want to go dabbling. Because you have to consider who would come through. There are some spirits that are—I’m not being rude now, but they are on a very low level. They’re only drifting about earthside because they’ve got nothing better to do. They’re like those kids you see on sink estates hanging about parked cars—you don’t know if they’re going to break in and drive them away or just slash the tyres and scratch the paintwork. But why find out? Just don’t go there! Now those sort of kids, you wouldn’t ask them in your house, would you? Well, that’s what you’re doing if you mess about with a Ouija board.”
She looked down at her hands. The lucky opals were occluded, steamy, as if their surfaces were secreting. There are things you need to know about the dead, she wanted to say. Things you really ought to know. For instance, it’s no good trying to enlist them for any good cause you have in mind, world peace or whatever. Because they’ll only bugger you about. They’re not reliable. They’ll pull the rug from under you. They don’t become decent people just because they’re dead. People are right to be afraid of ghosts. If you get people who are bad in life—I mean, cruel people, dangerous people—why do you think they’re going to be any better after they’re dead?
But she would never speak it. Never. Never utter the word
At teatime, when the event was over and they went down in the lift with their bags, Colette said, “Well now!”
“Well now what?”
“Your little outburst at breakfast! The less said about that, the better.”
Al looked sideways at her. Now that they were alone together, and with the drive home before them, Colette was obviously about to say a great deal.
As they stood at the desk, checking out, Mandy came up behind them. “All right, Al? Feeling better?”
“I’ll be okay, Mandy. And look, I really want to apologize about Morris last night—”
“Forget it. Could happen to any of us.”
“You know what Cara said, about unconditional love. I suppose she’s right. But it’s hard to love Morris.”
“I don’t think that trying to love him would get you anywhere. You’ve just got to get clever about him. I don’t suppose there’s anyone new on the horizon, is there?”
“Not that I can see.”
“It’s just that round about our age, you do sometimes get a second chance—well, you know yourself how it is with men, they leave you for a younger model. Now I’ve known some psychics who, frankly, they find it devastating when their guide walks out, but for others, let me say, it’s a blessed relief—you get a fresh start with a new guide, and before you know where you are your trade’s taken an upturn and you feel twenty years younger.” She took Al’s hand. Her pink-frosted nails caressed the opals. “Alison, can I speak frankly to you? As one of your oldest friends? You’ve got to get off the Wheel of Fear. Onto the Wheel of Freedom.”
Al pushed her hair back, smiling bravely. “It sounds a bit too athletic for me.”
“Enlightenment proceeds level by level. You know that. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that thinking was at the source of your problems. Too much thinking. Take the pressure off, Al. Open your heart.”
“Thanks. I know you mean well, Mandy.”
Colette turned from the desk, credit card slip between her fingers, fumbling with the strap of her bag. The nail of Mandy’s forefinger dug her in the ribs. Startled, Colette looked up into her face. Her mouth was set in a grim pink line. She’s quite old, Colette thought; her neck’s going.
“Look after Al,” Mandy said. “Al is very gifted and very special, and you’ll have to answer to me for it if you let her talent bring her to grief.”
In the car park, Colette strode briskly ahead with her holdall. Alison was dragging her case—one of the wheels had come off—and she was still limping, in pain from her smashed-up feet. She knew she should call Colette back to help her. But it seemed more suitable to suffer. I ought to suffer, she thought, though I am not sure why.
“The amount you take away!” Colette said. “For one night.”
“It’s not that I pack too much,” Al said meekly. “It’s that my clothes are bigger.” She didn’t want a row, not just at this minute. There was a quivering in her abdomen which she knew meant that someone was trying to break through from Spirit. Her pulse was leaping. Once again she felt nauseated, and as if she wanted to belch.
Sorry, Diana, she said, I just had to get that wind up, and Colette said—well, she said nothing, really, but Al could see she was annoyed about being told off by Mandy. “She was only advising you,” she said. “She didn’t mean any harm. Me and Mand, we go back a long way.”
“Put your seat belt on,” Colette said. “I’m hoping to get home before dark. You’ll need to stop somewhere to eat, I suppose.”
“Fucking will,” Morris said, settling himself into the rear seat. “Here, don’t drive off yet, wait till we get settled.”
“We?” Al said. She swivelled in her seat; was there a thickening of the air, a ripple and disturbance, a perturbation below the level of her senses? A smell of rot and blight?
Morris was in wonderful spirits, chortling and bouncing. “Here’s Donald Aitkenside hitching a ride. Donnie, what I’ve been trying to meet up wiv. You know Donnie, don’t you? ’Course you do! Donnie and me, we go back a long way. Donnie knew MacArthur. You remember MacArthur, from the old days? And here’s young Dean. Don’t know Dean, do you? Dean’s new at this game, he don’t know nobody—well, he knows Donnie but he don’t know the army crowd nor any of that lot from the old fight game. Dean, meet the missus. That? That’s the missus’s pal. Like a length o’ string, ain’t she? Would you? No, not me, no chance, I like a bit of meat on their bones.”
He laughed raucously.
“Tell you what, gel, tell you what, stop off south of Leicester somewhere, and we might meet up with Pikey Pete. For Pikey Pete,” he told Dean, “he is such a man, if he’s down on his luck you’ll see him picking fag ends off the road, but let him have a win on the dogs and he will see you and slot a cigar in your top pocket, he’s that generous.”
“Should we pull in south of Leicester?” Al asked.
