Melody Bittersweet and The Girls' Ghostbusting Agency: A laugh out loud romantic comedy of Love, Life and ... Ghosts? (27 page)

‘Me too,’ he says, holding up his notebook. ‘Story to file.’

‘No rest for the wicked,’ I say, and then because he deserves it and I need it, I stand on tiptoes and press my lips against his. It’s been a weird day; terrifying at turns and astonishing at others, but the thirty seconds I spend kissing Fletcher Gunn by the garden gate still count as the most electrifying of all. He holds me, and then he smooches me exactly like that blockbuster movie-ending dictates he should. His mouth is warm, and firm, and he cups my head in his hand when he all too briefly slides his tongue into my mouth.

‘I was wrong the other night when I told you you’re trouble,’ he says. ‘You’re worse than that. You’re a fucking calamity.’

I like it when he swears at me, it just makes him sexier. I wasn’t wrong the other night when I said he was lethal. He should come with a health warning. He presses his mouth fleetingly against my forehead and then steps away from me.

‘Get in your ridiculous van and go home, Bittersweet.’

S
tarting
the engine outside Brimsdale Road for the final time, I glance up at the attic window. It’s empty, as I’d known it would be, and I hope that Scarborough House will one day be filled with the laughter and chaos of a new family. It deserves its happy ending.

Marina digs in the detritus in the cool box and produces three still-cold glass bottles of limonata. Cracking off the lids, she hands them down the line until we all hold one, and then she proposes a toast.

‘To our very first job well and truly done,’ she raises her bottle and we touch ours to hers.

‘I don’t think he’s likely to pay us,’ Artie frowns, but I just laugh.

‘Sadly for him and luckily for us, Glenda Jackson had him sign a cast-iron legally binding contract. He wanted the ghosts gone, and as of this afternoon, they’re gone. I think that counts as upholding our end of the bargain.’

Marina raises her bottle again in salute. ‘To the unsinkable Glenda Jackson.’

I take a welcome slug of Nonna’s limonata, and then, for what feels about the hundredth time today, I’m choked up with emotion. ‘We did it, didn’t we?’ my voice catches in my throat. ‘We bloody did it.’

‘Today Brimsdale Road, tomorrow the world.’ Marina squeezes my hand. ‘Now pull yourself together and drive us home.’

I don’t think there have been many times in my life when I’ve felt luckier, or looked forward to the future more. I might have a wacko family, a complicated love life and the world’s most annoying pug, but I’ve also got the best friends in the world and a business with my name over the door. Marina’s right. Let’s go home.

‘Well,’ Artie says, as Babs backfires loudly when I pull away from the kerb. ‘That’s another day at work I can’t tell my mother about.’

* * *

I
t’s been
two days now since it all happened, and I’m slumped at my mother’s kitchen table. I’ve just eaten my own weight in waffles and bananas with Nutella, and I’m finally starting to feel more like myself again.

I watch Mum as she pretends to begrudge Lestat the chunk of waffle she’s cooked especially for him. That’s just her way; she’s incredibly generous but she doesn’t like people to see it. A thought strikes me, and once it does it’s so obvious that I wonder why I didn’t realise it earlier.

‘Mum, did you send me a gift in the post?’ I say, sipping my coffee. She has the most wonderful library of rare reference books in the shop and she knows how much I covet them. I’ve probably read them more often she has, and that’s a lot. ‘A book, perhaps?’

She pauses, caught out, and then she rearranges her features and looks at me as if I’m still five years old.

‘Who do you think I am, Santa Claus?’

Gran sighs and shoots my mother a look as if
she’s
still five years old, then pushes the newspaper across the table towards me with a knowing nod and a glass of champagne.

I glance at the clock and then shrug, pushing my coffee aside even though it’s only midday. ‘It’s five o clock somewhere, right, Gran?’

It’s front-page news, of course. They’ve run with the image of Donovan Scarborough trying to land his fist on a policeman’s jaw, and scandalous, attention-grabbing headlines about murder and intrigue on Brimsdale Road. Fletch’s copy is accurate, and the historical details of the unsolved murder are juicy enough to carry the front page without any reference to the ghost story at the heart of the matter.

