Ways to See a Ghost

dress to reveal a stretch of ghostly belly above pink tights. Through Angel, Isis could see the fridge.
    “None of them?” whispered Isis.
    Angel shook her head.
    “Why did you do that?” cried Isis. “You could have ruined everything!”
    Angel dropped her dress.
    “I want someone to see me,” she said. “Someone not you.”
    For a moment Isis thought of that future she’d tried to imagine, back in the garden. The one where she had a normal life, and didn’t have Angel trailing after her. She shook her head, scattering the thoughts, and held out her arms. Her dead sister climbed onto her lap, with the weight of a falling feather.
    “You’ve got me,” whispered Isis, “and I’ve got you.” She kissed Angel, like kissing a breeze. “Always and forever.”
    “Always and forever,” echoed Angel.

My dad had this theory. Actually, he has a theory about most things. Aliens, 9/11, how the government are using the Internet to control us, why the oil companies bumped off all these people who invented water-powered cars. You name it, my dad’s got a theory. So he had to have one about Norman Welkin, and why he died.
    He’d been following it up, you see. Ringing the police, checking the local paper for stories, doing Internet searches.
    “What’s the point, Dad?” I asked him. “The policeman said it was probably a heart attack.”
    “Well he would say that, they’re trained to put people off the scent,” muttered my dad, frowning at his computer while it brought up about twenty trillion hits onunusual deaths. “Norman’s death was strange. You said so yourself.”
    “No I didn’t,” I said. “It was Isis. You know – your weird girlfriend’s weird daughter.”
    Dad’s fingers stopped on the keyboard.
    “Why do you think they’re weird?” He looked at me. “Do you think
I’m
weird?”
    I shrugged. “Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”
    Thing is, I should never have told him what Isis said. How it was like the dead man had been frozen and coated in ice. I should have kept my mouth shut, because as soon as the words were out, Dad’s ears pricked up, and there was no stopping him.
    He spent ages on the Internet, and then he got onto the Network, which is basically this club for UFO freaks. I mean, they don’t call it a club, but they send each other emails all the time, and they have these meetings at hotels, where they give each other lectures and slide shows, and try and flog stuff like spaceship detectors, or anti-bugging gizmos for your mobile.
    “Those losers,” is what Mum calls them.
    The reason I know all about them is cos Dad took me along once. It was to ConspiriCon, which is just forconspiracy theories. Like, who blew up the Twin Towers? Or were the moon landings really faked in some desert in America? Actually, those are normal-sounding, compared to what was at ConspiriCon. There was this man who said the world’s really controlled by aliens. And another who said the ancient Egyptians had predicted the end of the world, and it’s going to happen in about five years. There was a guy who went on about the earth being hollow, and how the government are going to hide inside it when things get too bad. Dad made me sit through a talk about how UFOs are just a cover story for secret government weapons, and halfway through this other freak stood up and started shouting, saying it was really the exact opposite.
    We went there because it was Dad’s weekend and he didn’t want to miss out. On seeing me, or on going to ConspiriCon. So he just booked another ticket and didn’t tell Mum. He didn’t tell me either, not until we were on the motorway.
    “No way, Dad!” I said. “I’m not going!”
    “You’ll enjoy it,” he said. “You always enjoy our chasing trips.”
    “I like
camping.
I like being outside. This is just some crappy hotel, and everyone will have their shirt tucked intheir trousers. I’m not doing it, Dad! I’m going back home to Mum.”
    “And how will you do that?”
    I yanked at my seat belt, undoing the clip.
    “Just let me out, I’ll hitch or something.”
    “You won’t.” Dad reached with one hand, grabbing the seat belt and trying to clip it back in. The camper wobbled in the lane, a lorry slow-honked us. I suppose I could’ve grabbed the wheel and spun us off the road, but that was probably the only way I would’ve stopped him.
    Sometimes, I totally get why Mum left Dad.
    Anyway, it was the Network that Dad used to work out his theory about