Dead Romantic (8 page)

“This isn’t possible,” I protest.

“So you say, but here I am. I think you have a gift. That whack on the head has unlocked it.”

“Oh please! You’re not serious?”

“Think about it, Cleo. You can see me. I can manifest to you. Jesus, you have no idea how hard I’ve tried to reach my brother. It’s impossible. There are some people who genuinely have the gift and you, Dr Carpenter, are one of them. You can really see me! Besides, ghosts love you. Your office is full of them. Can you find Aamon a proper football, by the way? That rubber-band one is crap. And get that bloody cat a basket.”

I goggle at him. “You think you’ve seen Aamon?”

“I don’t
think
, I know! We played a bit of footy together. He’s a pretty cool kid and he wishes you’d talk to him rather than just thinking about his remains. He says you’re right about his evil stepmother too.”

“What?” There’s a sensation like somebody’s dropped a scoop of ice cream down my neck. I haven’t shared this finding with anyone; it’s far too early days and I was waiting for another CT scan to come back before I could verify my worst suspicions. “How on earth do you know that?”

“Because Aamon told me,” says Alex patiently. “She sounds like a right bitch. Aamon says she wanted him out of the way so that her son, snotty Setau, could rule in his place. She stabbed him in cold blood, right between the neck and the top vertebra. The cat tried to claw her, so she killed that too. They were mummified very fast and the priests weren’t happy at all. Not that his stepmother cared. She just wanted him written out of history.”

I’m staring at Alex. He has just, in thirty seconds, confirmed several of my hypotheses.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he says. “That museum of yours is teeming with ghosts and we do talk. I don’t know how you haven’t noticed us.”

My chin is practically in the basement flat. “You can find me at work? As well as here?”

“Pretty much anywhere. How do you think I managed to stop you from getting flattened on a busy road?”

“So you could appear at any time? Like when I’m in the bath or getting dressed?”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “I hadn’t thought of that!”

A blush creeps over my face and my heartbeat increases. Obvious side effects of my injury, I suppose.

“Only kidding,” he grins. “Not that I don’t think you’d look lovely in the bath, of course. Not that I’m thinking about you in the bath! Oh shit.” He buries his face in his hands. “Now I won’t be able to think of much else!”

“If I believed in you I’d hit you.”

“I wouldn’t bother. You’d only go straight through me and it really tickles.”

We grin at each other. Then Alex melts from the armchair and is next to me on the sofa.

“Cleo,” he says, his breath like the north wind against my cheek. “I really need your help. I’ve tried and tried to reach Rafe on my own but I can’t do it. You’re the only one who can see me. I need you to talk to my brother for me. He’s alone and he’s in a really bad way. If he carries on the way he is then I don’t think it’ll be long before he joins me. I have to save Rafe from himself. That’s the reason I’m still here.”

Now my headache is really pounding. The wine sloshes in my stomach. “You actually think you had a choice?”

He nods. “Before I died Rafe and I said some terrible things to one another. Really awful, Cleo. I didn’t mean any of it and I would have put things right, I really would, but I never got the chance. One moment I was jumping out of his car, the next there was nothing but noise and heat and metal crushing me. Then everything was over.”

“And that was it? You were dead?”

“Yeah. I was dead and had no chance of making things up with Rafe. How can I find any peace knowing he’s so grief-stricken? He’s in a terrible way. You have no idea what happens to some people when they grieve.”

I do actually. After Mum died we all crumbled in our individual ways.

But I don’t ever think about that.

“Rafe and I are tight. When our parents died we would have gone into care if Nan hadn’t taken us in. After she died we only had each other,” Alex continues. “He’s all the family I have, and I have to make sure he’s OK. He’s my brother. Cleo, I promised Nan we’d always look out for each other and look how it ended.” He dashes his hands across his eyes, which are shimmering with tears. “Christ. Sorry.”

Without thinking twice I move to put my arms around him, or rather I try to but my arms slip straight through his leather jacket. Goosebumps shimmy across my flesh.

“No way!” I gasp.

Alex gives me a watery smile. “Still think I’m a dream?”

