Josh didn’t turn up at college the day after his granddad’s death. I didn’t blame him. While I didn’t know his granddad very well, he and Josh had been close. They’d spent every bank holiday together for as long as Josh had been alive, as well as travelling to Spain and France on family holidays. Plus, from what I knew, Nathan was the soft touch of the family, which meant he’d let Josh do pretty much whatever he liked when he babysat.
‘Hey,’ said Josh, falling into step with me on the walk to college the next day. He had slightly farther to walk than me, so he usually walked past our house as I was leaving. Did he time it that way? Or was he just trying to be punctual? I was so overthinking it.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling?’
He sighed. ‘You know.’
We carried on down the street of terraced houses, sandwiched between houses on one side and cars on the other. To walk beside each other, we had to walk close. I wasn’t complaining.
I wished there was something I could say to him to make him feel better, but I knew from my own experience there wasn’t. He just needed to know I was there for him.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said.
‘Did you—I mean—never mind.’
‘What?’ I said. Something was on his mind. I just really hoped it wasn’t my visitation. That was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Hunting ghosts was one thing, but them seeking me out? That was a step too far.
He stopped walking. ‘How did you know what my granddad looked like? There aren’t any photos of him since he got sick.’
Frazzle. I’d described his granddad after his cancer diagnosis, not before, when he’d been fit and well. There were no photos of him since his chemo, and the last time I’d met the guy, I’d barely been a teenager.
‘And why did you ask about him right before – you know?’
I stared at my shoes, not knowing how to answer his question.
‘What, can you see ghosts or something?’
I looked up and briefly met his eyes, then looked at my shoes again.
‘What, you can?’
I nodded, just once.
Josh scoffed. ‘Come on, Edie.’
Of course he’d react like that. ‘Believe what you want.’ I stormed off without saying anything else. He didn’t try to catch up with me.
*
Josh and I avoided each other for the rest of the day. Easy when you only have one class together, and said class isn’t on Tuesdays.
We didn’t have the same circle of friends, either. Well, technically I didn’t have a circle of friends. Or a friend, beyond Josh.
It was difficult to hold conversations with people without getting distracted by the ghost haunting them, or another ghost being more interesting than the person trying to talk to me. So I preferred to keep to myself.
I got home and sank onto the sofa. Tilly ran over and dove onto my lap, jumping up with excitement because she hadn’t seen me in seven hours. At least she was my friend.
Mum walked in a few minutes later, an aggravated look on her face.
‘What happened?’ we chorused.
We both laughed.
‘You go first,’ said Mum, sitting beside me on the sofa. Tilly switched from making a fuss of me, to jumping up at Mum and licking her face. Mum kissed her forehead, giving her a hug.
‘Josh asked if I could see ghosts.’
Her face turned white. Whiter. She was a ginger.
‘Don’t worry, he doesn’t believe me anyway.’
‘He’ll come around,’ Mum said.
‘Will he?’
‘Give him time. It’s a lot to process.’
‘What about you?’ I asked, desperate to change the subject.
‘Nothing interesting. Fixing things, building things. Same old.’
‘Fun for you,’ I said sarcastically.
‘Yeah,’ she said with an eye roll.
Tilly jumped off Mum’s lap and started barking. A few seconds later, footsteps rattled the loose paving slab on the driveway. We looked out the front window to see Josh walking towards the house.
‘I’ll leave you two to it. Let me know if he’s staying for dinner,’ said Mum.
‘I doubt it,’ I mumbled, but I went to answer the front door anyway.
‘Can we talk?’ he asked as soon as I opened it.
Tilly jumped up at him, barking for his attention. He picked her up and hugged her. I stepped aside to let him in. Bloody dog hadn’t given me a choice.
‘I spoke to Mum,’ said Josh, sitting on the worn grey sofa. ‘She explained everything. About you and your Mum.’
‘I see,’ I said, sitting in a chair opposite him. I didn’t want to sit next to him after the way he’d been.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shifting forwards on the sofa. Tilly continued to try to climb over him. He rubbed behind her ears absentmindedly while we talked. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It’s not exactly everyday conversation,’ I said. ‘And anyway, would you have believed me if I had told you?’
‘Probably not,’ he admitted. Well, at least he was honest about it.
‘What did your Mum say?’ I asked.
‘That your mum can see them, and she passed the ability on to you. And that she quit ghost hunting when your dad died.’
A lump formed in my throat. We didn’t talk about my dad, and there was a reason for that. He’d been able to see ghosts, too, but when he’d died in a car accident, Mum had stopped ghost hunting. They’d always done it together, since before I was born, and I guess it reminded Mum too much of him, so she stopped.
‘Did she tell you why Dumb Dan left?’ I asked, hoping Maggie might’ve known from Mum, and passed the information on to him.
‘No. Said she didn’t know either, but figured it probably had something to do with ghosts.’
Didn’t everything in our lives? Even when Mum didn’t want it to?
‘I’m really sorry I didn’t know, Edie,’ he said, lowering his gaze and watching Tilly as she wiggled her bum excitedly.
‘It’s not exactly every day conversation,’ I said.
He gestured for me to join him and Tilly on the sofa. I got up and walked over, being pulled onto his lap by him. Tilly climbed over me, alternating between trying to lick my face and lick Josh’s.
‘See? She’s happy I know.’
Tilly barked, jumping off my lap and across the room. I looked up to see a furry grey cat floating on top of the bookcase. If you didn’t look too closely, it looked like he was sitting on it. But, since he wasn’t corporeal, he couldn’t interact with physical objects.
Josh watched her, his eyes narrowed. ‘What’s she barking at? There’s nothing there.’ He looked at me, the possibility of what he couldn’t see dawning on him: ‘Is there?’
‘Spectre, our ghost cat.’
‘You have a ghost cat?’
‘Yeah. He’s not hurting anyone. Tilly may be barking at him, but that’s because she barks at everything. She enjoys playing with him, so we let him stick around.’
He smiled. ‘That’s cute.’
Spectre jumped off the top of the bookcase, landing just past Tilly. With him being a ghost, his cat acrobatics were even more impressive. Tilly did an about-turn, chasing him out of the front and into the kitchen.
‘See? Happy puppy.’
He gave me a squeeze. ‘Happy owner?’
I rested my head on his shoulder. ‘Yes, happy owner.’