Page 7 of Crazy Spooky Love

I flick some of the flowers from her hair and tussle her back onto the pavement.

“Come on. Try to pretend you’re normal.”

“Says the girl who talks to ghosts.”

“That is normal for me.”

I slow again as we clear the plant cover.

Scarborough House is the kind of place that would give TV producers on the home-makeover shows a wet dream.

It looks like a supermodel sleeping rough, shabby but with fabulous bone structure, dripping with potential, and ripe for a dream makeover.

It’s also the kind of house that gives impatient inheritors like Donovan Scarborough nightmares about missed opportunities for investment, which brings me smartly back to the fact that we can see someone standing in the open doorway of the grand old house.

“That’s him, Scarborough,” Marina whispers.

I knew that, I recognized him from the TV broadcast too.

“Hmm.” I try to see who he’s talking to but they’re standing out of my line of vision.

What do we do now? Shredding a gossamer-thin petal in my fingers, I mull over the options.

Option A: We walk up the path as bold as brass and offer our ghost-busting services.

Option B: We continue to slouch along the footpath in the style of escapees from a pagan flower-child cult.

Option C: something in the middle of the two.

I like the middle; it’s usually the most inconspicuous place to be.

I hope that in time I’ll become a more confident badass businesswoman than I am right now.

Give me a few months and I’ll be marching fearlessly up to my prospective customers rather than dithering about in their shrubbery for ten minutes beforehand.

“Let’s just shake the flowers out of our hair and get nearer so we can hear what he’s saying.”

We bend forward and shake our fingers through our hair, and I start laughing when we stand up again and look at each other, because Marina’s hair has grown to twice its original size.

“You look like you’re auditioning for an ’80s rock band.”

“And you look like you’ve been ravaged by the singer from an ’80s rock band,” she shoots back, nodding, then finger-combs my dark bob back into place forme.

“Perfect.”

I can hear the conversation more clearly now as we draw nearer; it’s distinctly riotous. “Someone’s not a happy camper,” I whisper, straining to catch their words.

“Is he yelling at Leo?”

We mosey a little closer.

“Mumbo jumbo claptrap…”

Okay, so I heard that pretty clearly. Scarborough is definitely not in the best of moods, and the cordial, chatty relationship we’d witnessed between them onscreen is nowhere to be seen.

“Just do your psychobabble-shit thing and get this place emptied of everything but the furniture, got that? In fact, you can order a skip for that load of old tat as well. This place is due to be a nursing home as soon as I can off-load it and they won’t want all that junk.”

“You can say the word spirit. ” Leo’s disdainful voice carries down the path as we approach the door along the uneven, crazy-paved front path.

I have a silent little laugh to myself at the fact that Scarborough just ordered Leo to sort a skip.

That will have pissed him off far more than the psychobabble comment.

They have their backs turned, giving us the advantage of listening to them unannounced.

“Or ghost, if you’re feeling particularly brave.

It’s not like saying ‘Candyman, Candyman, Candyman,’ you know. ”

We’re within touching distance now, and Marina taps Scarborough smartly on the shoulder and gives him a loud “Boo!” as he turns, making him jump out of his expensive suit and swear like a sailor.

“Christ almighty,” he explodes, shooting us daggers before he swings back to Leo. “What is this? A cheap attempt to turn this into a fairground haunted house to scare me into paying you more?”

Leo doesn’t answer straightaway. He’s too busy rearranging his features through a speedy cycle of “Hello, ex-girlfriend who I dumped acrimoniously; oh shit, you’ve got your vicious sidekick with you,” and “Don’t come a step closer, this job has Leo Dark stamped all over it.

” Or that’s how I read his micro-expressions when his eyes meet mine in the doorway.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he drawls eventually, still looking at me rather than at Scarborough.

For a few seconds I’m caught by his eyes; most people are, they’re pretty hypnotic.

Cola-brown shot through with shards of burnt-sugar gold and right now narrowed suspiciously in my direction.

He hasn’t always looked at me this way though.

Those eyes have laughed into mine and lusted into mine in the past; our lives have overlapped for as many years as I can remember.

Leo Dark taught me to drive in his first car, back when I was seventeen and he was a charismatic nineteen-year-old, and, as I remember, we spent quite a lot of time in the back seat of that particular car too.

He hasn’t always been so in love with himself that he can’t love anyone else; this TV gig has obviously massaged his ego like fine Wagyu beef.

