Chapter 3

Sol reached into his pocket and pulled out the small LED flashlight that was attached to his key ring. He flicked it on and a dim light lit the small foyer with ghostly shadows in the corners. He lifted the beam slightly and his lips twitched as the feisty—or was she simply cranky?—woman stared back at him. Large brown eyes were framed by a delicate face with high cheekbones. She was slightly built although the navy blue work shirt and trousers did hug some curves.

From the way the ad had been worded, he’d imagined an alternate—and definitely approachable—woman. Not the one who was now tapping her foot and glaring at him.

‘Should I be worried?’ she said.

‘Worried?’ He frowned and lowered the flashlight.

‘You were checking me out? Am I about to be accosted?’

Sol’s lips twitched again, and he fought back the chuckle that was threatening to rumble out of his chest. ‘I think you’re safe. And I wasn’t checking you out. I was checking you were okay. You hit that wall pretty hard. For a minute there I thought there’s been a lighting strike. I’ve never seen the wind gust like that.’

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Neither have I. The porch is protected by the high wall. And I thought the storm had passed.’

As she spoke there was a loud bang upstairs, and Sally frowned.

Aggie.

‘Look, let’s start again.’ He took a step towards her.

‘Whoa. Stop right there. I still haven’t decided if I can trust you.’

‘You can,’ he said quietly.

‘I’ll be the judge of that. And Aunt Aggie will too.’

‘Aunt Aggie?’ He peered around her into the living room. ‘Do you want to get some lights going?

‘Aunty Aggie doesn’t need lights.’ She folded her arms. ‘She’s a ghost, but you try any funny business and you’ll be sorry. She looks after us.’

Sol tipped his head to the side and wondered what he’d encountered here. Excitement curled in his stomach. Her stories were exactly what he’d imagined to find in this house. He didn’t usually read the community paper, but the fish and chips he’d sat on the beach and eaten at lunchtime yesterday—before the weather had closed in— had been wrapped in this week’s local newspaper. The ad had jumped out at him; if it hadn’t said call after five, he would have run up the hill and pounded on the door straight away.

Okay, despite her appearance, a little alternate, and the face had a fairy-like quality with those huge eyes and the pretty red lips, maybe she was what he’d imagined from the ad. ‘Us?’

She waved a hand. ‘Don’t worry.’

He bent over and shone the light on the scrap of newspaper that was on the patterned rug. Reaching down he picked it up and handed it to her.

‘In the ad it says to call in here at this address, after five pm today and ask for Sally. I’m just pleased that I found it today. It was meant to be.’

‘I wonder why none of the others asked for me by name.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘You’d better let me read it. I’m getting a bad feeling about this.’ Reaching up, she pulled the tie from her hair and massaged her scalp. Long, silky, dark hair tumbled to her waist and it was tempting to reach out and run the long tresses through his fingers.

He held out his hand instead and tried to inject professionalism in his voice. ‘I’m Sol Brown. I’ll probably here for a different reason to your other callers.’

She took it and it was as though an electric current ran up his arm. ‘Sally Smith.’

‘Perhaps we could have a chat, Sally? Or make an appointment.’ Not that he wanted to wait. The ad was exactly what he needed, and he wanted to talk to her now.

‘Look, it’s storming too much to send you back out there’—her voice was brisk—‘come into the kitchen and I’ll make a cup of tea while we sort his out.’

‘Thanks. That’d be great. I really didn’t want to wait too long. I’m on a pretty tight deadline.’

‘Follow me. I can turn the gas on and put the kettle on. That’ll warm us up, and the stove will dry you out a bit.’ She looked at him curiously as she held her hand out. ‘Pass me your light please.’

Sally—she’d said that was her name—turned and walked into a large room off the entrance foyer. It was too dark to see much, but the dark shadows and bulky shapes hinted at old furniture filling the space. He followed her through another three smaller rooms and then into a long hall that led to what appeared to be a separate wing at the back of the house. As they walked along the corridor, there was a series of bangs from the floor above.

He raised one eyebrow at her at the last particularly loud one as she pushed open a door.

‘Don’t worry, it’s only Aggie or Muggins.’

‘Muggins? You have two ghosts?’ He looked up but it was so dark he couldn’t even see the ceiling.

‘No. Muggins is a cat.’ She shone the light onto an ancient stove. ‘Taj was going to replace this but we insisted on keeping it.’

Sol looked around as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light.

‘Sit down. I’ll get the stove going.’ She crouched in front of it and there were a couple of clicks before the smell of gas surrounded them as he sat at the large wooden table.

‘Bugger,’ she cursed. ‘That would just top off the day. Blowing off my eyebrows is not what I want. Aunt Aggie did it so often, in the end they didn’t grow back.’

