Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Storms (17 page)

There was no point telling Mum, because I knew she wouldn’t believe me. Or worse, she’d
pretend
to believe me because parents are meant to have faith in their own children, but she’d probably also be worried that I might be showing early signs of a mental illness.

‘Sunny?’ said Mum, tossing an empty box at my feet. ‘We’d better get on with this, love.’ She was stuffing one of Granny Carmelene’s handbags with tissue paper to help it keep its shape.

‘Mum, do you think angels are a way that dead people try to communicate with the people they’ve left behind?

‘That sounds like the kind of question you’d be better off asking Auntie Guff.’ She snapped the clasp on the bag closed and wrapped the whole thing up in soft fabric, before placing it carefully in a box.

Mum and I drifted into silence and packed and sorted all afternoon. We stacked the neatly sealed and labelled boxes on the landing for Carl to put up in the attic. We wiped all the shelves and put new liners in the drawers.

I had solid proof that Bruce and Terry’s grief repellent only lasted about three hours, because the deep empty drawers of Granny Carmelene’s dresser started reminding me of nothing other than a coffin. It was like a funeral all over again. I could tell Mum was sad too, but she didn’t want to get bogged down it.

‘There,’ she said closing the window once more, as if a whole person’s life could end up being explained by just one word.

There.

I flicked the light off in the dressing room and Mum and I both stood for a moment by the door, looking over the work we had done to try to make the room forget.

I thought about Granny Carmelene’s things that I had up in bedside drawer – the locket, the photograph, the letter. And suddenly I wanted to get rid of them. I could throw the locket back into the garden and maybe even burn the photograph and the letter. People do that kind of thing all the time, you know.

But when I burst into my turret room, who should I find but Bruce and Terry standing by my open bedside drawer, where I also kept my letters from Finn!

‘Don’t worry,’ said Bruce, ‘we didn’t read anything.’ He handed me Granny Carmelene’s things. ‘You’d be making our lives a little easier if you dealt with these, Sunny.’

‘No need to do anything drastic though,’ Terry clarified. ‘Maybe just shut ’em up in a box for a while, if you know what I mean.’ He nodded towards the attic.

‘Gotcha,’ I said. ‘Thanks, guys.’

But before I could thump downstairs to the attic-bound boxes marked
miscellaneous
, Terry grabbed me by the elbow and said, ‘Wait. All this wondering and worrying you’re
doing about your grandmother – have you ever thought of just asking
her
where she is? I mean, you communicate with us, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling a little confused. ‘But you’re not dead. You’re … well you’re … you’re Bruce and Terry.’

‘That’s right,’ said Bruce. ‘I’m Bruce and he’s Terry.’

Terry rolled his eyes. ‘Look, all I’m saying, Sunny Hathaway, is that there might be ways of communicating with them that’s passed. Check with your googliser. It’s as common as mud. Have a seance, Sunny, and put this whole mystery to rest.’

‘Top idea, Terry,’ said Bruce. ‘A seance.’

‘All in a day’s work, my friend,’ said Terry. All in a day’s work.

‘Ah … Terry,’ I said. ‘Can you let go of my elbow now, please. I’ve got to go downstairs.’

Another letter from Finn was waiting for me on the kitchen table.

But the fact was, it wasn’t Pluto that really interested me. I mean, why can’t there be a telescope powerful enough to see up to heaven? I’d be down at Scienceworks in a flash. At least then I could sort out whether or not heaven existed and if it did whether Granny Carmelene was up there. At least then I could cross
nowhere
off the list.

Maybe Terry was right. Maybe the one person I’d been forgetting to ask about her actual whereabouts was Granny Carmelene herself. It suddenly seemed so obvious.

I stayed up late that night researching on the internet, and I got to thinking about how Finn’s letter had made me feel abnormal on two counts. One, for being the only person in the world who didn’t like Harry Potter, and two, for being more interested in heaven than in Pluto. Still, I reckoned Finn could be persuaded to be interested in different planets, if you could call heaven a planet. I mean, what else could it be if it was floating up above?

And the way I saw it, Finn could also be convinced to maybe help me with some
other
things too, like seeing if you could communicate with the spirit world. If I pitched
the idea well enough, spiritualism wasn’t such a giant leap from astronomy. Was it? I mean, even President Lincoln used to get involved in seances, right there in the White House.

It was Boredom
Control time again and this time we thought we’d start with a treasure hunt. If the dogs were focusing on searching for treats, Sophia might not think about jumping in the river, and Banjo might have something better to do than try to round me up like a wayward cow, and Woolfie wouldn’t dig up Settimio’s roses.

