Trick or Treat

by Sally Anne Morris

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Synopsis

Is she getting paranoid . . . or paranormal? Prepare to be hilariously spooked in this wonderfully quirky supernatural romance by Sally Anne Morris. Ever thought you were hearing voices in your head? Welcome to Lucy Diamond's world... Nothing seems out of the ordinary about Lucy. Well, not until she starts hearing the voices of grumbling ghouls from beyond the grave. Hippie-mom Jasmine arranged for Lucy to develop the Gift and unlike the other presents of vegan cookbooks and tie-dye blouses, this one Lucy can't return to the store. The Dead aren't going anywhere until she sorts out their problems. But how can she be expected to deal with the lives of those in Limbo when she can't even manage her own? What readers are saying about TRICK OR TREAT: 'Written with great humour and thought. The characters are charming and likeable, if not a little quirky!' ' Touching, funny and a great read. It even had me shedding a tear or two - though I won't say if it was through comedy or sadness! Spellbinding ' 'An excellent plot and believable characters, it takes you to places you simply can't see coming and just when you think it's all over, it starts again. What a brilliant read '

Release date: October 4, 2018

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 320

Sample

Lucy Diamond (Lucy Michelle Eleanor Jude Rita Diamond to be exact) does not, on the surface, have any of what the police might call ‘distinguishing features’.

She has an ordinary job in Human Resources that involves endless meetings and tedious paperwork, and is not the sort of job that you dream of doing when you grow up. She has ordinary looks. No hook nose, no bat ears, no claw feet. On a good day, she might turn a few heads, and on a bad day you wouldn’t exactly reel in horror, but you probably wouldn’t even notice that she was there.

Lucy is pretty average and averagely pretty. Her good points are: nice grey eyes that with the right amount of kohl can look downright beautiful, and slim legs that can draw the eye in a miniskirt but would not be suited to hot pants on account of the little semicircle of cellulite puckering the top of each thigh. She has long straight hair – provided she has time to straighten it and it isn’t in the slightest bit damp outside, which in Britain it usually is, so it can err on the side of frizzy – in a colour that the box from Boots describes as ‘iced mocha’. She is not as small as Kylie nor as tall as Erin (who needs a surname for clarification – O’Connor – for although she is and has been the face of Marks & Spencer she does not have the superstar status of Ms Minogue). Lucy assumed she must also have very averagely sized feet – 5½ or 6 (depending on the style) – because she could never find a decent shoe in a sale, unlike her friends with childish size 3s or mannish size 8s.

Even her friends – Jojo, partner in crime since the first day at Our Lady and St Margaret of Cortona’s Grammar School for Girls, and Nigel (GBF – Gay Best Friend and the essential accessory for the noughties, or so he claims) – would not seem unusual, out of step, wild or wacko. No, there was nothing to mark out Lucy Diamond in a crowd until this particular morning, although it wasn’t until a good time later that she could trace the beginnings of it all to this very day and say, ‘That was the day my life changed.’

It had started out with the all the hallmarks of a usual Monday. Lucy had risen with the hangover-recriminations that follow her Sunday night ritual with Jojo and a bottle of Oddbins’ ‘on offer’. She had breakfasted on her favourite cereal which still – to Lucy Diamond aged thirty and a half – tasted ‘grrrrrrrreaaaaat’ and pretty soon, after some rudimentary personal grooming, she had found herself on the Victoria Line.

Lucy was flanked on the one hand by a man who may or may or not have urinated in his pants but certainly smelt as if he had and on the other by a power-suited woman who had power-napped between Seven Sisters and Finsbury Park and was now power-talking into her mobile phone.

Rocked by the shuttle of the tube, Lucy was being lulled into an almost dream-like state. Her horoscope in the free paper suggested new insights as Mercury entered the dark of the moon, but she was longing to be back in bed. Her favourite fantasy on wet days such as this was to imagine herself towel-robed and turbaned, sitting on a Mediterranean-style terrace with the lazy promises of a summer day stretching ahead of her. With the aid of the glaring overhead lights and the stuffiness of the overfull coach, she could almost imagine herself there.

