COLD GHOST

PART ONE --- WARNING One The television was still glowing, and it took Kathy a moment to focus on the screen and bring the picture to life. An underfed woman in a leotard was jumping up and down and breathlessly encouraging the watching nation to join her. Kathy groped for the remote control at the side of the sofa on which she had slept and, scrabbling over the buttons with her fingertips, managed to switch the thing off. She yawned briefly, swallowed it, and swung her legs off the sofa, rubbing at her right arm as she did so, which was suffering from pins and needles where she had slept on it. Her jeans had become uncomfortable and the black sweatshirt she was wearing was wrinkled and stretched. Her underwear had twisted and ridden up, and she felt like a badly-packed suitcase. As soon as her faculties returned, she would get up and run a bath. Or perhaps put the kettle on first. Or maybe whip up a little breakfast. She reached for the remote and switched the television back on. The woman in the leotard, presumably too tired to continue, had been replaced by a short man in a snug suit who stood in front of a map of Great Britain which was largely obscured by cloud-shaped symbols. Kathy fell back into the cushions, trying mentally to shake off some of the feelings of sloth that had somehow come to dominate her life over the past few months. She felt lacklustre and drained, tired almost continually. Her doctor had diagnosed a mild depression, and subsequently prescribed anti-depressants; he being a practitioner of the old school: if you're remotely unsure, chuck a pill at it. Each morning, religiously, she would pop one of the little purple and green capsules out of its casing and drop it delicately into the wastebasket by her bedside cabinet. Some mornings she would intone 'Say aah' in the manner of a dentist as she dropped the tiny messenger of joy into the waiting maw of the by-now deliriously happy wastebasket. Let the quacks believe as they chose: a chemically induced happiness was no happiness at all in her opinion. Her ailing moods were one of the reasons she had taken the week off. The other reason was less substantial. The past few weeks and months had seen her moods slip away from loneliness and depression and into a more forbidding anxiety. Forbidding in that it was essentially groundless. The ever increasing lucidity of her dreams confounded her. She'd been waking lately from nightmares in which she had placed Ian in yet another hopeless, desperate death-trap, only to slip into sleep once again to repeat the exercise in even more gruesome, unwarranted detail. She dreamed as though she wished him harm. As the frequency of his calls diminished, so her dreams became more persistent. They had spoken every other day at first, and then it had been once a week, then twice a month. It had been three weeks since the last call. As soon as he had mentioned a small delay her heart had dropped into the pit of her stomach, and the rest of the conversation, for all the notice she took of it, needn't have happened at all. She had caught the excitement in his tone, and it had told her all she felt she needed to know. Work came first, Kathy McCleane came second. As though he had been reading her thoughts, Ian had said, 'I will keep my promise, Kathy, I swear it. When this is over we'll get married and do all the things rich, retired couples do...' 'Whatever they may be.' She had been intentionally curt with him. It washed straight over him. 'Yes, whatever they may be. Trust me, I'll be back before you know it. Won't be much more than a couple of weeks now.' 'Promise me.' 'I'll do my best, that I can promise.' And then nothing for three weeks. The previous Monday she had spent her birthday alone. He hadn't sent a card. She had been too miserable to bother going out, even though she considered visiting her mother, where she knew she'd have been more than welcome, or going out with Paul, whom she'd known since college, and who counted as the brother she'd never had. But she'd been in no mood for their sympathy and the company she chose that evening - the insipidly glowing box in the corner of the living-room - was in no condition to provide it either. She relinquished the sofa finally, deserting the pitiful companionship of the television, and made her way to the kitchen. Tea and buttered toast, that would have to do. She had neither the energy nor the inclination to prepare anything more complicated. While the kettle boiled, she shrugged out of her sleep-bedraggled clothes and dumped them unceremoniously into the linen-basket in the bathroom. Turning to the sink, she splashed cold water onto her face and then picked up her toothbrush. The toothpaste's heavily-manufactured mint flavour proved a sharper introduction to the morning than either the leotard-woman or the man in the bad suit. 'Congratulations Kath,' she muttered through a mouthful of foam. 'When brushing your teeth becomes the highlight of the day, you know you're in trouble.' When she looked at herself in the mirror, her mouth distorted by the toothbrush, and with white paste-spittle on her cheeks and on her chin, she appeared rabid. The effect was enhanced by the wildness of her hair, which was sticking up and out at every angle after its restless battle with the cushions throughout the night. Its usual serene waves had been replaced by far choppier waters: had become rapids before the storm of the waterfall. Her pale blue eyes stared bloodshot back at her. She spat, rinsed, spat again. She grinned broadly at the mess grinning back at her. 