Read Online The Smile of a Ghost by Phil Rickman - Free Book Online Page B

they came onto the square. A few shoppers and tourists were glancing at them by now, and Jane saw that Lol was looking a bit unhappy.
    ‘’Course I won’t say where it is,’ the Q guy said.
    ‘Only the market hall’s fairly well known,’ Lol said. ‘Be a give away.’
    ‘No problem – we’ll face you the other way. Better for the light, too.’
    The guy lined Lol up on the edge of the square, with the church in the background and people walking past, and Jane wondered if he was trying to simulate one of the famous black and white street-scene pictures taken for Nick Drake’s first album, Five Leaves Left .
    And she wondered, not for the first time, if that was a good thing. Nick Drake’s music was wonderful but he surely represented the old Lol. He had, after all, killed himself with an overdose of antidepressants.
    Jane saw Eirion’s car arrive – little grey Peugeot with the CYM sticker, identifying him as a Welshman abroad. Eirion drove slowly around the square to park in front of the vicarage gate, and Jane stopped herself from running across, waving. A measure of cool might be more appropriate. Try and cobble together a few quid for the petrol, indeed.
    She strolled casually over the cobbles as Eirion climbed out. He spotted her at once and did his incredible smile – the kind of smile that said you were the only person who could make it happen.
    Smooth bastard.
    OK, he wasn’t. Eirion wasn’t smooth. He didn’t even know he had any charm.
    When they’d finished kissing, he said, ‘Is there something wrong?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It’s very busy here today, isn’t it? I’ve never seen it like this.’
    ‘It’s Saturday.’ Jane looked back at the square. Lol and the guy from Q had gone already. Not a major photo-session, then.
    ‘Didn’t used to be like this on a Saturday, did it?’ Eirion said.
    ‘Tourism. It’s like tourists have suddenly discovered the area.’
    ‘Good for the shopkeepers.’
    ‘I suppose.’
    Jane imagined the figure of Lucy Devenish, the ghost of Ledwardine past, standing in the shadows under the market hall. Lucy looking very old, the way she never had, and the poncho drooping. Something feeling wrong.
    ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Jane said.

6
     
On the Slippery Slope
     
    M ERRILY FOUND THE atmosphere stifling. Too much heat, food-smells, a sense of something out of everyone’s control.
    She exchanged glances with Saltash from opposite ends of the sofa. Saltash raised an eyebrow. Mrs Mumford seemed to think he was some kind of priest. And the wrong kind, at that.
    ‘Where’s the Bishop?’ she kept shouting at her son. ‘You said you’d bring the Bishop. You never does what you says you’s gonner do.’
    Mumford sat, impassive, on a hard chair by the TV, which was silently screening some Saturday-morning children’s programme: grown-ups wearing cheerful primary colours and exaggerated expressions, smiling a lot and chatting with puppets.
    Soon after they’d arrived, Mumford’s dad had walked out. ‘Can’t stand no more of this. I’m off shopping. She won’t face up to it. You talk some sense into her, boy, else you can bloody well take her away with you.’
    ‘I’m cold.’ Mrs Mumford was hunching her chair dangerously close to the gas fire. ‘Fetch me my cardigan, Andrew.’
    ‘You got it on, Mam.’
    Mumford looked down at his shoes. The room felt like the inside of a kiln. His mam wore this winter-weight red cardigan and baggy green slacks. She had one gold earring in, and that wasn’t a fashion statement. She looked from Merrily to Saltash to Andy. She’d done this twice before, as if she was trying to work out who they all were.
    ‘Why en’t the Bishop come?’
    ‘He en’t well, Mam, I told you. He had a heart operation.’
    Her eyes filled up. ‘You’ll tell me anything, you will.’
    ‘Mam—’
    ‘He was always nice to me, the Bishop, he never talked about God and that ole rubbish. Used to come in when we had the paper shop. Used