Weddings? Pah.
It wouldn’t last.
“And you think that takes priority over Mrs Robinson-Smythe’s settlement?” Edie asked.
“I can come in early tomorrow?” Rachel’s bottom lip wobbled.
“You should be coming in early anyway if you want to get ahead. Oh don’t cry. Just go. But this will be going on your permanent record.” Edie said and turned away from her in disgust, ignoring her until she left the office.
Edie found that firing off an email to the HR department about the lackadaisical attitude of her trainee lifted her spirits, and she carried on working with a small smile. If you didn’t watch the trainees they were apt to slack off, she knew this. She’d been taught by the best. Really, between Rachel’s sloppiness and the other solicitors spending the time gossiping about men, it was a surprise that Bailey Lang Satis and Partners was still as successful as it was. Standards were slipping.
At eight pm, she shut down her computer, removed all papers from her desk, averted her eyes from Rachel’s teetering piles of briefs and left. She strode confidently through the office, and noted she was the last to leave. Good. It gave her a sense of pride, and also relief that she didn't have to make small talk with anyone.
Exactly twenty minutes later she was outside the door to her building, a red and white mansion block just off Victoria Street. It was a quiet and elegant place and an easy bus ride from work at the edge of the City. The double doors were half glazed and led through to a tiled entrance way. Above the doors was a stained glass semicircular window showing flowers, misplaced Edwardian whimsy, Edie always thought.
The last rays of the sun on this June evening were shining directly onto the window. As Edie put her key in the lock, she glanced up.
Instead of the whimsical flowers she'd expected, a face stared down at her. The face of Jessica Marley.
It glowed in the light of the setting sun. It had Jessica’s perpetual look of superiority; her chin length bob moved slightly as if touched by a faint wind. And perched on top was a cheap silver tiara. Brown eyes stared beadily down at Edie. There was nothing whimsical about them.
Edie blinked.
No, it really was just a stained glass window.
The blood from her face was now pooled somewhere round her knees. With her hand shaking, she turned the key in the lock and stumbled through the front door.
That didn’t just happen. It couldn’t have done.
“Low blood sugar. It’s just low blood sugar,” she whispered as she took the lift not trusting her legs for the usual brisk walk up the stairs. She’d seen Jessica because she’d been on her mind earlier; that was it. It had to be. It was the only logical explanation.
Once in her second floor flat, she rapidly turned the locks and put the chain on. Back flattened against it, she lifted a hand to her forehead. It was cold and damp, but not from fear; she didn't do fear.
She could hear Ms Satis' voice telling her to pull it together.
“Get a grip Edie. It was just a trick of the light.” Maybe if she said it enough she could believe it. It was a technique she knew well.
Taking a deep breath she walked to the kitchen through her bland and colourless flat. There was not a personal touch anywhere, not a photo or a knickknack; it was more like a hotel room. She could move out at a moment’s notice and not leave an imprint of herself behind. And what was in the flat was perfectly aligned; everything was in its place.
In her spotless and almost clinical kitchen, Edie prepared dinner with automaton precision: organic chicken, no skin and grilled to reduce the calories, organic vegetables steamed and not a touch of a starchy carbohydrate because it was after six pm. The work soothed her, all the boundaries and rules giving her structure, making her feel safe. Her phone rang, and she automatically checked the caller.
Her mother.
Her lips pursed. She didn’t have time to speak to her mother, Edie lied to herself, when what she meant was that she didn't have the energy to deal with her. She sent it to voice mail.
Then, as was her routine, she sat at the small breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the living room and carefully placed a forkful of food made up of perfect proportions and dimension in her mouth. She chewed exactly thirty times before she swallowed, and, because she'd had so much practice at ignoring anything that made her uncomfortable, she successfully dismissed the thoughts of weddings and stained glass windows as she reviewed Mrs Robinson-Smythe’s settlement.
By exactly ten thirty pm Edie was in bed, a solitary figure lying in her cool crisp white linen sheets. It was as if she was laid out, arms by her sides or occasionally crossed across her chest. All neat and tidy, nothing messy.
OK, so tonight she might have checked under the bed and in each wardrobe before she lay down, but those were just sensible precautions for a single woman living in the centre of London. And if she'd never done it before tonight, it was never too late to start. At least that is what she told herself.
On that fuzzy edge of sleep, that time where you walk on the verge between the waking path or the field of dreams, she heard an electronic click, the sound of a text message being delivered. It jolted her awake.
Who could be texting her now?
And then as her brain woke up, she remembered she didn't have an alert for her text messages, her phone was set to vibrate mode. Then as if to underline her thought and highlight it in bold, she heard it again, and again. And then it seemed that every electrical appliance in the flat turned on and began to beep, the sound getting louder and louder.
What the…
Edie's heart was hammering so loudly that she almost didn't hear the sound of stiletto-heeled shoes tapping slowly and laboriously towards her and the clanking sound of a chain being dragged over wooden floors.
It came closer and closer.
“Bugger this!” she whispered. “It’s just a dream.”
And as she said it, something came through the bedroom door. Right through it, without opening it.
“Jessica?” Edie whispered.
She pressed her hand against her ribcage as if trying to keep her slamming heart from leaping out.
The same face that had stared at her from the stained glass was right there in front of her: the superior look, the chin length bob. But Edie had never seen Jessica in a bridesmaid’s dress before. It was peach satin, cheap looking and so full of frills and lace, it was the embodiment of the dream of a demented four year old. And Jessica had a chain dragging behind her. It was fastened about her waist. It wound around her and fell behind her like a train. It sparkled with pink glitter; and woven between the links were pink feather boas, ‘L’ plates and bunny rabbit ears, penis-shaped straws, red devil horns and fairy wings.
Her body was transparent, so Edie could see the massive bow that adorned the back of the dress.
She’d always suspected Jessica was full of hot air.
“What the hell do you want? You’re dead.” Edie said.
“Oh come on Edie, of course I’m dead. Do you think if I were still alive I’d be here? Also, you know, see-through…” The shade gestured to her body.
“But J-Jessica…” Edie wasn’t sure why she was trying to argue with a mad bridesmaid ghost in her bedroom; maybe she needed to humour it until she was certain what she was dealing with.
“You know, that is the first time I’ve heard my name since I died. Nothing worse than having been someone and then to be reduced to wandering around without anyone knowing you,” the spirit said.
Edie suddenly remembered that although she and Jessica had known each other since secondary school and were united