I picked up the Polly Pocket diary from the kitchen table at Scarborough House on my way out a couple of days ago and it had revealed much more about Lloyd’s disturbed state of mind. His love for Maud was bottomless and obsessive. Being Douglas’s twin had cast him forever in the shade; I could easily see how that had happened, because Douglas shone like bright sunshine. Lloyd grew into a boy who learned to hate early, and he became adept at masking that hate with theatrics and drama. It had been all too easy to get away with murder, to take Douglas down rather than risk him turning his attention on Maud, and then for Lloyd to deflect the blame onto serious, studious Isaac. I’m just glad to have been able to give Isaac the justice he deserved, even if it was a century too late.

It’s just as well that the story is meaty enough to carry the front page without any mention of the ghosts, because there is none. Or more accurately, there’s one passing reference to Leo Dark’s spurious involvement inserted purely to take a snarky potshot, but beyond that, absolutely nothing. It’s as if it never happened at all. I’m not at all surprised, and on closer examination of my own feelings, I’m not terribly bothered. Fletcher Gunn is never going to view the world in anything but black and white.

I flick through the pages and my eyes settle on Fletch’s face next to the cinema review column, and I recognise the title of the film as the Scarlett Johansson movie we watched the other night.

I smile, and then I close the paper. I might not let Lestat pee on this one.

M
onday morning sees
us all back in the office. Artie sticks his lunch box in the fridge and makes straight for the kettle, and Marina peels the lid off Nonna Malone’s pretty biscuit tin to show me today’s treat.

‘Ricciarelli,’ she says. ‘Macaroons to you.’

Man, I love macaroons. I reach out to snag one but she bangs the lid down, disappointing not just me but Lestat. He’s sussed out that Nonna’s tin means treats and he’s just hurtled across the room to stretch himself up Marina’s leg and stare at her with his tongue hanging out to one side.

‘Only you could choose a dog with a bigger sugar addiction than you,’ she says, stashing the tin safely on a high shelf.

‘I didn’t choose him. He chose me, remember?’

I watch Lestat amble back to his bed, and feel an unexpected wash of affection. I didn’t expect a dog to be part of my twenty-seventh year, but he’s here now and he’s embroidered himself into the fabric of my life. He might be a pain in the ass, but he’s
my
pain in the ass.

I glance around at the others as they go about the business of getting the new week underway. Marina is helping Artie finish up making the morning tea and coffee, and they’re laughing quietly about something I can’t quite hear. Glenda’s behind her desk, a pencil tucked into her hair as she types. I press pause for a second inside my head and just allow myself to feel a momentary warm glow of pride.

Two months ago I turned twenty-seven, and my feet have barely touched the ground since. It’s like someone pressed the fast forward button, and that someone is me. I did this. This agency is mine. I made it happen from spun-sugar dreams and superhero hopes and the luck of the Magic 8 Ball. I’m a businesswoman now, and I’m on my way to being badass.

I wish I could say that my romantic life is following the same upwards conjecture, but at least I can say that I’m not lonely anymore. I’ve been romanced by a ghost; a handsome man from the past whose kiss will remain on my hand forever. Leo Dark has walked back into the middle of my life and is eighty percent idiot and twenty percent idol. I have no doubt that our paths will stay intertwined, so who knows which way those percentage sliders will go in the future? And then there’s Fletch. What can I say about Fletcher Gunn? The man is mercurial. He and I will never, ever see eye to eye on pretty much anything, but he is quicksilver in my veins when he touches me. He doesn’t just turn me on. He switches me on like a lighthouse, and that is pretty much as bright a light as I can imagine.

‘Earth to Bittersweet, Earth to Bittersweet,’ Marina says, flicking the wrapper from her stick of gum at me to get my attention. She directs my attention towards Glenda when I look up.

‘There’s a woman on the phone for you.’ Glenda covers the receiver discreetly as she speaks. ‘She wants to come in and see you urgently about a problem she’s having with the ghost of a circus ringmaster and his pet lion.’

I pass her the diary and grin. ‘Book her in.’

T
hank
you so much for reading
Melody Bittersweet and The Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency
, I hope you’ve laughed along the way and enjoyed spending time with the weird and wonderful folk of Chapelwick!

I
’d be massively
grateful if you have a couple of minutes to leave a review, it only need be a sentence or two and it really does help other readers decide if they’d enjoy the book.

I
’d love
to hear from you too! I read and reply to all of my emails or messages on Facebook and Twitter, so please do get in touch to let me know your thoughts on Melody. I’m currently writing book two in the series, a brand new adventure that may or may not include a castle, a nun, and a ghostly circus complete with a spirit lion . . . Life is never dull around Melody Bittersweet!

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ould
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T
hanks and lots of love
,

K
itty

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