Ways to See a Ghost

nothing. Isis didn’t answer.
    When he’d gone, Angel’s small hands reached up.
    “Carry,” she ordered.
    Isis leaned down and picked Angel up. Like holding the breeze from a butterfly’s wingbeat.
    “Thank you.” Isis shivered, smiling. “You saved me.”
    Angel grinned at Isis from her round little face. “I do it.”
    Isis kissed her. Like kissing the mist rising from a river.
    Her little sister. Three years old, five years dead.

All right then. If you want to know, I met Isis the year after, in late March. The days were getting longer by then, there’d even been a few warmish ones, so Dad’s round was picking up. He always gets busier in spring; lawns need cutting, stuff needs pruning. He started taking me out with him, on his weekends and the days he picked me up from school. That’s another of Dad’s things I didn’t tell Mum, cos she would’ve got really mad about it, but I liked it actually. I liked being outside.
    So, we were at this house. Mansion really. It had a massive garden, about the size of our school playing fields or something, with high yew hedges and big iron gates on the drive. Dad was doing the lawn that afternoon, drivinground it on his mower. Green Garden Gil, that’s what he calls himself – it’s painted on his camper and on the trailer behind. Not that he’s actually green, he just doesn’t use any chemicals and tries to get people growing wildflowers and stuff.
    Anyway, it was Mr Welkin’s place. Norman. He was really rich – he’d made loads of money selling herbal remedies. You wouldn’t think you could get to be a millionaire that way, but Dad said people will believe anything. And he was mad. I mean, completely fruit loop. He had long white hair, and he never wore shoes, even outside in the winter because he said they block ‘earth energies’. He was into ghosts and UFOs. He told me Jesus was really an alien, and he was always quoting this Native American chief, who said it’s only when all the trees are gone and the seas are empty of fish that we’ll realise we can’t eat money. He was into even weirder stuff than Dad, if you can believe it. I think that’s why Dad got the job.
    I suppose we’d been there about half an hour, so it was probably a bit after four, and Dad was mowing the lawns. He’d told me to stay in the camper, do my homework, but the cooler in that van hardly worked and the sun was shining in and turning it into an oven. And anyway, what’sthe point of going to a massive place like that and not even going round it? I mean, the garden has an actual stream running through it! And so many trees it’s practically a forest, and all these yew bushes clipped into weird shapes. Dad said they were peacocks when they started, but over the years they’d grown out, so now you’d never know what they’re meant to be. Norman Welkin asked Dad if he could prune them back to being peacocks, and he said he’d do his best, but when he’d finished they looked more like aliens than anything. I’m not sure if that’s what he meant to do, but Mr Welkin really liked them.
    Norman’s garden is the best Dad goes to, so I didn’t want to just sit in the van. Also, there were the biscuits. Old Norman always brought some out, along with coffee for him and Dad. Really good biscuits; he said they were organic. Whatever, they had big lumps of chocolate in, and that chunky sugar on top. Him and Dad would yak on about their latest theory, and I’d eat the biscuits.
    Not that day. I waited twenty minutes, and Norman didn’t show. In the end, I looked through the window into their living room, but there was only Sondra, his girlfriend. Not like that sounds, because she’s really old, as old as him. They weren’t married though, even though shelived there. She was as weird as him, sort of jittery, like she was expecting someone to creep up on her. She had grey hair down to her waist, and wore all these long, flowery dresses. She said she was an artist, but she showed me a couple of her pictures once, and they were all… swirly and mixed up. Rubbish, I thought. Anyway, she was in the living room with this other woman, one of her friends I guessed. And no sign of Mr Welkin, which meant no biscuits.
    I trudged off, keeping out of Dad’s sight, and I heard this sound over the noise of the mower.
Tatatatatata
, like someone drumming on the big horse chestnut tree. I knew it was a woodpecker because that’s what they do in spring. It’s hard to spot them