Sitting on the edge of the bed, Richard dried his hair with the hairdryer. Looking up, he saw Nicky standing in the doorway with a concerned look on her face. He turned the hairdryer off.
“All right?” he said, half-hearted, still worried about coming clean.
“I’m all right,” she replied, her tone uneasy. “How about you?”
He reached down and unplugged the hairdryer. “I’m fine.”
“Look.” She walked over to the bed and sat beside him. “There’s something wrong. I know you too well, Rich.”
Looking down at the carpet, he sighed. “Nic, I’ve tried to talk to you about it, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Grimacing in perplexity, she shuffled to face him. “What do you mean? When?”
“You know what I mean. We’ve been arguing about it all week.”
Her eyes opened wide in puzzlement and shock as she stood up. “Please don’t tell me that this is about that bloody ghost?”
He looked up at her and gave an eye gesture to suggest that she was right.
“Rich, this is getting out of control. If it’s bothering you this much then maybe you should see someone about it.”
He shot up from the bed, anger soaring through his body. “See who, Nic? A bloody ghostbuster?”
“Don’t be stupid—you know what I mean.”
“What—a psychiatrist? No way!”
“Well, you have to do something. You can’t go on like this. You haven’t been right since you hit your head.”
Richard stormed over to his bedside cabinet and picked up a folded piece of paper. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but…”
“But what?” she asked as he handed it over to her. She opened the paper; it was the Christina Long “missing” poster from the supermarket. “What’s this?”
“Read what it says.”
She read it silently, taking a few seconds to finish. Glancing back up at him, she frowned. “Who’s Christina Long?”
“Who’d yer think?”
She shrugged, then looked at him, almost in disgust as she realized exactly who it was. “Please don’t tell me that you think this is your ghost?”
“It is her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s the same woman from the photo.”
She took another look at the picture. “She may just look similar to her, but—”
“It is her!” he snapped. “She looks exactly the same. And she has the same bloody name: Christina Long.”
“And where did you find out her name?” she asked, almost mockingly.
“I had a dream.”
She shook her head. “A dream! Oh, this just gets better and better.”
Richard felt his face flush with frustration. “This is exactly why I’m so pissed off. I can’t tell you anything.”
“That’s not true—you can tell me anything. Just don’t expect me to believe that this poor missing woman is now haunting our house, for Christ’s sake.”
“She is. Ask Karen if you don’t believe me.”
“Oh, I will be,” she said, bitterly. “And I’ll be telling her exactly what I think about her filling your mind with all of this rubbish.”
“Don’t blame Karen. It’s not her fault.”
“Yes it is. She’s the one who’s been fueling the fire.”
Exhaling loudly in irritation, he sat back down. “Look, I’m not making any of this up.” His voice began to calm. “When you found me sleeping in the spare room the other day, I had a dream. The woman I saw in the kitchen and in our bedroom spoke to me. She said her name was Christina Long. At first I thought it was maybe a name I’d subconsciously heard somewhere else. But then, when I went shopping today, there she was, pinned to the bloody notice board.”
“Okay, it is weird, I admit, but you may have seen it there before. The poster says she’s been missing since last June. You could have walked past it a million times and seen the name without even realizing it.”
He shook his head. “When was the last time I went food shopping, Nic?”