Vic, Vicwake up, you lazy sod! Youll sleep your whole life away if I let you. Look at him, will you? Still dead to the world. Victor, get up, or youll miss your own destiny, mark my words.
«Edith Margaret, for pitys sake, let a man sleep!»
«Sleep? Youll sleep when youre retiredor dead.»
«Right, Ill catch up on rest in the grave, shall I?»
«You wont be resting there either. Up you get, come on!»
Victor dragged himself to the mirror, bleary-eyed, his face creased from the pillow.
«Well?»
«Youve not even harnessed yourself properly. Go wash, shave, make yourself presentabletheres still time. Get on with it.»
«What time, Edith Margaret?»
«The right sort.»
Victor shuffled to the bathroom, muttering curses under his breaththough not too loudly, lest a slipper come flying at his head. Still nagging him, even now. Bloody woman.
«Vic, did I ever tell you I can hear thoughts sometimes? No? Well, now you know,» his mother-in-law declared, perched cross-legged at the foot of his bed like some spectral yogi. «Side effect, I suppose. Now go scrub those teeth properly, and dont forget to shave. You look like a tramp.»
Arguing was pointless. Even alive, shed been impossible to reason with.
Edith Margaret wasnt just any mother-in-lawshe was a ghost.
No, he hadnt lost his mind. No, he wasnt pickled in gin. Shed simply appeared. After her funeral.
«I hear you, you know. Most of the time,» she mused, floating gently. «How did my Lucy ever put up with you? Youre a dinosaur, plain as day.»
Victor waved her off and stalked into the bathroom.
He and Lucy had divorced a year ago. The kids were grown, off living their own lives. Lucy had snapped one day, called him a tyrant, said he stifled her «personal growth,» stuffed a bag, and slammed the door behind her.
Victor had stood there, bewildered.
When he rang her, shed hissed that she wanted nothing to do with a «backwards misogynist.» No one had ever called him such filthy words before.
And how, Lucy demanded, could he stop being a «backwards misogynist» when his literal job was building houses? And sheds, and the occasional summerhouse. Strange woman, that Lucy. And foul-mouthed, these days.
Point was, shed fallen under the spell of some life coachGod knew whoand decided her marriage had been «oppression.» Hed «yoked her like a plough-horse,» forced her to make stews and fry cutlets.
Though, Christ, the way Lucy fried cutlets
Victor nearly choked on his own drool. Then an idea struck him. Razor halfway down his cheek, he bolted into the corridor.
«Edith Margaret! Edith Margaret!»
«What in blazes are you screeching about?»
«Edith Margaret, will you teach me to make stew? Proper stew? Please?»
«Oh, just like that, is it? Hand over my secret recipe?»
«What goods it doing you now? Cooking for demons?»
«Ugh, you brute.»
«Exactly. Lucys stew is better than yours anyway.»
«Ha! Lucy? Better? I taught her everything she knows!»
«So?» Victor resumed shaving, bathroom door wide open. Decorum was long gone. It was Sunday, hed been dragged out of bed at seven, and the ghost wasnt budging.
«So?» Edith Margaret flickered, agitated. Shed spent her first weeks as a spectre tumbling about like a circus act before mastering solid surfaces. Now she could even grip objectsslippers, mostly. «I trained Lucy, you great oaf.»
«Not arguing. Just saying the student surpassed the teacher.»
«What? Go on, thenwhat meat does Lucy use?»
«Pork, obviously.»
«Idiot! Its beef.»
«Oh, and I suppose its not this pot, but that one?»
«Are you dense? That one over»
Between them, they cooked the stew, Victor scribbling notes like a schoolboy.
Later, clean-shaven, he sat at the kitchen table, spooning up the most sublime stew of his life.
«Mum youre a genius.»
«Eh?»
«Your stew. Its transcendent.»
«What about Lucys?»
«Pfft. Doesnt hold a candle. Waitare you crying? Can ghosts cry?»
«Dunno,» she sniffed. «Youre a right git, Vic.»
«Well, thats charming. Whatve I done now?»
«Nothing. Just called me Mum. Now Im blubbing. Vic, I was supposed to sort your future out.»
«Hows that?»
«Well I was meant to send you to take the bins outclean, shaved, at half-sixjust as Geraldine from number forty-two stepped out. Forty-seven, never married, new to the area. Youd bump into her, literally, and then»
«Go on.»
