‘It is well hidden,’ Beulah said. ‘It is a secret sadness.’
‘Loads of people are walking around with those,’ Jules said. ‘Come on, I’m going to see what we’ve got for supper.’
‘Have you spoken to the spirits, Julia?’
‘No, I have not because you know that I don’t believe in that sort of thing.’
‘You should speak to them, darling. I sense that they are trying to help you.’
Jules moved through to the sitting room.
‘Are you on or off cheese at the moment, because I might make a cheesy pasta bake?’
‘You know that I can eat cheese in the summer, but not in the winter because of my sensitive sinuses.’
‘I’d forgotten, but thank goodness it’s summer.’
‘I’ll come and help you,’ Beulah said. ‘We can cook together. That’s a bonding thing to do.’
Depends on who you’re cooking with, Jules murmured to herself. Perhaps she would speak to the spirits after all. Perhaps she would ask them to help her find patience.
DANGER
Eliza stood in the doorway to the bedroom watching Beulah sleep. Isaac’s hands rested on her shoulders, preventing her from moving closer.
‘Another lovely visitor,’ Eliza whispered in his ear. ‘It is good that the cottage is so popular!’
‘You need to come away, Eliza,’ he said, pulling his wife back on to the little landing. ‘I think this woman could be dangerous.’
‘Oh, Isaac. You are worrying too much.’
She raised her hand and tried to stroke the stress from his face, resting her finger on the corner of his lips. The lips she had kissed so often with so much love. She would never tire of doing so.
‘I do not like this new person being here,’ Isaac continued.
Beulah stirred and turned over in bed, her face soft and relaxed.
‘She looks harmless to me, Isaac, and if she is Jules’s mother, she can’t be bad.’
‘I’m not saying that she is a bad person, my love, far from it. In some ways I feel that she is too good, too much in contact with more than her human form.’
‘You mean, Isaac, that she may be able to see us?’
‘It is possible.’
Eliza looked through the open doorway at Beulah.
‘But I do not think she would cause trouble, even if she did.’
‘She may not mean to, Eliza, but…’
Isaac let go of her and paced across the landing, head down, shoulders hunched, hands clasped together, seemingly unaware of the increasingly violent ripples of air he was creating. Eliza knew what this meant. He was trying to work something out, to foresee shadows in the future with a view to preventing them.
‘Perhaps,’ he said at last, spinning on the spot and turning towards Eliza, ‘our latest guest could do with some of your assistance.’
Eliza’s lips twitched.
‘Surely, you are not advocating meddling, my love? I thought that I was banned from interfering?’