The words of her fellow commuter drummed in Lucy’s head. Maybe it was the nonsense of her office-speak forcing surreal images into Lucy’s mind like ‘someone’s head’s gonna roll for this’ and ‘you better get me a regional-size sticking plaster because this sore is getting out of control’. Maybe it was the constant, almost monastic drone of the woman’s voice along with the cradle-like rocking of the tube. Maybe it was all those things and the heat and the fact that Lucy was not quite awake. Whatever the reason, Lucy’s mind was wandering.

Her face had set into the glassy pan of the regular commuter – an almost corpse-like stare, entirely without expression. Thoughts of bed or sun terraces had dropped out of her conscious awareness. She was staring, unblinking, but not at anything. Certainly not at her reflection, just visible in the window opposite, because if she had been she would have started fiddling with her hair, because there is a part of Lucy Diamond that is really quite vain. Nor was she aware of the Jaeger-dressed middle-aged woman seated diagonally opposite who was scrutinising her from top to toe and thinking unkind thoughts about Lucy’s already frizzing hair.

So she sat, eyes wide but not seeing, mind working but not thinking. There was not a thought in her head until . . . blaaam!

A face appeared less than two inches from her nose and Lucy lurched in shock. The wild brown eyes of an ashen-faced young man bored into hers.

‘At last! I need you to help me!’

‘What?’

Not an intelligent response but appropriate, given that it was a little past seven forty-five in the morning and Lucy was more than a little surprised.

‘You’ve got to help me. We haven’t much time.’ He had his hands on both of her armrests, corralling Lucy into her seat. She could feel the cold chill of his ungloved hands seeping through the sleeves of her pea-coat.

She shuddered involuntarily, acutely aware that Londoners travelling into the city from E17 were not renowned for their helpfulness to strangers in predicaments with crazy men, particularly if knives were involved. But years of commuting on the Underground had taught her to be polite to the mad, bad and potentially dangerous to know.

Not that this chap looked particularly dangerous. Agitated? Yes. Barking? Most certainly. But as he ran his hands through well-cut, thick sandy hair that Boots would probably label ‘sun-kissed honey’, a part of Lucy acknowledged that he was kind of cute in a rugby shirt/Labrador/sailing dinghy kind of way. Or at least he could be if he wasn’t so pale and pasty looking. He reminded Lucy of a seedling that had been shut in the potting shed and not seen daylight for a very long time.

‘I beg your pardon?’ See how polite Lucy is? Even in extreme circumstances of shock and invasion of personal space her manners, drilled into her by the nuns at Our Lady and St Margaret of Cortona’s, win out.

‘Come with me.’ The young man was insistent, desperate even. He was standing a little away from her now, alternately checking his watch and ramming his hands into the pockets of his putty-coloured trench. His distress was growing every minute and he was looking up and down the carriage as though watching for someone or waiting to be caught.

‘I haven’t got any money,’ she began, still polite, but lying. The nuns had not taught the latter at Our Lady and St Margaret of Cortona’s but seven years of observation of the Girl with Most Detentions in the History of the School – Jojo Gray – had. Lucy did, in fact, have ten pounds but that was for lunch and she’d held her breath at the cash point this morning waiting to see if there were sufficient funds in the overdraft to get it because pay day was still four days away.

‘I don’t want your money!’ His Scottish accent was evident now but so soft that with her eyes closed he could probably have passed for Bond-era Sean Connery. Not that Lucy was planning to close her eyes. It is, after all, useful to be vigilant in such circumstances. ‘I need you to talk to her. I need you to tell her it’s all OK. She’s over there. The girl in the yellow coat. Just there. Now come with me. She’ll be getting off soon. I don’t know how long I can do this for. Hurry!’ He was moving off, head cocked in the direction he wanted, gesturing frantically for Lucy to follow him.

‘Why don’t you talk to her yourself ?’ Lucy asked softly in a manner she hoped implied ‘helpfully concerned’. Why did she always attract the crazies, the religious zealots or the nutcases who believed that lizards ran the planet? Once she’d even literally been left holding the baby by a woman who jumped off the tube to avoid the ticket inspector.