«Nothing, Vic.» Her eyes dartedas much as ghostly eyes could.
«Edith Margaret. Spit it out.»
«Youd have got on. And Id have been free to go. That was the deal.»
«Deal?»
«To make you happy.»
«So, youve known this whole year?»
«Course.»
«Why not do it, then?»
Her eyes skittered again. «You had to go and pester me about stew, didnt you?»
«Me?»
«You! Now Im stuck here until until»
«Until what?»
«Until I make you happy, thats what!»
«Happy? With some strange woman? Im happier than you think.»
«Hows that?»
«Im alive. Breathing. Ive got the recipe for the best stew on earth. And Ive got youkeeping me fed, clean, from brooding myself into a pit. Im not lonely, Mum»
«Oh, bugger off,» she shrieked, vanishing into the wardrobe, where muffled sobs echoed.
Victor decided to tidy up.
«Not like that, you great lumpuse the other cloth!»
***
Lucy hadnt slept well. Shed dreamt of her motheryoung, beautiful, reaching for her.
She tried to watch her life coach, Eustace Marvellous, but the video buffered endlessly. She rang him instead. The man was a saint, available day and night.
No answer.
Then»Who the devil calls at this hour?» A rasping voice, a flushed face pixelating on-screen. «Have you lost the plot?»
Lucy snapped the laptop shut. That wasnt Eustace. That was some ogre.
She sat, uneasy. Then, for reasons she couldnt name, she needed to see Victor.
***
Victor and Edith Margaret were playing chess, cackling.
«Gone mad,» Lucy thought, watching her ex-husband converse with thin air.
«Lucy! Mum, your moveaha! Check!»
Lucy swore the pieces moved themselves.
«Looking well, Lu. Mum says youve lost weight. Not eating? Fancy some stew? Mums recipe.»
«Vic are you alright?»
«Never better. Mums promised to teach me her cutlets next.»
«Vic what mum? Shes shes been gone a year.»
«Ah. Shes been living with me.»
«Vic darling, are you ill?»
«Never felt better. Cmon, try the stew.»
Lucy decided not to argue with a madman.
The stew, though the smell just like her mothers.
«Vic you made this?»
«Mum gave me her secret. Oh, stop blubbering, Edith Margaret. Lu, ask her something only you two would know.»
«Vic, I»
«Go on. You think Im cracked anyway.»
«Mum what secret did I tell you when I was eight?»
«That you fancied what? Me?»
Lucy sank into a chair.
«What colour was my pram? When did my first tooth come in? Whos Auntie Marge?»
Every answer was perfect.
«This cant be Vic Mums really here?»
«Ghost, Lu. Mumshow yourself.»
For a flash, Lucy saw her. Then again.
«Shes fading, Lu. Loves you. Wants you happy. Wants us happy? Whats that mean, Edith Margaret? Waitwhere are you?»
«Mum»
Victor woke with a gasp. Lucy jolted up beside him.
«Lucy?»
«Victor?» She clutched the sheets. «I dont understand how Wait. Was that?»
«A dream,» Victor whispered.
«You dreamed Mum was a ghost?»
«Yeah. And that youd left me for some life coach»
«Victor!»
«Lucy!»
A fist hammered the door.
«Up, you layabouts! Sleeping the day away!»
«Mum?»
«Edith Margaretyoure alive?»
«Not for your benefit! Lucy, stop filling your head with nonsenselife coaches, indeed. Had the queerest dreamspent a year haunting this fool. Now up! Were going to the cottage. Work to do. Lucy, Ill knock some sense into you yet. And you, Victorlearn to make stew properly. Just in case.»
***
«Vic whyd you never call me Mum in thirty years with Lucy?»
«Dunno Mum. «Always called her Edith Margaret like I was scared. Like if I said Mum, Id owe her something. But she gave it all anyway. Even when she was gone, she stayed. Taught me how to bleed onions slow, how to love quiet mornings, how to say what matters before it slips through your fingers.»
«Hmph. Took you long enough.»
Victor stirred the soup, the spoon clinking soft against the pot. Outside, rain tapped the window like a secret being passed from one world to the next.
«Think Lucyll come back to the cottage?» he asked, not looking up.
«She already has, you dolt. She never really left. The spoon stilled in the broth. Victor smiled, just once, into the steam rising between the living and the not-gone. Outside, the rain softened to a hush, and somewhere deep in the house, a floorboard sighed under a familiar step.