Sol swallowed. A ghost with no eyebrows, no less.

Finally with a whoosh, blue flames danced in the ring on the top of the stove. Sally handed the torch back and he slipped it into his pocket.

‘Yay.’ After she filled the kettle and put it on the hob, she crouched down and lit the oven. Sol held his breath waiting for a bang, but her eyebrows remained intact.

‘So…’ He searched around for something to fill the awkward silence after she sat across from him. ‘Divine Soul Sisters? There’s more than one of you?’

Sally frowned and he couldn’t help thinking how pretty she was. Her posture was straight and her movements were graceful. Maybe it was the soft light from the flame and his small flashlight, but her face looked ethereal. He wandered off into a daydream, thinking about some of the fairytale heroines he’d studied as part of his first Master’s degree. His supervisor had wrinkled her brow, unable to see what he was trying to convey in his thesis when he’d first presented the idea but he—

‘There were three but now we are two.’

His head flew up and he frowned. As usual he’d lost the thread of the conversation; it drove his family crazy but they were used to him by now. He saw it as being blessed with an intellect that was prompted by free thinking; his family called it being off with the pixies.

‘Sorry. What was that?’

‘I said there were three to start with.’ She was staring at him.

‘Three what?’

‘Three divine soul sisters.’ She leaned forward and folded her hands on the table. ‘Now it’s just my twin sister and I. Rosie’s on the circuit.’

‘The circuit?’ The last thing he’d imaged was a circuit for his research topic.

‘And does your sister do the same thing as you?’ he asked.

‘No.’ From the tone of his voice, he sensed that she wasn’t happy with that.

‘And um, how do you run your business?’ Sol leaned forward and put his hands on the table too. ‘I need to know if I’m going to be able to use you.’

‘Use me? You just make an appointment.’ She shook her head and confusion crossed her face. ‘The paper must have run an old ad. I haven’t advertised my business for years. But maybe it’s not such a bad idea, if that’s the sort of response I get on a stormy afternoon.’ She bit her lip. ‘Since the football club folded, my clients have dropped right off.

‘The football club?’ He knew his eyes were wide. ‘The whole football club?’

‘Yes, they used to keep me busy. They’d fill a whole class so I’d run an extra one on a Friday night. The coach used to say he could guarantee a win on the Saturday after the class.

Sol swallowed. This was not what he’d imagined at all. ‘Um, you run classes?’

‘Yes. It’s not very effective one-on-one. And I’d never make a living if I took clients individually.’

‘Maybe I could come to a class and watch?’

‘I’m not sure that watching would be beneficial. But if you want to see what a class entails, sure. But you’d still have to pay the class fee.’ Sally looked at him as though he had two heads. ‘But isn’t that why you came knocking on my door?’

‘No.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I thought that I could get more information from an individual interview. But maybe watching a class…’ Heat ran up his neck. Reading research articles and interviewing practitioners in the field, he was comfortable with, but he didn’t know how he’d feel like being an observer in the room. He’d felt uncomfortable sitting by himself watching some of the DVDs that he’d sourced from the German Association.

The kettle whistled and Sally stood. ‘People usually just turn up.’

‘But how do you know that they’re right for what you do?’

‘You can generally tell by first look whether they will be able to cope in one of my classes. I even have some clients in their eighties.’ She held up something and he squinted.

‘In their eighties?’Sol knew his eyes were wide.

She nodded at the tea bag in her hand. ‘Tea or coffee.’

‘Ah yes, tea would be good, thank you.’ He was fascinated by her responses. ‘White, no sugar.’ He nodded his thanks and waited while she poured water into a mug. As she passed it to him, he tried to get his head around what she was saying. ‘You’re giving me a whole new perspective for my area of study. But it’s too late to change now. In their eighties, you say? Wow.’

‘When Aunt Aggie was alive’—she glanced at him as she passed over the mug—‘she was in the nursing home across from the beach and I’d run a couple of classes there most weeks.’

Sol spluttered as he sipped his tea and the hot liquid sprayed from his mouth. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief to dab at his shirt. Sally stared at him as he wiped his mouth and Sol felt more gauche than he usually did. The newspaper in his pocket cracked as he pushed his damp handkerchief back in. He pulled the ad out and put it on the table as Sally tipped her head to the side.

 ‘And what do you mean by area of study? I thought you wanted to enroll in a class,’ she said reaching for the newspaper clipping. ‘From memory my ads just advertised class times. And the times have changed since I ran the last ad.’

She held the ad up to her face and shook her head. ‘It’s too small to read in this light. Can I have your torch again please?’

Sol passed over the small LED light and flicked it on for her.