She blamed her mother, of course. Bestowed by dear old hippy, dippy Beatles-mad mum, a name like Lucy Michelle Eleanor Jude Rita Diamond really was a curse. Laden with references to the acid trip that was the sixties and the most famous band on earth, she was tired of people breaking into spontaneous song whenever she had to fill in her name on a form. Lucy had no idea where all the ‘lonely people’ came from, but she sure as hell knew where they all ended up. Talking to her on public transport!

‘I’m sure she’d rather talk to you,’ Lucy offered again.

The young man was looking at her as though she was crazy. Lucy was about to elaborate and advise him that from a woman’s point of view a direct approach in relationships worked best when a curt voice cut in.

‘Do you mind? I’m trying to have a friggin’ conversation here!’ Power-Maid glared from behind her ironic but expensive heavy black glasses frames. She obviously had more ‘fish to fry’ or things to tell others to put on the ‘back burner’ or leave ‘dead in the water’.

Lucy was stunned. This was so unjust! It was not yet eight o’clock and she was being assailed by nuts on all fronts. Was this some sort of elaborate piss-take with Jojo and Nigel behind it? Was Noel Edmonds about to appear in a dodgy disguise and give her some award for being a good sport? She was already formulating the slightly exaggerated ‘forward to all recipients’ e-mail to make the story funnier still. Not that people believed her stories at the best of times – certainly Jojo had never believed the one about the baby and the tube jumper.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy said in a voice that she hoped was assertive, yet still polite. (Thank goodness for Professional Development Day! Five hours shouting No! at potential assailants had seemed ludicrous at the time but a year ago she would not have replied at all.) ‘But so are we.’ She motioned behind her to Nut Job No. 1. ‘This is public transport.’ Feeling pretty pleased with herself, she turned back to her agitated travel companion and found he was gone.

She looked up and down the carriage now as frantically as he had and there was no sign of him anywhere. Where in hell had he got to? How could he have just disappeared in that split second? Lucy was furious that he’d ruined her peaceful journey and managed to make her look stupid at the same time. What a way to start the working week!

Power-Maid was rolling her eyes and doing the twirly index-finger thing to the temple to indicate to the rest of the carriage that Lucy was a lunatic, but Lucy was oblivious. She was locked in her own world of puzzlement.

Something caught her eye. The girl in the yellow coat was standing now, making ready to join the throng exiting at the next station.

Despite the remnants of a tan, she seemed as drained of colour and life as the man who had so desperately wanted Lucy to talk to her. And Lucy being Lucy, with the sort of generous soul that likes to do people good turns, felt she ought to tell the girl about him. It was probably a lovers’ tiff, but on the other hand if he was a mad stalker at least she could warn her.

Lucy gathered up her bag and began to push through the other commuters. Several ‘Excuse me’s’ later, still polite, though anxious to keep sight of her quarry, she drew alongside the girl waiting to leave by the sliding doors.

Lucy could see by the swing of the glossy ponytail and the curve of the spot-free cheek that the Girl in the Yellow Coat was desperately pretty. Little wonder that she had driven a man deranged for contact. She had those universal wholesome good looks that win Miss World and in a split second of savage envy Lucy thought, Yeah, and I bet you like children and animals too, dontcha?

But as the girl turned her head towards Lucy and their eyes locked for a few brief seconds – summer-in-Provence blue with Lucy’s British-skies grey – the heaviness behind her eyes, hollow and dead as they were, weighed instantly upon Lucy and she was filled with guilt for her mean thoughts.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Lucy began, which, of course, was a far more civilised way to begin a conversation than At last! I need you to help me yelled in your face without warning, ‘but this . . . um . . . guy came up to me and . . .’ It really was very tricky to translate the latest episode of Crazy Man on the Tube to a stranger. The doors opened and Lucy was pushed on to the platform – a stop earlier than the one she wanted – and carried with the surge of nine-to-fivers towards the escalators. ‘He really wanted to talk to you,’ she blurted out.

‘Thank you, but I’m not interested in going out with anyone.’ The girl did not break her stride or look back.

‘No, no.’ Lucy struggled to keep up with the other woman’s purposeful gait against the onslaught of commuters coming in the opposite direction. ‘He didn’t say anything about dating. He just wanted to say it was OK. That was the message. I thought he must already know you.’

