Ghosted by Mark McCrum

Author:Mark McCrum [McCrum, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In the house in Tufnell Park, Serena was still up. Walter and Matty had taken their differences upstairs, it seemed, and Serena was sorting out her kitchen. This was how she always behaved when she was upset. She would get on with some mindless task. She was never one to sit hopelessly and stare.

She lived up to her name, Serena. Always had done. None of that edgy neurotic energy that Julie had. She exuded calm. Prickly, pompous, incompetent Walter was lucky to have her. Not for the first time Adam found himself wondering why he had ever allowed himself to be tempted away to that crazy, lust-filled drama that Julie had dangled before him. It had been fun, of course it had been fun, but when the madness was over, and he realised what he held in his hands, he had been filled with regret, even if he hadn’t allowed himself to admit it for years. And now the crazy bitch, not content with ruining his life, had murdered him. Or so it seemed. What kind of payback was that?

Leo was standing watching his mother with the look of love. Dear Leo. Adam had meted out such shit to him over the years and it had never seemed to affect him. He had abandoned the family when Leo was just fifteen, the worst possible time, and how had Leo repaid him? By flipping out; by taking drugs; by harming himself; by truancy; even by a critical or sarcastic attitude towards his dear papa? Not a bit of it. Leo had just ploughed on, a model if somewhat dogged pupil, the man in the middle, the friend of all, the upbeat, dutiful son. He had risen above his circumstances and maybe for that Adam had Serena to thank, because she too was possessed of that imperturbable niceness. She would go to her grave thinking the best of people, doing her bit, never boasting or striking attitudes about the good things she did, all the time, routinely.

His son turned to him with that smile of his, still somehow preserved into this afterlife, or semi-afterlife, or whatever it was that they were in now.

‘Okay,’ he asked, ‘what do I say?’

‘Whatever you like, Leo. I’ll just watch.’

‘How come she’s going to hear what I’m going to say in a minute and she doesn’t hear this?’

‘We don’t know that she is going to hear what you’re going to say in a minute, do we? But it’s when it’s addressed to her, directly, that it seems to work. If it doesn’t, I’ll back away into the other room.’

‘Okay, let’s give it a try.’ Leo giggled nervously, then tiptoed stagily towards his mother (always the clown). ‘Hi, Mum.’

Serena turned. Then she stepped sharply back, her hand over her mouth in silent shock.

‘Good… h-heavens!’ she stuttered eventually. ‘Leo…’

‘So you can see me?’

‘Are you… alive?’ For a moment there was a desperate inflection of hope in her voice, a pleading look in her large, ever-thoughtful brown eyes. But her son was shaking his ghostly hologram of a head.

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