At eleven the following morning, Emily’s business partner sat at the kitchen table with her eyes shut, while Jason and Emily sat facing her, apprehensively. Jason, bleary from tiredness, sipped a strong coffee. Emily was also exhausted from a largely sleepless night, because Jason had worked through most of it, needing the lights on, brightly. Just when she had finally drifted off, it seemed only moments later she was woken by the roar of machinery on the building site.
Louise, a rotund woman with short, dark hair cut into a fringe, was dressed in a baggy, knee-length, cable-knit jumper over leggings and ankle boots. Usually she had an irrepressibly cheerful demeanour with a foghorn of a laugh, but this morning she looked deadly serious and focused.
‘Oh-oh-oh-oh,’ she said, eyes still shut. ‘So much activity. So much. I’ve got so many spirits all trying to communicate with you, all at once. They’re being very naughty, very rude. I’m trying to get some order here, but they’re not letting me.’
‘What do you mean?’ Emily quizzed.
Louise did not respond. Instead, she shouted, nodding her head, ‘No, you! Back! Wait your turn!’
Jason looked at her, very sceptical.
Still with her eyes tightly shut, Louise said, ‘I’m getting a message for you, Jason. From a woman. She says she’s sorry that she damaged your painting last night. She is telling me she was angry that you put her portrait facing the wall – she says she recognizes she has anger issues ever since she passed into spirit.’
How could she know this, he wondered?
Emily looked at her husband. He frowned back at her.
‘I’m getting another person now,’ Louise said. ‘Another woman. She’s been in spirit for a long time. She is very angry indeed. She’s – she’s just full of anger. Now there’s a man interrupting. He tells me his name is Harry. He’s telling me he used to drive the digger. He’s giving me a message for you. He’s saying, “Ask anyone, they’ll know about the digger.” Does that mean anything to you?’ She opened her eyes and looked at them.
Jason and Emily stared back at her, as pale as ghosts.
‘Digger?’ Emily asked. ‘Did you say digger?’
‘There is so much spirit activity. Was there a graveyard here before? That’s what it feels like. So much spirit activity. It really needs to be calmed down.’
‘When you say spirit activity, Louise, what exactly do you mean?’ Jason asked. ‘What do you mean by a spirit?’
‘A trapped soul.’
‘Soul?’
‘What I believe,’ Louise said, ‘is that all of us have guardian angels – guides – who look after us. If we die of an illness, or just old age, they take our spirits – souls – over to the other side. But sometimes, if a person dies suddenly – they’re murdered, or in an accident, for instance – and the guide is not around at that moment, then the spirit doesn’t realize the body has gone. It wanders around, lost, trapped here in this plane. It’s what we call earthbound. An earthbound soul.’
‘How long are they trapped here for?’ he asked.
‘Time is different in the spirit world,’ she replied. ‘We live in linear time, we go from A to B to C. You wake up in the morning, say at seven a.m., go for your bike ride, come home at eight a.m., have breakfast, work on a painting, have lunch at one p.m., and so on. It’s different in the spirit world; time has no meaning. For spirits it’s as if everything that ever was, still is. They go back in time and they go forward in time.’
‘Forward?’ he quizzed.
‘Oh yes, absolutely. That’s how they can sometimes show us things.’
‘How far forward, Louise?’ Emily asked.
‘I don’t believe there’s any limit,’ she replied. ‘They can go back years, decades, centuries – and forward just as easily, too.’
Jason smiled. ‘So, when we die we see the future?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Could be useful for giving horse racing tips to someone on the earth plane,’ he jested.
‘Oh, it’s been done,’ Louise replied. ‘But never with a good outcome – that’s a misuse the spirit world would frown on.’
‘Louise, if we have a spirit here in this house, what do we do about it?’
‘It will need rescuing.’
‘Rescuing? Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?’ he said, jokily.
‘999 and ask for the Spirit Rescue Service?’ grinned Emily.
‘You phone your local vicar,’ Louise replied, firmly.
‘Our vicar?’ Emily said. ‘We don’t even know who that is.’
‘You could—’ Louise was interrupted by a harsh ringing sound.
They all looked around, startled.
It repeated.
The doorbell, they realized.
Signalling to his wife to stay where she was, Jason walked out and over to the front door, and opened it.
A tall, lean man in his late forties stood there, wearing an Aran jumper with a minister’s white dog collar just visible, blue jeans and work boots. He had thinning hair and a handsome face with an insouciant, rather world-weary expression that reminded Jason of an actor whose name he could not immediately remember.