The girl stopped, though they were both being buffeted by passers-by. She was in her late twenties, her face as yet unlined but the roundness of her teens replaced by sculpted cheekbones and an air of knowingness that did not detract from her obvious beauty. She was so well groomed – smelling faintly of vanilla and Palmer’s Cocoa Butter – and so well dressed in her startling yellow sixties-style coat that Lucy wanted to slink away to rot in a litter bin. The girl’s mouth formed a smile though her sad eyes could not. She was being assertive now, Lucy observed; she was standing her ground. After all, it took one to know one.

‘I’m really not interested in dating right now. Thank your friend for me. I’m sure he’s very nice but it just wouldn’t work for me to go out with anyone at the moment. Thank you again. Goodbye.’

Unlike Lucy, the Girl in the Yellow Coat was clearly used to requests for dates on her commute to work and had developed a strategy to deal with them. The crowd carried her forward and up and Lucy was left, being cursed by workers in a rush, standing rooted to the base of the escalator by the sheer weight of the departing girl’s inexplicable sadness.

She’d done her best: she’d given the message. And overall she was pleased that, in a capital city where people will talk loudly into phones on station platforms about yeast infections or masturbate openly in a packed carriage, when one strange girl stops to talk to another the exchange can, at the very least, be civilised.

Her phone buzzed with the arrival of a text. She fumbled in her bag, moving out of the way of the Monday morning crush, and now she could not help smiling. The day was going to turn out fine after all. It was Nigel and he wanted to meet for lunch.

There’s nothing like a meeting about forthcoming meetings to make you feel there’s little point to living. Lucy had devised several strategies to ensure that meeting time wasn’t wasted. At least it meant her pelvic floor got exercise, and today she had a free pen and promotional coaster to compensate for the two hours of flip-chart mind-maps and PowerPoint projections.

She was sucking one of the conference provider’s complimentary mints with which she had filled her pockets as she hurried along the damp streets to the nearest coffee shop in response to Nigel’s texted invitation to ‘do lunch’. A reheated roasted vegetable panini or something similar beckoned. It would not be a grand affair.

She shook her umbrella into the street and entered the steamy heat of the coffee shop. Nigel had reserved a window seat sofa. Not that there was any point. The condensation clung to the windows and would obscure their view. So there would be no assessment of passers-by and their ‘shagability’ today.

A latte in a paper cup and some oozing, dripping, glorified cheese on toast were waiting. Nigel was trying desperately to look relaxed and casual but Lucy could tell his posture was staged and that he was desperately sucking his stomach in.

‘Niiiice!’ he hissed, his face forced into a smile as fixed as Eurovision voting whilst his eyes flicked past her shoulder.

Nigel was using his ‘stranger voice’. He heteroed up and said ‘larst’ instead of his Midlands ‘last’ when they were in ‘company’.

‘Who’s your friend?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t be silly, just introduce us!’

‘Who to?’ Lucy folded her coat and stashed her umbrella under the table before kissing Nigel warmly.

‘That guy you came in with. The one in the mac. Where’s he gone? He had the look of Mickey Rourke in 91⁄2 weeks. Before the surgery,’ he stressed.

‘I didn’t come in with anyone. Is he at the counter?’ Lucy was craning her neck this way and that.

‘Don’t!’ Nigel hit her on the arm. ‘You’re making it obvious!’

‘I can’t see him. Must have gone to the loo or took it to go.’

Nigel groaned in disappointment but breathed out, letting his stomach relax and find its natural resting place over his waistband.

‘You smell nice.’ Already chomping a mouthful of mozzarella, she breathed in his scent. As ever, Nigel was groomed to male-model perfection. He was the only person she had ever known who made use of those travelling manicure sets. He knew the function of each and every surgical-looking tool, but then he was also familiar with the array of gadgets available in the Betterware catalogue. He actually owned a special three-pronged dusting device for cleaning his Venetian blinds. The macho male love of gadgetry and tools – mutated by his sexuality – seemed to have expressed itself in Nigel as something altogether different.