Lyall had bought a pack of doggie tidbits from the pet shop and was portioning them out to Saskia and I like mixed lollies. Saskia made a trail around the house like in
Hansel and Gretel
.

‘Won’t this just make Sophia even fatter?’ I said.

‘Nah,’ replied Lyall. ‘Afterwards we’ll work them out on the dogstacle course.’

While Lyall and Saskia were hiding the rest of the treats, I set off to Kara Bleakly’s to pick up Sophia. Kara was just leaving the house when I arrived.

‘Perfect timing, Sunny,’ she said. ‘Now I can leave without any dog-guilt.’

I stood in the gateway while Kara clip-clopped out into the street in her high heels. Kara sure did seem to work a lot. Surely it’s not good for a person to live alone and not have enough time to make a new friend or even to walk their dog?

When I got back to Windermere, Lyall, Saskia, Woolfie and Banjo were already there.

‘Where’s Willow,’ I said, handing Sophia’s leash over to Saskia. Woolfie gave Sophia a big lick on the face and Sophia’s tail wagged hard.

‘We forgot to let her out of the house,’ said Saskia.

Lyall was practising getting Banjo to sit on command, which seemed to be working, but I was still a little nervous for my ankles. Just to be safe, I was wearing my gumboots with Explorer socks.

Finally we were ready to let the dogs go. Sophia immediately found the trail and started systematically gobbling up each treat, but the other dogs couldn’t have cared less. They were too busy chasing each other around the garden and doing giant laps around the house with
Willow striding at least ten dog-lengths ahead at all times, smiling from ear to ear.

‘This is all wrong!’ I said as Sophia followed her nose around the entire circuit, hoovering up all the treats as she went. She even knocked over the logs and found the treats I’d stashed underneath. ‘Sophia needs to be running, not eating.’

‘I’ll see if she’ll run with me,’ said Saskia. Come on Sophia!
So-phi-a!
’ Saskia took off towards the front of the house, but Sophia ignored her and kept sniffing about to see if there was anything else to eat.

Willow must have finally had enough of being chased because she sought me out and hid her head between my knees, puffing like anything. Banjo threw himself onto the grass to cool down, and Woolfie ran over to Sophia as if he’d suddenly realised there had been a treasure hunt and he’d missed out. Once Willow was satisfied there would be no more chasing, she too flopped down on the grass.

‘It’s no use,’ said Saskia, making her way back. ‘Sophia’s just not the running around type.’

‘Why don’t we do a few laps of the house with Sophia on her leash?’ I attached Sophia’s leash and started jogging. ‘Make sure you don’t let Banjo follow!’ I yelled over my shoulder.

Sophia trotted obediently beside me, and Woolfie did too, nibbling at Sophia’s collar the whole way around. By
the time we’d all had a turn Sophia was puffing and panting and I felt satisfied that she’d had some exercise, even if it was just to make up for the treasure hunt. At least we were back to square one.

Next we threw the ball for the other dogs. We were watching Woolfie, Willow and Banjo, so nobody noticed that Sophia had slunk away until we heard a loud splash from the river. This time, though, Saskia knew it wasn’t a matter of life and death. And when we arrived on the scene, Sophia was happily swimming in circles.

‘Maybe Sophia will swim after a stick,’ said Saskia. ‘Then it would be like she was swimming laps.’ She found a straight arm-length stick near the water’s edge and threw it as far as she could out into the river in front of Sophia.

Sophia
did
actually bring it back. Every time! which was a huge relief because if Sophia didn’t start to slim down, Kara Bleakly would have no hesitation in giving us the sack.

For some reason neither Woolfie, Banjo nor Willow wanted to join Sophia in the water, but you could tell they were awfully impressed with the way she swam back with the stick, heaved herself out of the river, shook herself off (still with stick in mouth) and dropped the stick once more at Saskia’s feet.

‘You see that, guys?’ Lyall said to Banjo, Woolfie and Willow. ‘Now that’s what you call
cooperation
.’

Woolfie’s ears pricked up momentarily as if to say,
I’ll show you cooperation
, and the very next time Sophia swam the stick back to the river bank, Woolfie leant over and gently took it from her, just like in a baton relay. Sophia turned and swam back out to the middle while Woolfie carried the stick over to Saskia and dropped it at her feet. We all cheered as if it was a trick Woolfie and Sophia had been working on for months.