He would be a good subject to paint, was his first thought.
‘Mr Danes?’ he enquired, with a posh public-school voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m the vicar of Cold Hill parish, Roland Fortinbrass. I just thought I would pop round and introduce myself, as you’ve just moved in. Is this a convenient time? I hope I’m not disturbing you from your work?’ He gave a warm smile. ‘I understand you are a very celebrated local artist.’
‘Struggling, rather than celebrated,’ he replied, hesitantly, and smiled. This was such a weird coincidence, his turning up just at this moment, he thought. Should he invite him in now, with Louise here, or ask him to come back later? He made a decision.
‘How nice to meet you. Fortinbrass, did you say? Like the character in Hamlet?’
The vicar smiled. ‘Well, similar – he had only one “s” in his name – I have two.’
‘Ah, right. Please – come in.’
Entering, the vicar said, ‘What a simply charming house – it reminds me so much of the original mansion that was here on this site. I hope you and Mrs Danes will be very happy here.’
Closing the door behind them, Jason said, ‘Can we offer you some tea or coffee, Reverend?’
‘Oh no, thank you, I’m fine, and I don’t want to trouble you for longer than is necessary. This is just a very quick visit to welcome you to our little community.’
‘My wife and I went to the Crown yesterday, for lunch, and got the feeling some of the locals aren’t too happy about this development,’ Jason said.
Fortinbrass smiled. ‘Well, you have to understand that country folk are very set in their ways. They don’t like – or get – change.’
‘So it seems.’
‘Allow me to speculate that the most vociferous among them was a certain farmer?’ Fortinbrass said.
‘Albert Fears?’
‘Well, I don’t like to name names, but I’m afraid yes, Albert is one of those who springs to mind. He somewhat insularly takes the view that to be a local, you have to be born here. Everyone else, in his book, is an interloper.’
‘We rather got that impression.’
‘Don’t let it worry you. It was the same with me, when I came here. Please don’t let it put you off. This is a very friendly community and we welcome new blood. Indeed, we badly need it – and especially, if I may say so, someone as famous as you. There is so much talk in the village – everyone is very thrilled to have you and your wife here.’
‘We’re extremely happy to be here.’
‘Without being too personal, Mr Danes, would I be right in saying you’ve chosen a new-build home because you have an aversion to dirt?’
Jason looked at him, a little miffed at such a personal remark. ‘How do you know that?’
Fortinbrass smiled. ‘Shall we say, as the vicar it’s my job to know about issues with my flock?’
‘I’m afraid neither my wife nor I are very religious.’
‘But you do believe in something, don’t you? A bigger picture?’
‘Well – yes – who told you that?’
Again, that strange smile. ‘As I said, it is my business to know things.’
Jason looked at him for some moments, puzzled by how he could know this. ‘Please come through and meet my wife, Emily – we have a friend with us, her business partner.’
‘What business is that, may I ask?’
‘Catering.’
‘Ah. Well, that could be very interesting for me, very interesting.’
They entered the kitchen. To Jason’s relief, Louise had her eyes open and was chatting to Emily. He introduced the vicar to both of them.
‘How very nice to meet you,’ Roland Fortinbrass said, shaking Emily’s hand and then Louise’s. ‘I don’t know if any of you are musicians or have good voices, but we are short of members for the church choir, and we are always looking for musicians for our church band.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Emily said. ‘I’ve a singing voice that sounds like two cats fighting in a dustbin.’
‘And I’m tone deaf,’ Jason added.
The vicar turned to Louise. ‘How about you?’
‘I live in Brighton, I’m afraid,’ Louise said. ‘I’m just here visiting Emily.’
‘What a shame.’ Looking at each woman in turn, he said to Emily, ‘Your husband tells me you are in the catering business? We must have a chat about catering for one of our church events, sometime. And if there is anything I can ever do for you, please let me know – you can always find me at the Vicarage – the house right next to the church.’
‘Actually,’ Emily said, shooting a glance at Jason, then Louise. ‘There is one thing.’
‘Oh?’
‘I understand the Church of England has diocesan exorcists in every county.’
Fortinbrass suddenly looked awkward. ‘Well, yes, although we prefer the title Ministers of Deliverance. Why are you interested, if I may ask?’
‘We think we need one to come here,’ she replied.