Ways to See a Ghost

before, not with any of his other girlfriends. I came into the kitchen and he was on his mobile, asking Cally.
    I stopped dead in the doorway.
    “Dad, you can’t!” I cried, but Dad just cut his hand in the air to shut me up, and when he put the phone down, he said, “That was really rude, Gray. Luckily Cally didn’t hear you.”
    “You can’t bring them along!” I said.
    Dad turned his frown up a notch.
    “Why not? It’ll be fun. Anyway, Cally wants to see what I do, and I want to show her.”
    “But it won’t be the same if
they
come.”
    Dad opened a bag of bread that was on the worktop, and took out some slices.
    “If you don’t like it, Gray, you can stay at home.” He went to the fridge and shoved things about until he found the butter and the cheese. “Or, I can rearrange it for one of the weekends you’re at your mum’s.”
    “If that’s what you want!” I stamped into the living room, turning the telly on. It was some stupid bloke playing stupid golf, and I didn’t even turn over.
    Dad followed me in a minute later, holding two plates. There was a cheese sandwich on each of them.
    “Here’s your lunch.” He put my sandwich on the arm of the sofa. “Are you going to waste electricity watching that?”
    I didn’t answer, just stared at the golf. Dad started eating his lunch.
    “I’m not changing my mind,” he said, chewing. “Cally’s coming with me. You can join us, or not.”
    Like I said, that’s how it is with Dad.
    “Is Isis coming?” I asked.
    Dad nodded. “Of course. You won’t be on your own or anything. She’ll be there to keep you company.”
    Which just showed how much he knew.

    Cally and Isis were late. We’d already set up the gear, and the camper was parked as out of sight as Dad could get it. Which wasn’t very, cos Dad’s calculations had got us to the middle of this big, flat, open field. There were a couple of straggly, half-dead trees, but mainly it was just wheat and the sky. Not even any hedges, just a barbed-wire fence running either side of the track we’d come along. We climbed through, so Dad could take readings out in the field, and it was like wading into a swishing, rustling sea.
    We’d timed it to get there late, just before sunset, because the only thing to hide in was the dark, but Cally and Isis hadn’t turned up. Dad kept looking back down the bridleway, then checking his watch and peering at the low-down sun.
    “If they don’t get here soon, they’ll struggle to find us.”
    “Yeah, that’d be terrible,” I muttered, plonking our camp chairs on the grass next to the dusty track, and letting Dad’s fall over.
    “Keep your attitude to yourself,” snapped Dad. That was when we heard wheels running on dirt, and I spotted their dirty orange car heading our way.
    Dad ran to meet them, shouting directions aboutwhere they should park. And when Cally had finished scraping her car up onto the grass, he didn’t even wait for her to get out. Just squashed his head in through the open driver’s window and started kissing her.
    The passenger door whacked open and Isis shot out.
    “Hi,” she said to me.
    “Hi.”
    We didn’t really speak apart from that. I mean, what was there to say?
    Eventually Dad stopped snogging Cally, and helped get their stuff out. Not that they’d brought any proper gear. Isis had this thin, flowery sleeping bag, and Cally didn’t even have that, just a coat and a blanket.
    “We don’t really do camping,” Cally said, smiling at Dad. “I thought we could all go in your camper van if it starts raining.”
    “There are only two beds,” I said to her. “Dad took the others out so he could fit more boxes in. You’ll have to sleep on the floor or something.”
    Dad glared at me over Cally’s shoulder.
    “You and me can squeeze in together,” he said to her, and she giggled.
    “Is it going to rain?” Isis asked me.
    “I really hope not.”
    Isis was holding two garden chairs, those cheap canvas fold-out ones you buy in garages. She clunked them along a bit further, then dropped them onto the grass.
    “Are you going to light a fire?” she asked.
    “You joking?” I said. “We might as well call the police ourselves, and ask them to come and arrest us.”
    She looked at me blankly. Of course, she didn’t know about farmers or anything. How they hate people camping on their land. How they really hate UFO spotters like me and Dad. We’ve got chased off a few times – Land Rovers turning up at