in your school. It’s so easy to make terrible mistakes, even if you’re only pretending to contact the other realm. And you don’t have to pretend to be psychic, Isis, you’re special in so many ways.”
Isis pulled her hands out of Cally’s.
“Why don’t you ever listen to me?” she said, louder than she meant to. “I’m not pretending. I can see ghosts!” She found herself shouting, needing Cally to hear. “I can see the old teacher in the main hall at school, and the woman who plants potatoes in the shopping centre, and I could see Philip Syndal’s spirit guide…” Her mum’s astonished face only made her angrier. “I can see Angel!”
Angel stopped singing, stopped dancing. Poked her head between the seats.
“You saw her too,” Isis continued, unable to stop herself now. “Down in the mortuary, after they revived me. I know you did, because I showed her to you!”
The car was silent but for the sound of Cally’s breathing.
“Mummy seed me,” said Angel.
“Oh… God,” gasped Cally, and she began to cry. Choking, gulping sobs that drew up from inside, shaking her shoulders and bending her double, hands over her face.
Isis’s heart pounded on, her fury congealing into some thing less fiery as Cally sagged against her seat, leaning her head back as her sobs subsided into small gasps. She took a deep breath, and turned her head, looking sideways at Isis.
“You used to sit on my lap together when you were little,” Cally said quietly. “Do you remember?”
Isis nodded.
“I ’member!” cried Angel delightedly.
“I can still feel the both of you,” Cally continued, “even now. The way you held yourself so neatly, while Angel kicked and wriggled. My two arms around my two girls, both so beautiful and so different.” She sighed. “Angel wasn’t much past being a baby. She hadn’t even learned to talk properly.”
Cally turned her head back to straight, and Isis watched a tear dawdle its way down her cheek.
“She was so solid,” Cally whispered. “She stomped around. She shouted and had tantrums. She was proud when she used the toilet by herself.”
Something turned over inside Isis and she looked at her now ghost-sister.
“I did poos,” said Angel, nodding wisely.
“I loved her with every particle of myself,” said Cally, “just the way I love you.” She sat up and wiped her hand across her cheek. “But that wasn’t enough.”
Isis clicked and unclicked her seat belt. She couldn’t go back, now that she’d started. “You did see her though, didn’t you? In the mortuary?”
Cally took in another deep breath, then said, “Yes.”
“I tol’ you!” cried Angel.
Isis smiled. At her mum, at her ghost-sister.
“Don’t you see? Angel’s still with us! I’m sorry I never told you before, but I…” was frightened of how you’d react, when being psychic was all you had. No, she couldn’t say that. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. But now you do, because you’ve seen her yourself! And that means we’re still a family, all together. You, me, Angel. I know Dad’s not here, but we’re all right, aren’t we?”
Cally didn’t answer Isis’s smile.
“I wasn’t surprised Angel was there in the mortuary,” she said quietly, “after all that had just happened to you. I expect she came back, to watch over you and make sure you were all right. But seeing her…” Cally fell silent again.
“Weren’t you happy?” Isis asked, trying to puzzle her mum’s strange reaction.
Cally laughed, and it was almost another sob.
“Angel was going to follow you into primary school,” Cally said, but it was hard to tell if she was talking to Isis, or reciting something she’d said to herself many times before. “That’s what I was expecting. And I was going to buy her a pink scooter for her next birthday.” Angel clapped her hands, while Cally continued without hearing her. “I told people she’d be a handful as a teenager, but I knew in my heart she’d calm down after and get a nice boyfriend. I wanted her to go to college and get a good job.” She looked directly at Isis. “That’s what I was expecting for her, but she’ll never have any of it.”
“So it was a comfort then?” asked Isis hopefully. “Seeing her ghost, knowing she isn’t gone forever?”
“The ghost of my dead baby girl,” said Cally quietly. “Looking just how I remembered. Exactly the same.” She put a hand out to Isis’s cheek, as if trying to trace something in her face. “Not grown, or lost her baby teeth, or gone to school. Right there