Walking with Ghosts

Of The Mamas And The Papas. He stuck it in the machine and pushed the PLAY button. ‘California Dreaming’. That’d do. Sam liked his music to have matured.
    What Sam had said on the phone last night was that there was a new job. But what he’d also said was that he wanted Geordie and Marie to handle it between them. He’d want reports, but essentially they were gonna do it on their own. Make the decisions, everything. What did Geordie think about that?
    ‘Oh, sure, why not? We’ve been involved in enough cases by now. We know what to do. It’ll be a piece of bread.’
    ‘Cake,’ Sam told him.
    ‘Piece of cake?’
    ‘Yeah, like falling off a twig.’
    But then after Sam rang off and Geordie got to thinking about it, he wasn’t so sure. He’d talked to Janet about it, a nd Janet thought he shouldn’t worry. Just do it.
    ‘But what if we make a mess of it? How long’s it gonna be before we get another chance? And we could lose business - I mean if people hear how we screwed up this job, we might never get any other jobs.’
    ‘Geordie,’ Janet had said with her patient voice. ‘There are never any guarantees that things are going to turn out right. You just do the best you can. That’s what we all do. The best we can. And if that turns out not to be good enough, then that’s how it is. We learn by our mistakes. But if you make a mistake it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a disaster.’
    ‘Yeah. Sure,’ he said. ‘And it’ll be good experience. When Sam dies, eventually. I don’t mean he’s gonna die soon, or anything like that. He could live for years yet. Could live to be over a hundred. But when he dies or retires, I might have to take over the business, me and Marie together. Then I’ll remember this time, when Sam gave us this chance.’
    But he didn’t sleep all night. Lying next to Janet, breathing in the scent of her, feeling the closeness and warmth of her body, watching the fluorescent numbers on the digital clock by the side of the bed. At half-past three Janet got up and said she’d make him a cup of cocoa.
    ‘I thought you was asleep,’ Geordie told her.
    ‘How can I sleep when you’re just lying there not moving and not breathing right?’
    ‘Jesus,’ said Geordie, pulling on a dressing gown, and following her down to the kitchen. ‘I thought I was breathing perfect.’
    The Mamas and the Papas moved on to ‘Dedicated To The One I Love’, and the kettle boiled and switched itself off. At the same time Marie arrived, and Geordie told her that it was synchronicity.
    ‘Don’t think so, darlin’,’ she said, hanging her coat and scarf on the stand. ‘Synchronicity only happens to Jungians.’ Marie had lost weight over the last year. You would still regard her as big, but it was more to do with the size of her bones than the amount of fat she carried. Geordie couldn’t work out if she looked better for it. She did look better for it but she looked better because she felt good about herself for losing the weight. She didn’t really look better because she was slimmer. Geordie had liked her when she was rounder and softer, but he didn’t say so. It might be sexist.
    She took a copy of Val McDermid’s Blue Genes out of her bag and put it on Sam’s desk.
    ‘Have you read the Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám?' Geordie asked.
    ‘Not this week,’ she said. ‘I read it when I was your age, along with The Prophet and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Now I’m older I’ve moved on to social realism.’
    ‘Celia gave it to me, and me and Janet’ve been reading it in bed. “The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on.” ’
    Marie tapped her head and took up where Geordie had left it, ‘ “Nor all thy piety nor whit shall lure it back to cancel half a line...” ’
    ‘ “...Nor all thy tears,” ’ concluded Sam, coming through the door, ‘ “Wash out a word of it.” Thought I might be in the wrong place, coming up the stairs there. The Mamas and the Papas and Omar Khayyám. Nearly turned round and went home till I smelled the coffee.’
    ‘I thought you liked the Mamas and the Papas,’ said Geordie, kneeling down to fuss with Barney, his dog, who’d been sleeping over at Sam’s house. ‘It’s one of your tapes.’
    ‘I like them,’ said Sam. ‘I liked them thirty years ago. Twenty years ago I still liked them. But there comes a time when a man thinks he ought to listen to something else. You listen to the Mamas and the Papas for thirty years,