Page 31 of Crazy Spooky Love

Amazingly, he seems to understand what I want, because he huffs and dutifully climbs down from the sofa.

I pat him on the head and then watch as he shuffles over toward his bed.

I almost feel sorry for him, right up to the moment where he lowers his pudgy little backside down and squats on the oak floorboards.

I squawk and lunge for the nearest thing to shove under his bum that I can find, which just happens to be Mum’s newspaper that I’ve brought up from the office to read.

I get undeniable satisfaction from watching Lestat’s pee seep slowly into Fletch’s smug-faced snapshot. I can’t help it. I grab my phone and snap a little video, apologizing to Lestat for filming him whilst he’s indisposed. Though I don’t feel that bad about it, to be honest.

It takes me precisely two minutes to find the Shropshire Express website on the iPad, locate Fletch’s page, and text him the video on the number he handily mentions about five million times in case anyone has a scoop for him.

The only scoop he’ll be thinking about when he watches this is a pooper-scooper.

It’s Fletcher Gunn’s fault I have this dog.

The least he can do is watch it pee on his face.

Lestat doesn’t snore like a freight train. He snores like a goddamn Eurofighter is hovering over my bed—where, of course, he is sleeping right beside me, flat on his back. He has his head on the pillow and his balls are swinging low and free over my Ikea comforter.

“Melody?” someone says, and for the first time in forever I’m actually glad to be interrupted by a ghost. I flick the lamp on and sit up.

There’s a woman in my bedroom, wringing her hands as she stands close to the bed, looking anxious.

I’d put her age at midfifties or thereabouts, and I’d say she probably died around the 1920s, if her clothes are anything to go by.

She looks quite well-to-do; I’d hazard a guess that her wartime stocking seams would have been silk rather than drawn on with eye pencil.

“Your dog is terribly loud,” she remarks, as if he’s inconveniencing her.

I mean, to be fair, he probably is, but no more than she is inconveniencing me.

In fact, they’re both inconveniencing me hugely; it’s 4:30 a.m. and I want to be sleeping like a baby, not trying to make myself heard above Lestat the Thunder Pug.

“I’m Agnes,” she says. “Agnes Scarborough. You’re investigating the death of Douglas, my son.”

“Mrs. Scarborough.” I sit bolt upright and wish I was less tired.

“This is really quite difficult,” she says. I don’t know if she means she’s finding it hard to concentrate because of Lestat or that she’s finding it tricky to say whatever it is that’s brought her to my bedroom.

“It’s about the diaries,” she says, sounding anguished. “I made a terrible mistake.”

Then, in the most frustratingly ghostly manner, she vanishes, as if she was never there in the first place.

It happens like that sometimes. When a spirit makes the effort to visit me, they can find it hard to hold themselves together for long enough to actually communicate.

They usually come through most strongly if they died recently and urgently need to relay a message, such as Artie Elliott Senior.

He couldn’t leave until he’d taken care of his boy.

But Agnes Scarborough must have died more than ninety years ago, and if this is her first time trying to communicate with the living, then I don’t hold out much hope of seeing her again in the near future.

What could she have meant about Lloyd’s diaries?

“ I made a terrible mistake, ” she said. What did she mean?

I look over at Lestat and decide that there’s little point in trying to get back to sleep.

I can’t wait a moment longer to make a start on those diaries.

We’d reluctantly resolved to hold off until tomorrow when Glenda arrived with the new supply of latex gloves, but I’m itching to know what secrets lie between those pages.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got a pair of Marigolds under the sink somewhere.

Coffee steaming beside me, I take a seat at the dining table and awkwardly unravel the strings that bind the diaries together with my clumsy, canary-yellow-gloved fingers.

I lightly trace the faded gold numbers punched into the front cover of the top volume.

1908. Well over a hundred years ago. I can barely imagine how life must have been for the Scarboroughs back then, and how wonderful the house must have looked in its heyday.

It feels like snooping to even open the diaries, to read Lloyd’s private thoughts and hopes.

I’m nervous; I don’t like him very much, and I fear that this glimpse inside his head is going to make me like him even less.

I lift the top volume from the pile; they’ve been sandwiched tightly together for decades, and it peels away with a reluctant squelch from the one below it.

Angling my reading lamp so it highlights the diary, I take a deep breath and slowly open the cover.

The first page is tipped with a gilt-framed border, and inside it, in beautiful lavender-blue ink, copperplate type declares that these are the secret hopes and dreams of the owner.

Except they’re not Lloyd’s secret hopes and dreams.

The diaries were written by Agnes Scarborough.