Free Jessica's Ghost by Andrew Norriss

not even shoes – and had a slightly dazed look. Not that Francis was bothered. He was just overwhelmingly pleased to see her.
    ‘Thank goodness!’ he said. ‘Where have you been? Are you all right?’
    ‘I think so.’ Jessica had the look of someone who’s been knocked down by a car and still hasn’t quite recovered.
    ‘So what happened?’
    Jessica had, it turned out, no idea where she had been or what had happened. All she knew was that she had found herself in the little room on the third floor at thehospital that morning feeling, as she described it, ‘sort of strange’ – and not even sure what day it was.
    ‘I checked the calendar on the nurse’s desk,’ she said, ‘which said it was Wednesday, then realised I couldn’t remember Monday or Tuesday.’ She frowned. ‘Last time I saw you was Saturday, right?’
    ‘We went out to where you used to live,’ said Francis. ‘In the afternoon.’
    ‘Did we?’ Jessica looked puzzled.
    ‘We went to the graveyard and then you went over to your aunt’s house and never came back. You don’t remember?’
    ‘Oh …’ Jessica nodded. ‘Yes, I do. A bit.’
    ‘Did something happen at the house?’
    Jessica opened her mouth to answer … and disappeared again.
    This time, fortunately, she was not gone for long, and twenty minutes later she popped up between Francis and Andi, still wearing the hospital gown, as they were walking to school.
    ‘What happened?’ she said.
    ‘You disappeared again,’ Francis told her.
    ‘Again?’ Jessica frowned. ‘Why do I keep doing that?’
    ‘We don’t know,’ said Andi, ‘but I wish you’d stop. It’s very upsetting.’
    ‘And you need to get changed into proper clothes,’ said Francis. ‘You’re all hanging out at the back.’
    ‘Oh, right …’ Jessica concentrated for a moment and the hospital gown was replaced by jeans and a coat. ‘Better?’
    ‘Much better.’ Andi smiled. ‘You really have no idea why you disappeared?’
    ‘No.’ Jessica shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’
    When she ‘disappeared’ twice more in the course of the morning, however, a part of the reason soon became clear. On each occasion, she disappeared when Francis or Andi asked questions about what had happened during the visit to her aunt’s house on Saturday.
    They decided very quickly that there must be no more talk of aunts, houses, the village or whatever had happened that day. There must be no more investigations, either, into Jessica’s past. Interesting though it might beto find out why she had died, if it was going to make her disappear, it simply wasn’t worth the risk. Life with Jessica’s ghost was too good to do anything that might mean losing her.
    Especially, as Andi said, with a maths test coming up on Friday.
     
    The sight of their contented children was an unceasing marvel to both Mrs Campion and Mrs Meredith. Mrs Meredith saw with relief how Francis had lost that downtrodden, slightly hunted look that had worried her for so long, while the change in Andi was something Mrs Campion still found hard to believe. Everything about her daughter seemed to have been transformed. She was getting good reports from school, she’d stopped hitting people, she even dressed differently – something Mrs Campion found particularly puzzling.
    Andi had never been interested in clothes – out of school, she had simply worn the same jeans and T-shirt every day until they disintegrated – but in the last few weeks that had changed. It had begun with the T-shirtsFrancis had made her, then she had asked for money to buy new clothes in town and now, when Mrs Campion had asked her to find something smart to wear when they went up to London, she had appeared in an off-white cotton top and a very fetching little skirt in a Prince of Wales check that fitted her like a dream. Mrs Campion almost cried when she saw it. Her little Thuglette! In a proper skirt!
    How all these changes had come about she did not know, but Mrs Campion