“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Laura bluffed. “Perhaps I left it there and forgot about it, and somehow it leaked.”
She knew how unlikely it sounded, and the expression on Sunshine’s face confirmed that she was completely unconvinced. Laura had been thinking about what Freddy had said, and the more she thought about it, the more concerned she became. If all these things were Therese’s doing, and a physical demonstration of her pain at still being apart from Anthony, then surely the longer it went on, the worse it would get? She remembered Robert Quinlan’s description of Therese as “having a wild streak, and a fiery temper when roused.” Good God, at this rate she’d soon be setting fires and smashing up the place, and Laura was already a little tired of clearing up after a grumpy ghost.
“We should try and help her,” said Sunshine.
Laura sighed, slightly shamed by Sunshine’s generosity of spirit.
“I agree. But how on earth do we do that?”
Sunshine shrugged her shoulders, her face crumpling into a perplexed frown.
“Why don’t we ask her?” she eventually suggested.
Laura didn’t want to be unkind, but it was hardly a practical suggestion. She wasn’t about to hold a séance or buy a Ouija board on eBay. They spent the rest of the morning adding things to the website while Carrot snored contentedly in front of the fire.
After lunch, Sunshine and Freddy took Carrot for a walk, but Laura stayed behind. She was thoroughly unsettled. Normally the task of entering data onto the website was a therapeutic distraction, but not today. She could only think about Therese. Like a creature whose fur has been brushed against the nap, her skin prickled and her thoughts skimmed and zigzagged like a water boatman across the surface of a pond. She needed to do something about Therese. There had to be what Jerry Springer and his fellow reality-TV ringmasters called “an intervention.” If only she knew what the hell it ought to be.
Outside, gauzy sunlight seeped through clear patches in a gray marbled sky. Laura took her jacket from the hall and went out into the garden for some air. In the shed, she found Freddy’s “secret” packet of cigarettes and helped herself to one. She was only a high days and holidays smoker really, but today she thought it might help. She wondered if Therese had smoked.
As Laura strolled aimlessly round the rose garden, puffing like a guilty schoolgirl, Sunshine’s words slipped back into her head.
“Why don’t we ask her?” It might not be very practical, but nothing about this whole situation was exactly run-of-the-mill and there was no point in Laura trying to deal with it as though it were. So maybe Sunshine was right. If it was Therese doing all these things—and some days Laura clung on to that “if” like a passenger on the Titanic to a life jacket—then leaving her to her own devices would only mean more and more trouble. “Why don’t we ask her?” Laura was embarrassed even to be considering it. But what else could she do? Put up or shut up until . . . Laura didn’t want to think about the possible endings to that sentence. She took a final puff on her cigarette and then, glancing round furtively to make sure that she couldn’t be seen or heard, she let her words escape out loud into the chill of the afternoon air.
“Therese,” she began, just to clarify whom she was talking to, and just in case any other ghosts happened to be listening, she joked to herself, “you and I need to have a serious chat. Anthony was my friend, and I know how desperately he longed to be with you again. I want to help, and if I possibly can I will, but wrecking the house, locking me out of my bedroom, and keeping me awake all night with your music isn’t exactly appealing to my better nature. Clearly ghostbusting isn’t my area of expertise, so if you know how I can help, then you’ll have to try and find a way of sharing that with me.”
Laura paused, not expecting an answer, but feeling somehow that she should leave a gap for one anyway.
“I don’t have the patience for puzzles and riddles, and I’m hopeless at Cluedo,” she continued, “so you’ll have to try and make it as clear and simple as you can. Preferably without breaking or setting fire to anything . . . or anyone,” she added, under her breath.
Once again, she waited. Nothing. Except for the cooing and canoodling of two amorous pigeons on the shed roof, practicing for spring. She shivered. It was getting colder.
“I meant what I said, Therese. I’ll do whatever I can.”
She marched back down the garden, feeling a little foolish and in need of a cup of tea and a consoling chocolate biscuit. Back in the kitchen, she put the kettle on and opened the biscuit tin. Inside was Anthony’s pen.
CHAPTER 37