“Hello, Alison dear,” sniffed the spirit guide. “Here I am, alone in this wicked world. Play your tape when you get in. She’s left you a few kindly sentiments, if you want to hear them.”
“I’m sure I shall!” Alison cried. She sounded, in her own ears, like someone else; someone from an earlier time. “Why, Paul,” she cried, “the sequins is all fell off your jacket!”
Colette removed Al’s portrait from the boot of the car. “They’re right,” she said. “You need to get this picture redone. No point in fighting reality, is there?”
“I don’t know,” Al said to her: temporizing. Said Paul, “You might fetch out a needle and a scarlet thread, darling girl, then I can stitch up my glad rags and be on my way to my next post of duties.”
“Oh, Pikey Paul,” she said, “do you never rest?” and “Never,” he said. “I’m on my way to link up with a psychic in Wolverhampton, would you know anyone who could give me a lift up the M6?”
“Your nephew is around here somewhere,” she said.
“Never speak of Pete, he’s lost to me,” said Paul. “I want no truck with his criminal ways.”
She stood by the car, her hand resting on its roof, her face entranced.
“What’s the matter with you?” Colette said.
“I was listening,” she said. “Mrs. Etchells has passed.”
Torches crept over Admiral Drive. It was the Neighbourhood Watch, beginning their evening search among the cow parsley meadows that led to the canal, for any poor wastrels or refugees who had grubbed in for the night.
Colette played the messages on the answering machine; several clients wanting to set up readings, and Mandy’s cool level voice … . “on a trolley in the corridor … didn’t linger … mercy really … given your name as next of kin.” Once she had shot her first draught of sauvignon blanc down her throat, she wandered into the sitting room to see what Al was doing. The tape recorder was in action, emitting chirps and coughs.
“Want a drink?” Colette said.
“Brandy.”
“In this heat?”
Al nodded. “Mrs. E,” she said, “what’s it like there?”
“It’s interactive?” Colette asked.
“Of course it is.” She repeated, “Mrs. E, what’s it like in Spirit?”
“Aldershot.”
“It’s like Aldershot?”
“It’s like home, that’s what it’s like. I’ve just looked out of the window and it’s all happening, there’s the living and there’s the dead, there’s your mum reeling down the road with a squaddie on her arm, and they’re heading for hers to do the unmentionable.”
“But they’ve demolished those houses, Mrs. Etchells. You must have been past, you only live down the road. I went past last year, Colette drove me. Where my mum used to live, it’s a big car showroom now.”
“Well, pardon me,” said Mrs. Etchells, “but it’s not demolished on this side. On this side it looks the same as ever.”
Alison felt hope drain away. “And the bath still in the garden, is it?”
“And the downstairs bay got a bit of cardboard in the corner where Bob Fox tapped on it too hard.”
“So it’s all still going on? Just the way it used to?”
“No change that I can see.”
“Mrs. Etchells, can you have a look round the back?”
“I suppose I could.” There was a pause. Mrs. Etchell’s breathing was laboured. Al glanced at Colette. She had flung herself onto the sofa; she wasn’t hearing anything. “Rough ground,” Mrs. Etchells reported. “There’s a van parked.”
“And the outbuildings?”
“Still there. Falling down, they’ll do somebody a damage.”
“And the caravan?”
“Yes, the caravan.”
“And the dog runs?”
“Yes, the dog runs. Though I don’t see any dogs.”
Got rid of the dogs, Al thought: why?
“It all looks much the same as I remember,” Mrs. Etchells said, “not that I was in the business of frequenting the back of Emmeline Cheetham’s house, it wasn’t a safe place for an old woman on her own.”
“Mrs. Etchells—listen now—you see the van? The van parked? Could you have a peep inside?”
“Hold on,” Mrs. Etchells said. More heavy breathing. Colette picked up the remote and began to flick through the TV channels.
“The windows are filthy,” Mrs. Etchells reported.
“What can you see?”