of wine stood beside a wastepaper bin overflowing with cocktail cans and sandwich wrappers.
Casey noticed there were two sleeping lumps beneath the scrunched-up sheet on the king-size bed.
A mobile phone on the bedside table farthest from the window began to vibrate. Casey watched as a familiar arm snaked out from beneath the sheet, followed by the rest of Other Casey’s torso and head.
Other Casey rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, smearing already-smudged mascara even farther down her face, and answered the phone.
“Mm, hello,” she croaked. She still had her long hair—made even more blonde by the sun.
So far, Casey thought that this Other Casey’s life wasn’t looking too shabby.
She heard her brother’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey,” said Nate. “Is it too early to call?”
Other Casey reached for the bottle of water by her bed and took a deep drink before answering.
“No. It’s early but it’s fine. I’m on the breakfast shift.
” Casey recognized the deep scratch and sluggish tone in her voice and knew she’d been drinking the night before.
“Are you all right? It’s late for you—what is it, half one over there? ”
“I just thought I’d check in with my little sister” came the reply. “How are you? How’s work?”
Other Casey pulled her hair off her face and rested her hand across her eyes against the sun. “Same old, same old. I live to make other people’s dream holidays a reality.”
“How’s the writing going?”
“Ask me another.”
“Don’t give up on it, you’re so good.”
She smiled and Casey recognized the love held within it.
They might be living in different realities, but their love for their big brother transcended time and space.
She was relieved. She reckoned she could handle almost anything thrown up by her alternate life paths, but not being on good terms with Nate would be more than she could bear.
“Yeah, well”—she laughed hoarsely—“right now you’re the only person who thinks so.”
“Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. You just need to keep the faith and keep on writing.”
She sighed and looked over at a small desk and chair in the corner of the room, with a neat pile of notebooks and a closed laptop with a desk lamp bent over it. “Yeah,” she replied without conviction. “How are the kids?”
“Good. Good. Ellory has been cast as sheep number four in the school nativity, and Conner got picked for the under-eights football team.”
“Wow. Tell them I said congrats on both counts.”
“Sure.” There was a hesitation that weighed heavy in the warm room and then he asked, “Do you think you might make it home for Christmas this year? We’d all love to see you.”
“Awww, I really wish I could, but I don’t think so. The hotel is fully booked. Maybe I could get back for New Year’s? You don’t mind, do you?”