Give a man a microphone and a designer cape and he buys into his own hype so much that he can’t remember those admittedly hot tumbles on the back seat of his Nova.

Here we go again, I think, and I brace myself against stray unplatonic thoughts, because I’m not a girl given to letting the same man near her heart twice.

He broke it quite spectacularly; he pretty much rolled out of bed with me and onto the train to London as soon as the TV job offer pinged into his inbox.

If he’d written me a parting letter, which he didn’t, it would have said something like

Thanks for the last few years, Melody, they’ve been fun but basically worthless given that I’m dropping you like a stone to follow my fortune on the golden paved streets of London. Love, Leo. (You should keep this letter safe, my signature will be worth a fortune in a few years.)

I nod and then turn my attention to Scarborough. “Mr. Scarborough, I saw your piece on TV this morning and came to offer you our services.”

“ My piece on TV,” Leo snarks, then steps closer to stand shoulder to shoulder with Scarborough, creating a solid no-entry wall in the wide stone doorway to the house. “Thanks and all that, but I’m afraid we don’t have time for rubberneckers.”

“Rubberneckers?” Marina scoffs, and I hold on to her arm in case she takes a swing at him.

Still looking at Scarborough, I smile politely.

“My name is Melody Bittersweet, owner of The Girls’ Ghost-Busting Agency. We’re local specialists in this area of work, Mr. Scarborough, and I really think I could help you.”

In days gone by, I’d have felt disloyal about basically going head-to-head with Leo to try to steal the job from under his nose.

But then…what goes around comes around. He lost his right to my loyalty when he decided I was expendable in his life.

All’s fair in love, war, and ghost busting, as they say.

Or as I’ll say if he ever challenges me onit.

“He has all the help he needs,” Leo cuts in smoothly. His eyes flash with fury, quite at odds with his dismissive, throwaway tone of voice.

“I rather think that’s my decision,” Scarborough says, scowling, and I notice a chink in their relationship that Leo doesn’t want me to see.

“We may not be on television,” I begin.

“Or wear stupid capes,” Marina stage-whispers, making Leo’s lip curl.

“But I promise you that I know what I’m doing, and I might be able to speed things up for you here.”

I keep my eyes firmly on Scarborough, even though Leo is clearly hopping mad and dying to interject.

He’s a step away from holding his arm up in the air like a kid desperate for the teacher’s attention, and he’s clearly finding it hard to hide all of that beneath his cool, calm Kylo Ren veneer.

He settles for laying a proprietorial hand on Scarborough’s arm.

“Donovan. Can I call you Donny?”

“No.”

Leo falters for a nanosecond then recovers himself. “Donovan.”

“Mr. Scarborough.”

“Very well. Mr. Scarborough, rest assured I come with the highest credentials and the backup of a full professional team at your disposal around the clock.”

Scarborough turns to glance behind Leo at the aforementioned team, and his sidestep allows us to see beyond them to two blond women hovering in the hallway just behind them.

One holds Leo’s deerstalker, the other his briefcase, and they’re wearing matching black bodycon dresses and patent red stilettos.

Their clothes are not the only thing about them that’s similar; they have the same heads. Like, completely identical.

“Fucking hell! Creepy or what,” Marina gasps, and I can only agree. Leo seems to have acquired himself a living, breathing twin-set of Barbie dolls.

“I have a team,” I counter. All four people on the doorstep look at my team, aka Marina, in different ways. Scarborough’s expression is dubious, the twins’ eyes are territorial, and Leo’s are openly scathing.

“Marina Malone is your team?”

I nod, unabashed. “Marina is integral to my team, yes, along with others. Mr. Scarborough,” I turn my attention back to the homeowner, “my family are long-established and well respected in this area, and the service I can offer you is second to none.”

“Are you suggesting you don’t think this guy is capable of the job he’s been hired to do?” He cocks his head toward Leo.

I don’t dare glance in Leo’s direction. “No. But I am telling you that I’m better.”

“Bullshit!” Leo rips the Velcro fastenings from the neck of his made-for-TV cape and flings it at one of the creepy twins in the style of an infuriated matador.

“Is it?” I say, jutting my chin in the air. “Only that’s not what Isaac thinks.”

“Isaac?” Scarborough frowns, confused.

I fold my arms over my chest and nod. I fear my expression is dangerously close to smug. “Isaac. Your great-uncle.”