Ways to See a Ghost

furiously, and shaking her sodden foot. Cally had finally lost her temper, shouting back, yanking at Isis’s sandal and pulling off her mud-stained sock. Neither of them had noticed Angel, running on ahead.
    “She was only three,” Isis whispered to Gray. “She didn’t know to stay off the road, not really.”
    Angel had been playing a game, jumping on and off the grassy verge, and it had led her away from them. Not far, only a handful of metres. But it was where the lane curved away round a bend, where a tall, blowsy hedge blocked any sight of what was coming.
    It was Isis who’d seen her first. Isis who’d raced, one foot bare, to catch her.
    “Angel!” she’d shouted. “You mustn’t go on the road!”
    Cally had gasped, dropping Isis’s sock.
    “Stand still both of you!” she’d cried, running behind Isis. “Get on the grass!” But Isis had ignored Cally, and Angel had ignored them both, hopping up onto the verge, then back onto the tarmac.
    Isis had just reached her when the car came round the bend.
    Its brakes were already screeching when it hit, and Isis remembered the driver’s face, rigid with horror. She remembered the strange, shattering sensation of being hit, and seeing Angel fly over the bonnet.
    When she’d opened her eyes, she was lying next to Angel in the road. Angel was staring at her, but even though dazed and filled with pain, Isis could see how terribly wrong Angel was. Her head was twisted one way, her body the other. Isis stretched out her hand, and took hold of Angel’s.
    “Her eyes were open,” Isis said to the night and the sleeping wheat. Next to her, Gray was silent. “And then she died.”
    Like a sigh, like some invisible change.
    She remembered how much it had hurt. She remembered Cally, screaming and clinging to Angel. The driver of the car running over and gabbling into his phone, begging for an ambulance to come quickly.
    “And then, Angel got up. Her body was still on the ground, but she was sitting next to me as well, still holding my hand. Like she’d just… stepped out of herself.” The little ghost on Isis’s lap nodded.
    “I do that,” said Angel.
    Isis smiled down at her. “It was her ghost, you see? I knew she was dead because I could see her ghost.”
    She looked across at Gray. His eyes were white against the dark, his mouth open.
    “And… then what?” he asked.
    Isis shrugged, her sleeping bag slithering off one shoulder. “She just sort of… hung around. And I started seeing other ghosts.” With one hand, she pulled the sleeping bag back up again. “Maybe I’d seen them before that? I don’t remember though.”
    Gray twitched, looking around quickly.
    “Are there any here?” he whispered.
    “Me!” cried Angel.
    “Yes,” smiled Isis.
    Gray pulled into his chair, going very still.
    “Where are they then?” he asked. His voice was too loud, a challenge.
    “With me,” said Isis. “It’s just Angel. She’s around mostof the time actually.” She looked down. “Don’t you have anywhere else to go?” she teased.
    Angel leaned up and kissed Isis on her chin. Like being brushed by spider’s silk.
    “I lub you and I lub Mummy,” said Angel. “That why I here.”
    “I love you too,” whispered Isis, and turned back to Gray. He was staring at her.
    “You’ve got a ghost sitting on your
lap?
” he asked.
    Isis nodded.
    Gray jerked backwards in his camping chair, nearly knocking it over. Then he steadied himself, and started laughing.
    “You’re winding me up, aren’t you?” he said. “That’s a good one, especially out here.” He sat down in his chair again. “You’re weird, you do know that?”
    “I’m not joking!” said Isis. A sudden desperation filled her, just to have someone she could tell, someone who believed her!
    “Yeah, right,” said Gray.
    “I’m not!”
    Angel started wriggling, pulling herself out of the sleeping bag, her wisp of a body emerging through the cloth.
    “I here!” she shouted at Gray. “I here!”
    Angel scrambled onto the ground, a cold shiver in the summer night. Flowery-sandaled feet stamped soundlessly on the dirt, little fists sat on Angel’s hips as she planted herself in front of Gray. The white dust path showed clearly through her.
    “I HERE!” she shouted, in a voice that would have woken the field, except only Isis could hear it. “I HERE!”
    There was the tiniest of flickers on Gray’s face, his only reaction. Angel glared at him, her lip wobbled, and she