I stare at him in shock. Did I really just put my arms through a ghost? The chill clings to my limbs and my breath clouds the air.

“This can’t be happening,” I murmur.

He pins me with big sad eyes. “It is. I promise you, it really is. Cleo, please help me make things right with Rafe. He’s in such a bad way and I’m scared that unless I help him something terrible’s going to happen. You can tell him how sorry I am and that I don’t blame him.”

“No way! Your brother will think I’m nuts! Or some kind of deranged stalker fan. Look, no matter what you may think, I’m really not the person for this job. Can’t you find a medium?” I wrack my brains. “I know! What about that woman from
Totally Spooked
?”

He screws up his nose. “Lilac Delaney? You have to be kidding. She’s a total phony.”

“And I’m a total sceptic!”

“Who’s talking to a ghost! Come on, Cleo! It’ll be worth it just to get rid of me – and, believe me, I’m going nowhere until I’ve managed to make things right with Rafe.”

We eyeball one another, both equally determined.

“I’m going see my consultant again,” I decide. “I’ll tell him all about these weird episodes and he’ll give me some medication to make all this go away.”

Alex smiles. “Go ahead; be my guest. Crank up the drugs. This isn’t a dream. You really can see me and I’m not going anywhere.”

“But I don’t want to see you!” I cry, jumping to my feet and sending my wine and laptop flying. “Just go away! Go and annoy somebody else and leave me alone! Go on! Push off. I don’t want you.”

“Fine,” says Alex coldly. “Be like that. But sending me away isn’t going to help. Face it, if you can see me you’ll see all the others too – and they might not be quite as obliging as I am. You know where to come when you need some help.”

“Not to you!” I shriek. “You’re nothing but a chemical reaction in my brain!”

A crazy chemical reaction in my brain, it seems, because I’m suddenly talking to thin air: the sofa’s empty. A wine stain spreads across the duvet and my laptop lies upside down on the carpet. The television chatters to itself in the corner of the room, the fairy lights twinkle and the cat reappears to wind itself round my ankles. Even the warmth is back, although the sweat that trickles down my back is icicle cold.

I collapse onto the sofa. What’s happening to me? Am I really going mad? Suffering from paranoid episodes? Having delusions?

But if Alex is just a delusion why do I now have two huge pinch marks on my arm?

Chapter 8

Five to nine the next morning finds me in the GP’s surgery, playing dodge-the-virus with every snotty toddler and coughing pensioner in the vicinity. Normally I avoid such places, which is probably an overreaction to all the horror stories Susie tells me about MRSA and other killer superbugs. Seriously, if I listened to my best friend I’d never go near a hospital again and I’d only venture into the doctor’s wearing a full nuclear decontamination suit. Already I’ve coated my hands with about eight squirts of hand gel and snorted half a vat of Vicks First Defence up my nose. I probably smell revolting but to be honest I don’t care – I’m far too busy trying to avoid breathing too deeply. The man sitting opposite me is sneezing and spluttering everywhere and I can almost see the germs parachuting in my direction.

Great. I’m coming in with head trauma and probably leaving with pneumonia. Just what I need. Who exactly did I upset in my last life again?

Although it’s only early, the waiting room is crammed to bursting point with patients balancing precariously on narrow plastic seats or being swallowed whole by enormous high-backed armchairs of the variety normally found in an old people’s home. I’ve somehow managed to end up on one of these and I’m burrowing into it, my hands avoiding the worryingly tacky armrests, while I read all the posters and information leaflets on the walls in an attempt to distract myself from the germ warfare all around me. I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes now and already I’m an expert in hand-washing techniques, understand the need to vaccinate my baby and have been well and truly warned that this practice will not tolerate violence and aggression towards its staff. I could also learn all about the importance of using condoms if I really felt like it – but on top of all my other problems right now, contemplating my lack of a sex life and how I made a complete fool of myself in front of Simon would probably push me over the edge.

I’m only here because I need help. After the events of last night, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that either the doctors have missed something pretty major on my brain scan or I’m going crazy. There’s no other logical explanation. I’m seeing visions of a dead rock star with whom I’m having imaginary arguments in my own sitting room. I mean, does that sound normal? If it hadn’t been for the huge pinch marks on my arm I would have assumed I’d just fallen asleep and dreamed the whole episode.

