Ways to See a Ghost

Angel pushed her way to the gap in the door, desperately trying to squeeze her head through.
    “There’s nothing,” whispered Isis. “They’ve all gone in.”
    “What Mummy doing?” Angel wriggled a bit further. “I want to see Mummy.”
    “No!” Isis put her hand in front of her little ghost-sister,holding her back. Angel was a nothing-cool kiss on her skin. “Mummy’s in an important meeting.”
    And it was important. Cally had been jittering about it for the last three weeks. No, it was ever since she’d decided to become a clairvoyant. Isis remembered Cally’s handwritten career plan, the one she’d come up with in the bad old black days.
    • Contact the spirits
    • Start doing readings
    • Do a tour
    • Join the Welkin Society
    • Write a book
    It was their grief counsellor who’d suggested the list, and Isis hadn’t known if he was trying to encourage Cally or put her off. He’d passed Cally a pen and paper, saying, “Writing things down can help you to focus.”
    Then he’d turned to Isis.
    “You’re very quiet. How do you feel about your mother’s idea?”
    She’d been struck dumb for a moment, panicking he’d somehow found her out. It didn’t help that a see-through Angel was jumping up and down on the sofa, right next to him.
    Maybe Isis was really the one who’d lost it, maybe she should’ve been writing lists.
    “Whatever Cally wants,” she’d said at last. “I don’t mind.”
    Whatever it took to get her mum back, instead of the shell-woman who’d taken her place after Angel died and Dad left. The shell-woman stayed in her room, curtains shut, while Isis got herself ready for school. She was sitting on the sofa, staring, when Isis got home. The shell-woman let their house drift into dirty chaos, and their meals transform from healthy, to oven-ready, to random. Worst of all, the shell-woman had nothing behind her eyes, like she’d left as well. Isis stopped calling her ‘Mum’ around then, but the shell-woman hadn’t noticed.
    The funny thing was, the grief counsellor was right: working at being a psychic had given Cally focus. Isis’s mum had returned. Slowly, and in bits and pieces, but Isis had hoarded up those precious flashes, hoping. Even the seances and the tours were a little less humiliating, when she thought about those moments. And now here they were: number four on Cally’s list. At Philip Syndal’s house, joining the Welkin Society.
    “We in kitchen,” said Angel, as if she’d only just realised. “Can we make cakes?”
    Isis laughed. Being dead hadn’t dampened Angel’s enthusiasm for baking. As a living toddler, she’d been able to shove an entire cupcake in her mouth in one go. Now, she floated on the sweet steam as they came out of the oven, the way birds ride updrafts in the wind.
    “I don’t think Philip would like me cooking.” Isis could just imagine his face. “You’ll have to watch the cartoons.”
    “I want cake.” Angel hurtled headlong for the oven, straight in through its door. Her head came back out of the glass window. “It not even hot,” she said. “He
won’t
mind.”
    “I think he will.” Isis knelt down, next to Angel’s head. “You can’t just make food in someone’s house, not without asking them.”
    Angel’s tongue peeped out of her mouth as she thought. Her face brightened.
    “I ask him then!” she said.
    “No!” Isis leaped to grab at the little spirit, but Angel was a wisp in the air, then gone.
    “Ange
l
!” Isis whisper-shouted, slamming open the kitchen door, running into the hall.
    Angel was at the far wall, her small hands splayed against the greeny-blue, her head and shoulders already fadedinto it. Isis threw herself after, fingernails scraping wallpaper, but she couldn’t catch her ghost-sister.
    Isis slid down to the floor, a sick feeling reaching up to her.
    Angel was in a room full of psychics. Any one of them might see her. All of them might!
    All except Cally, who’d never seen Angel, not once. Not in the darkest days, not even when Angel’s little ghost had stepped from her own mangled body, in front of her horror-struck sister and screaming mother.
    Isis got herself up to standing, heart thudding. There was nothing else to do.
    She walked to the door of the meeting room, and took hold of the handle. She could hear a man speaking, and another answering.
    She pushed the handle down, and walked into the room.
    “Can we help you, dear?” asked an elderly woman with high