“A love potion.”
The three of us are silent. Marie and Sylvia clearly find this very, very funny.
“Mum! Do you know the story of the missing girl from my school? Lily?”
“The girl by the river.”
“Yes.”
The air in the room is immediately changed. Marie’s face looks stricken.
“Ni, you said you didn’t know that girl.”
“I don’t. But Maeve does. And she … she wants to talk to Sylvia about it.”
Marie and Sylvia exchange a few words in Tagalog, their voices low and concerned. Fiona rolls her eyes irritably, and it’s clear that this is a language primarily used to keep things from her.
“OK,” Marie finally says. “I’m going to start making dinner. You can talk to Sylvia in here, but I don’t want you asking her to make anything. No silly stuff.”
“OK,” Fiona agrees.
“And I’m keeping the door open.”
“Mum!”
She puts one finger up. “It’s my house, and I have the right to stop this at any time. I don’t want Maeve and this nice boy going home with stories about what ‘those crazy Filipinos’ get up to.”
Marie puts her hand to the soft spot of her temple. “Not that you would, Maeve. But you know how it is.”
I do not know, but I nod anyway. Sylvia watches us both in wary respect of her older sister.
“You don’t mind, Sylvia?” Fiona asks.
“It’s fine.” She nods. “Let me give José a snack first, though. And I don’t have any cards with me, you know.”
“It’s OK, Maeve has hers. And I gave him a snack.”
“Crisps,” Jos says happily and Sylvia looks sharply at Fiona.
“Crisps, Fifi?”
“Traitor,” Fiona grumbles.
Twenty minutes later, Jos has eaten his way through a bowl of carrot sticks and we are sitting on the floor of Fiona’s living room, my cards spread out face up on the carpet. Sylvia is studying each one.
“It’s a nice deck.”
“Thank you,” I say, proudly.
“Old, too. Maybe 1960s, 1970s. You might get a hundred euro for them on eBay, Maeve.”
“She wouldn’t sell them,” interrupts Roe, who is immediately embarrassed by his sincerity. “Well, you wouldn’t.”
“You say … there is a card missing?”
“Yes. The Housekeeper card. She showed up the day I gave Lily her reading and then never again. Except in dreams. Nightmares, really.”
Sylvia runs her hand through her hair and thinks for a minute.
“Did she look like the other cards? The same red border? The style?”
“She looked different. No border. And the style was creepier, less blank-faced than these.”
Sylvia nods, her face creased as though trying to work out a puzzle. “So, she isn’t of the deck. The Housekeeper visits the deck.”
“Yes.”
“Or,” Sylvia says, her tone measured, practical. “She’s summoned to the deck.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever seen this before, Tita?” Fiona asks.
Another silence from Sylvia. She traces her finger across her bottom lip, concentrating.
“Not exactly,” she says finally. “Describe to me what she looked like.”
I tell her. The long black hair. The white gown. The knife. The dog. The sense of her as being human-ish, rather than human: the hair that doesn’t curl when wet, the unlined skin.
“What you’re describing is familiar, Maeve.”
“Familiar? You know her? Who is she?”
“Everyone knows her. Black hair, white dress. In the Philippines, we would call her the Kaperosa. But versions of her exist everywhere: the Malay have the Pontianak, in Brazil it’s the Dama Branca. Every culture you can think of has some version of the White Lady. Google it if you don’t believe me.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just one of those unusual things. Do you know that the story of Jesus existed, almost word for word, within the Egyptian story of Horus? He even had twelve disciples.”
“So … the Christians copied the Egyptians?” asks Roe, trying to grasp her point.
“Maybe, but what I think is much more likely is that there are some stories or figures or places that are so powerful that cultures are just pulled towards them. It’s like gravity.”
Sylvia slowly brings her closed fists together, imitating gravitational force.
“OK, so she’s everywhere,” Fiona says, clearly losing patience with this cultural history lesson. “But is she real?”
“Yes.”
“Well, OK.” Fiona replies. “You … answered that pretty quickly.”
“Anything people come together to believe in is real. Any intense, passionate energy that is focused on one spot will create something.”
“No, I don’t mean in a, like, pretend way. I don’t mean, ‘Is she real?’ in the sense of ‘Is love real?’ I mean, is she literally real?”
“And I’m telling you, Fifi, yes.”
Sylvia doesn’t just say it, she spits it. This calm, level-headed woman is suddenly antagonized, irritated by her niece.
“Why do you think people believe in ghosts, Fifi?”
“Because they’re sad and they want to believe their husband is still alive, or whatever.”
Sylvia’s nostrils flare and Fiona rolls her eyes again. Roe and I exchange an uncomfortable look. One that says: Ah, I see we have stumbled into another person’s long-standing family argument. Time to excuse ourselves and make a run for it.
“It’s because only very powerful emotions can create very, very powerful energy. Ghosts linger after grief because it’s one of the most powerful things a person can feel. People don’t see ghosts because they’re sad. The sadness makes the ghost.”
“What about the White Lady? What makes her?” I ask.
“It could be anger. Betrayal. Revenge.”
I swallow hard.
Anger at Lily for showing me up in front of our class, for making me feel guilty.
Betrayal, like when I ditched her to be friends with two girls I don’t truly even like.
Revenge, for just existing, for being an ever-present reminder of all the things I try to deny about myself. The silly games we played for too long. The slow-reading group at school. Licking books in Waterstones.
Tick all that apply.
Sylvia is staring at me, but I can’t meet her eye. I can’t let this nice woman know that I am capable of feeling that kind of emotion. I look at my hands.
“I don’t know about this Housekeeper,” Sylvia says, standing up gingerly. “I only know what I believe. And I believe that collective human feeling brings these spirits into existence. We like to think that
