Epilogue

19 November 2019

I was walking to college early on the morning before my seventeenth birthday when I realized someone I didn’t know was walking next to me. She was a woman in her twenties, with very long, tangled hair, and I thought she was wearing a hospital gown under her coat. She looked like a mermaid, but with legs and odd clothes.

‘’Scuse me,’ she said.

I smiled because she reminded me of a mermaid, and I was Ariel. I was in a good mood. Max was coming down this afternoon and it was my birthday tomorrow.

‘Yep?’

‘Sorry. You don’t know me. You’re Ariel, right?’

I nodded and stopped walking. I looked at her face. I definitely didn’t recognize her.

‘My name’s Mia,’ she said. ‘I’ve come from the hospital. I only went in for a knee operation, but … well, I need to ask for your help. I’ve heard you might be able to give me a hand with this little tiny, massive, huge problem I’ve got.’

This was freaky. I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.

‘How would I be able to help? I mean, I guess I will if I can, but I really doubt that I’d …’

She interrupted with a huge smile.

‘Yay! You will if you can! That’s wonderful. Thank you so, so much! I know you can do it. It’s hard for me to get out of hospital. I can only do it early in the morning because I have to be back by ten. But the other day I managed to get on a train at seven and I met a woman called Lara. She said if I seriously wanted to escape from this, then I had to find Ariel.’

‘Really?’ I had a bad feeling about this. Lara.

I started to realize what this meant.

‘She said you’re a ghost detective,’ said Mia. ‘But it’s not urgent. I mean, it can wait until you have time.’

She reached out to touch my arm.

As I had known it would, her hand went right through me.