Ways to See a Ghost

frozen in weird ways.
    She stood as still as a statue, listening.
    “How many did they find?” she asked.
    “Thousands of people who died of cold or heart attacks, but they got it down to seventeen where they thought it could’ve been the same. I’m not sure though, none of them seemed exactly like him.”
    “How did your dad find out about these other people?” she asked.
    “I can’t tell you,” I said. “Confidential sources, you know?”
    Isis nodded, thoughtful, and didn’t even ask what I meant.
    “So does your dad know what killed Mr Welkin?”
    I paused, then shook my head. Thing is, Dad had loads of ideas, and so did Stu. They even came up with a name for what happened to him: spontaneous refrigeration.
    “Like spontaneous combustion,” said Stu, all excited, “but the other way round!”
    They spent half the night in the bathroom, going through The Database and coming up with theories.
    “We narrowed it to eight possibilities,” Dad said thenext day. But if you’ve got eight possibilities, it really means you haven’t got a clue.
    “Maybe… aliens.” I said to Isis, because that was what Dad went on about most. He always went on about aliens.
    “Aliens?” said Isis, eyes going wide, and she started laughing. “Why does your dad think it was
aliens?
”
    “Why does your mum think ghosts talk to her?” I snapped.
    She stopped laughing, and her face went all closed up. I felt a bit bad, but it was her own fault.
    “I’m just telling you what he found out,” I said. “Think what you want.”
    Like I said, we didn’t get on very well, back then.
    Spontaneous refrigeration, now there’s an idea we might be able to use. It could make a convenient cover story for certain activities.
    But your father was wrong, of course. I can tell you from experience, Norman Welkin’s death was nothing like the ones caused by aliens. Nothing at all.

“Cally!” pleaded Isis. “Don’t.”
    But Cally wasn’t listening. Instead she was pushing past the queue of people waiting to get their tickets, causing a tutting wave of annoyance. When she reached the theatre’s box office, she barged past the man at the front of the queue and said, “Excuse me, I’m on the guest list.”
    Isis shuffled backwards, getting further away from her.
    The woman behind the counter sighed, and pulled out a sheet of paper from under her till.
    “Name?”
    “Calista Dunbar. I’m a professional colleague of Philip Syndal.” Cally went on to loudly tell the woman how well she knew Philip, and about her own psychic performances.
    Isis turned round, staring at the revolving door at the entrance, trying to pretend she was waiting for someone. As people circled into the theatre, Isis glimpsed purple reflections in the glass; Cally was wearing the same shimmering dress she’d worn on her seance tour. It had looked exotic then, but now, among the summer blouses, T-shirts and jeans of the people waiting in the foyer, she looked like she’d got lost on her way to a nightclub.
    “Don’t you think it’s a bit much?” Isis had asked, back at their flat. Cally had carried on blow-drying her hair.
    “If I want to get on,” she’d shouted, pulling a brush through, “I need to make an impression. An invitation to one of Phil’s performances is an opportunity to do that.”
    “But we’ll only be in the audience, watching him like everyone else.”
    Cally switched off the hairdryer.
    “The people around us could be
my
audience soon,” she said. “I need them to notice me.”
    And they definitely had.
    Isis caught a flash of blonde and pink. She turned round to see Angel, slipping through the crowd towards her.
    “He got hair now!” cried the little ghost, waving her short, transparent arms. “He coming.”
    “Who is?” whispered Isis, barely moving her lips.
    Cries of excitement rang through the foyer.
    “Philip! Philip!”
    “It’s him, he’s over there!”
    “Please! Can I have your autograph?”
    Philip Syndal charmed his way into the crowd. His hair had been styled to hide his baldness, and the yellow pullover swapped for a sleek black suit with a deep blue shirt. He looked sophisticated, if not exactly handsome.
    A worried-looking usher was standing behind him, holding open a small door near the theatre’s grand staircase. The usher kept glancing at his watch, but Philip ignored the time, moving slowly through his fans, speaking to everyone and signing autographs for anyone who asked. From her place