In spite of herself, Bea was smiling when she put down her phone. Chris and her husband Ray were darlings. She could visualise the conversation so easily. Chris’s remit was sheets and towels and groceries. Ghosts. No. For ghosts, ring Bea. Box ticked.
Mark was in the kitchen preparing supper when Bea finished the call. Behind the elegance of its late Georgian frontage and main rooms their house, the one that came with his job, still clung to medieval roots and the high-ceilinged kitchen came from that much older age. It was large, with ancient flagstones on the floor. The dresser and larder and the huge scrubbed oak table may have come from another century; the cooker, fridge and dishwasher were, thank heaven, modern.
Mark looked up when she walked in and pushed a glass of wine across the table in her direction. ‘Was that Chris on the phone? How is she?’
Sitting down, she picked up the glass. ‘She’s fine.’ She hesitated. Should she keep silent or tell him about the ghost? She hated the thought of lying. Hated the thought of being put in this position at all. Better perhaps to prevaricate for now. ‘She was telling me that there’s a problem with her holiday let. You remember the cottage up on Offa’s Ridge? She’s rented it to an author for several months, so she’s a bit twitchy about everything being perfect for him. I said I would go up there with her tomorrow to take a look.’
He turned back to the chopping board. ‘Did she say what kind of problem?’
She shook her head. ‘I expect we’ll turn it into an excuse for a girls’ lunch.’
Simon had slipped the spare key off his key ring and given it to her before they parted. It appeared he was planning to go out next day. ‘Better if I’m not there. Go and have a poke around on your own. See if you can sort it.’
On her own.
It had been too late to say no. And after all, how difficult could it be – a wailing voice and a knocking at the door in the night? She had dealt with worse, much worse, before.
Bea loved her husband unreservedly, had done ever since the first time she had laid eyes on him when they were both going to the same sixth form college. Standing in their kitchen, chopping vegetables in his Snoopy T-shirt, a present from their daughter Petra, it was easy to forget that he now gloried in the title of Canon Treasurer at one of England’s great cathedrals. Without the dog collar, he was himself.
They had first met going backwards and forwards to college. He was the best-looking boy she had ever seen. Tall, dark hair, scruffy, but not overly so, and with the most charming smile, he had made a beeline for her on the bus on the first day of term and sat down beside her. She only realised how much of a catch he was when she saw the other girls scowling. Their friendship became close and they started to go out together at weekends and sometimes in the evenings to local dances or the pub. No one else had ever had a look in. They confided in each other and told each other their hopes and dreams – and her dreams of the future included Mark. There was only one thing she had kept from him. Her secret life.
When she was a child, it had been her grandmother who listened to her half-excited, half-frightened stories of another world, and told her they were normal. Her grandmother understood, saw as she did, and warned her that not everyone saw these things and that people would tell her that it was all her imagination. In an over-rational, hypercritical world it was easier to keep quiet about her gift than talk about it. Her Nan had also warned her that some people would be afraid of her.
Bea and Mark went on to university together, she to read English, he to do business studies with a view to joining his father’s firm in the City. In her secret heart of hearts, she’d imagined that one day they would marry. For two years, life continued according to her plan, but then came his sudden announcement and her world fell apart.
He was going to give up his business course and become a priest. They would still be there at uni together, he assured her, still travel up and down on the same train at the beginning and end of term. But, perhaps inevitably, she realised almost at once that he was becoming a stranger. When her parents moved to London, she went with them. His original plan to join her there was abandoned. After graduation he took a curacy far away in the North of England. They lost touch. She applied for a post as an English teacher close enough to her parents to stay with them until she found her feet.
She had lost Mark, but she had not lost her interests. She began to attend workshops and seminars, meeting people with the same abilities as herself. She studied healing and spiritual development. She studied ghosts. That was when she realised she had found her true calling.
Boyfriends came and went. No one serious. No one who could ever take Mark’s place. And then, out of the blue, they met again quite by accident and that had been that. She’d put aside her reservations, swept into the giddy passion that carried them into marriage and through his first two parishes, where she had proved herself remarkably good