My hallucinations of Alex Thorne had freaked me out so much that I’d been incapable of making further progress with my notes for the job application; nor had I felt able to re-examine my emailed scans of Aamon to see whether there was any truth in Alex’s revelation. Or was it my own revelation, conveyed in a dream? My thoughts had been like tangled fishing twine, and no matter how hard I’d tried I just couldn’t unravel them to make any sense of it all. Just as I’d followed one lead it had snagged and knotted itself up into another. Alex was merely a figment of my mind, I’d lectured myself sternly as I’d brewed some tea to warm myself up; the details I’d
thought
he’d told me I must have heard somewhere previously, that was all. The accident had just caused the part of my mind that processed memory and time to act a little differently. I’d cheered up significantly at this thought – until a small voice that I couldn’t quite ignore pointed out that I’d been given the all-clear by my consultant. Besides, I knew that I’d never heard of Thorne before.

Still icy cold, I’d paced around the flat trying desperately to find an explanation. At one point I’d even raided Susie’s pile of
Fate and Destiny
magazines just in case the articles on angels and guides and psychics could shed any light on the problem. Luckily I came to my senses halfway through an interview with the infamous Lilac Delaney, who was discussing how she’d first discovered her psychic gifts. No bumps on the head or dead rock stars for her; apparently she had always been able to see dead people, in true
Sixth Sense
style.

“It’s my calling to help loved ones on the other side come through to share their messages of hope,” she’d gushed. “Even pets that have passed over have something to say.”

As Lilac had continued to communicate the innermost thoughts of a dear departed moggy, I’d put the magazine down in disgust, convinced that even reading it was sufficient evidence that I was losing my mind. Frustrated, I’d taken myself off to bed. I must admit I undressed as fast as I could, unable to shake the thought that Alex was lurking in the shadows hoping to catch a glimpse of my bra and pants. Honestly, the whole thing was ludicrous; there was no way I could carry on like this. If I was cracking up then I’d better find out why, and fast, before I started chatting to Elvis or something. It was always better to know the facts. If Mum had shown a doctor her lump sooner rather than spending weeks in denial, things might have been very different...

So, bearing all these factors in mind, when I woke up this morning the first thing I did was make an appointment to see my GP.

“There has to be a logical reason,” I whisper to myself. “There has to be.”

“Keep telling yourself that if you want,” says an amused voice that’s starting to become annoyingly familiar. “I’ve already told you the truth. You really can see me. No pills will make me go away”

Glancing to my left I groan out loud, causing several patients to look over in alarm. Alex Thorne is lolling in the chair next to me. His dark hair flops over his eyes but I can tell he’s grinning at me.

“Go away,” I hiss – or rather, I try to, but I don’t want to look like a total lunatic addressing thin air. Quite a few other people are looking at me in a rather worried fashion now. I can’t say I blame them.
I’m
looking at me in a rather worried fashion too.

“How can I if I don’t exist?” says Alex reasonably.

It’s a good point – not that I’m going to give him the satisfaction of conceding it. Instead I pointedly turn my back on him and pretend to be fascinated by a dog-earned copy of
Heat
magazine. Oh look! Katie Price has got married again. And who on earth are the Kardashians?

“Don’t be like that,” says Alex. “You’re stuck with me so we might as well be friends.”

“I am
not
stuck with you,” I mutter out of the side of my mouth. “You’re just a chemical imbalance in my brain.”

The man on my right shifts down a seat. Thank God I don’t know anybody here. Imagine if I started hallucinating at work? Walking down the staircase in my pants would look dignified by comparison. I really hope the doctor can give me something to sort this out – and soon, too, before I lose all credibility.

I focus my full attention on the magazine.

“I used to be in
Heat
loads,” says Alex conversationally.

I try to ignore him, but he’s very persistent, chatting away nineteen to the dozen and insisting on reading out all the posters describing infectious diseases. When the receptionist calls my name I leap to my feet in relief. Escape here I come! Very soon I’ll have an explanation and some lovely pills, and life will go back to normal.