'When you get to the bottom, girl, there's only one way to go - and that's sideways.' It had been one of Paul's favourite expressions at college, but she'd have bet that he'd lifted it from one of his comedy videos. He had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of the things, and on more than one occasion she'd had to shut him up, and warn him that if he carried on in this vein he'd be in danger of turning into a walking cliché, forever repeating stolen remarks and phrases. In the hallway, near the front door, on the low table which stood next to the palm, the tiny red light on the telephone flashed on and off, repeating its signal over and over, as faithful and ignorant as a retriever. Dressed once more: clean blue jeans, denim shirt, trainers; Kath took up her post in the living-room, munching toast and gazing at the screen in the corner, ignoring the mug of tea cooling at her feet. Her chewing slowed and she struggled to swallow as the image on the screen blurred, and the newscaster became at first a shadow, and then less than a shadow. Something rippled, but she couldn't tell if it was the screen flickering or her eyes watering. She'd been prone to the odd unexpected outbreak of tears lately. She dropped the remains of her toast when Ian's ghost shimmered momentarily into the shadow-space where the newscaster had been. She could see his features clearly enough, but it seemed she was able to see through him at the same time, as if he were transparent, or close to. His eyes were staring out at her: wide, accusatory. With a start, she snapped her head back, and her right foot sent the mug cartwheeling away, brown liquid spraying out over the cream-coloured carpet. Kathy let out a low groan, no more than a guttural hissing breath, as she rolled herself quickly forward off the sofa, and tried to snatch the mug up before any more damage was done. Quick as she was, it was too late. The mug was empty and the tea was already soaking its way into the carpet. 'Shit.' Kathy swore under her breath. She glanced back at the television and was only half relieved to see the newscaster back in his familiar place. Now that she'd been forced into action, her mood seemed to lift of its own volition. On her way back from the kitchen, a cold, damp cloth in her hand, she noticed the message-light, and had to force herself on into the living-room, to take care of the stain first. As she scrubbed briskly, and for the most part ineffectively, at the stain, she tried to imagine who might have called her. Even though a call from Ian was long overdue, she scarcely believed it could be him. Ian was a stickler - no, scratch that - had used to be a stickler for routine. Until recently, that is. He'd always been aware of the hour or two time difference, and besides had made a point of only calling her in the evening, her time. Mind you, she'd no idea how long she'd slept last night. It seemed to be a longer period with each day that passed. When did she hit the sack last night? Good question. She couldn't remember much of the evening, so it must have been pretty early, even by her standards. He wouldn't have called before she'd woken, would he? No, what would have been the point of that? It must have been Paul. At this thought, she smiled - even though Paul lived in the same country, no more than twenty minutes from her, in fact, he was possibly less aware of the time than her fiancé in Africa. Apart from Ian or Paul, she could think of no-one else who would likely choose the middle of the night to call her. Her circle of acquaintances was not a large one, and she was happy to keep it that way. Her mother certainly wouldn't have called anytime before the afternoon, and it was extremely unlikely to be Daniel Johannsen, her Danish employer (probably soon to be ex-employer if she continued to take so much unwarranted time off). No, it had to have been Paul, and she suddenly began to dread just listening to the message. She'd been seeing an awful lot of Paul since Ian had been away, and occasionally she'd felt a tiny twinge of guilt. She knew this was a ridiculous feeling to have, especially as they'd seen no less of each other, probably more of each other in fact, when Ian himself had been around. She mused on the two men. As boys they'd grown up on the same street, been to the same schools, and shared almost everything. Kathy had met them both at college, where she had at first been amused, and then charmed, by their inseparability. The three of them gelled quickly, not least because of her shared interest with Paul in the Arts. Ian had more concrete interests, though his love of numbers came as much from the heart as did Paul's love of Art. It was the boys differences as much as their common interests, Kathy quickly came to realise, that bound them so closely together. At times she felt envious of their intimacy - envious of the obvious yet invisible bond between them that she could never either fully understand or be privy to. If Ian or Paul had the slightest idea of the way Kathy felt she stood outside looking in at certain times, they were at least generous enough not to show it, and the trio inevitably grew close in a short period of time. When, in their second year, Ian had started dating an overly-pretty first-year blonde, Paul and Kathy had at first welcomed the transition from trio to quartet, even though the newcomer - Christina 'Call me Chris, I hate Tina' had been unjustly wary of Kathy's relationship with Ian. The situation resolved itself nicely three months later at the Christmas party where, the morning after, Kathy woke in a familiar room, though not her own. The alien lumps in the duvet next to her had proven to be Paul, but then she had deduced that much already from the Gauguin print on the back of the door and from the interestingly messy desk and overflowing wastebasket in the corner. Lunch that day had been at first mildly uncomfortable. Paul and Kathy finally enlightened Ian as to the new state of affairs between them, and he had been delighted, and behaved as though he had seen this coming for a very long time, and was only too happy to be proved correct. 'I hate Tina' mellowed significantly when she arrived some time later and Ian allowed the penny to drop ever so gently. For Chris' part, she was only too happy to be part of a 'proper' quartet now, and for once was wise enough to keep her opinion to herself. Kathy had been rubbing the cloth across the carpet with more force than she realised. It suddenly rolled out from under her bunched fist, and she scraped her knuckles painfully against the carpet, friction burns turning three of her knuckles instantly red. She sat back on her haunches, licked her knuckles, and blew on them to cool them down. On her way to the phone, she tossed the cloth all the way from the kitchen doorway to the sink where, rather than landing with a neat little plop in the bowl, it chose to drape itself over the front of the cupboard doors, before dropping onto the floor. Kathy didn't even notice, intent as she was on the flashing message-light. She leaned over the little black plastic machine, and pressed the button marked PLAY. And listened with growing horror as the world she knew dropped away from her like a stone.

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