Page 19 of Between Us

‘Me, I do!’ Gina said.

‘Do you?’ Roisin said doubtfully.

‘If it’s notsuperscary,’ Gina said.

‘Joe, that is heavily qualified consent,’ Roisin said.

‘Given I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t care,’ Meredith said.

‘I’m agnostic,’ Dev said. ‘Anita?’

‘I believe,’ she said, sitting down and reclaiming her fishbowl G&T. ‘But bring it on.’

A split second after she spoke the wordsI believe, the candles on the mantelpiece guttered. Gina and Anita shrieked.

Gina said, ‘Matt, do you believe?’

‘No. But I keep an open mind,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Roisin said, laughing, and Matt said, ‘Oh chill, Miss Trunchbull,’ which made Roisin laugh harder. She’d forgot Matt’s comic theme that she was a joyless authoritarian.

‘Is that a full house “yes” vote for the story, then?’ Joe said impatiently. ‘Rosh, you’re a sceptic, it can’t seriously bother you. You can’t fear being haunted by something you don’t believe in.’

He had her there.

Joe scrolled his screen. ‘Ah, success! Here goes.’ Joe adopted the voice of a local TV newsreader. ‘Cumbria’s ghostly hotspots. The grand Benbarrow Hall is said to be visited by the spirit of a servant girl who drowned herself in the lake in the late 1800s.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Why is it always tragic spurned women or angry men on horseback?’

Roisin realised she was still the bolshie twelve-year-old witnessing Queenie Mook’s phantasms. Nevertheless, looking at the candlelight flickering on the walls, she was glad she wasn’t going to bed alone.

‘They’re always “ladies”, too,’ Roisin said. ‘The Lady Of The Something. Tragic, sexy young Ophelias. Someone should do a thesis on the underlying social values exhibited in ghost stories, if they haven’t already.’

‘Cor, you can tell you’re a teacher,’ Dev said.

‘Forgive my girlfriend’s strident feminism,’ Joe said. ‘It’s said the girl was secretly engaged to the son of the family who lived here. When the scandalous liaison with a lowborn woman came to light, he denied her and branded her a liar.’

‘Wanker,’ Gina, said with feeling. ‘Sounds exactly like my ex.’

‘Distraught, she ran from her bed and drowned herself by moonlight,’ Joe continued. ‘Visitors to Benbarrow Hall have reported looking out of the windows and seeing a ghostly figure standing by the lake at night.’

‘Argh!’ Gina squealed as Meredith jumped to her feet, scuttled to the window and cupped her hands round the glass.

‘Don’t LOOK, Meredith!’

‘What’s looking going to do?’ Meredith said.

‘When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back!’ Gina cried.

‘Wasn’t that a movie tagline?’ Dev said.

‘I think it’s Nietzsche?’ Matt said to Gina.

‘I saw it on a poster,’ Gina said.

Anita joined Meredith, while Gina performatively chattered her teeth.

‘Oh my God, there’s someone there!’ Meredith said, in a sepulchral hush as she turned to Gina, face stricken. ‘She’s … TWERKING?’

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