They had met on the first day of the first term in their first year of university. He had been playing Dolly Parton too loudly and when she went to ask him if he could just turn it down a little bit he had been so impressed by her knowledge of the lyrics to ‘Coat of Many Colours’ that he’d invited her to a stay for a small sherry. Nigel had not believed that her name was Lucy Michelle Eleanor Jude Rita Diamond so had lied and said that he was called Michael Jackson. At least when the truth came out he could commiserate with her. Seven years at an all-boys’ comp had not been easy for a boy christened Nigel Leaks.

‘Still, it could have been worse,’ he had quipped at the time. ‘Mum nearly called me Johnny.’

So they had bonded over several glasses of Tio Pepe and, thereafter, many people had assumed they were an item until Nigel came out a year later. It had been obvious to most of their friends that Nigel was, well . . . Nigel. After all, so many signs had been there. It had just taken Lucy a little longer than most to see them.

The stomach-churning, cheek-burning crush she had once felt for him had evolved into the fierce, accepting love of friendship, but looking at him now it was easy to see why her naïve little eighteen-year-old heart had beaten so quickly whenever he was near.

His long lean legs were encased in a Top Shop rip-off of Japanese denim and he had layered sky-blue cashmere over a grey marl tee. The labels might be Florence & Fred, but he carried the look as though they were design pieces. Never mind that being over thirty was beginning to take its toll in the shape of a slightly less taut stomach – the whole look was still eminently touchable.

His dark hair fell over one eye in the Alex-James-of-Blur cut that he had favoured ever since an early beau had told him that it gave him the rakish air of a 1920s public school boy. Always fond of Brideshead Revisted, he kept the haircut and it became his signature. He used it to good effect – flicking it here and tossing it there – when he spouted his literary quotes and bitchy one-liners. She had fallen for his comedy timing and love of obscure eighties television as much as his big, denim eyes and angular jaw.

‘I hear you had a freak-attack on the tube.’ He had been texting back and forth with Jojo as he waited for Lucy to show.

‘Nothing new there. So why aren’t you in work? Day off ?’ Lucy enquired between mouthfuls.

‘Duvet Day.’ Nigel shrugged.

‘Not man monthlies again!’ Lucy almost choked. ‘This is your third this month! Have you actually done a full week? They’ll give you the sack!’

‘They wouldn’t dare!’ Nigel bridled. ‘I’d claim discrimination. I’d get the unions in and scream harassment. This is the civil service, you know, not the real world. Jeff in finance has been off sick for two years, claims that he was bullied because he was overweight. It still hasn’t gone to court. Two years of “gardening leave” – imagine that! Think how long I could milk it for the Pink Cause! I might get a good pay-off to go quietly. I could spend two years just writing scripts. I think I’ll make it my next career move.’

Like Lucy, Nigel had drifted into the first decent graduate post he’d been offered and with rent, overdrafts and loans to pay found himself, nearly a decade later, stuck in a nightmare of being an extra in what felt like endless repeats of The Office, his dreams of being a playwright were not so much on the back burner as totally up in smoke. Lucy brought him back to earth.

‘You’re forgetting that you don’t have any evidence, at all, whatsoever, of bullying. They all love you. Your boss sends you get-well cards if you’re off sick more than two days, and don’t you remember that little leg up the pay scale they gave you when they saw you with the Guardian and assumed you were looking for jobs even though you were actually just reading the TV listing? And just for the record, you used to call Jeff “Fatty Arbuckle” behind his back.’

Nigel smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m just a bit peed off, that’s all.’

‘Aren’t we all? I’ve actually had a complaint filed against me by Janet in accounts. For real. She said that I’m not adhering to the Equality of Opportunity Act.’

‘My God! I’m sorry. This is serious stuff.’ Nigel was all concern now, putting his arm round Lucy’s shoulder protectively. Why did she always feel a little flutter as he did so? Even now, after all this time?

‘That accusation will go on your file indefinitely. What did you do? You’re not a racist! If anything, you’re a world contender for Miss PC. And since you are officially the Gay Man’s Friend, it can’t be that. Is she a wheelchair user? Did you block her exit with your Primark bags?’

Ignoring the barbed comment about her shopping habits, Lucy elaborated. ‘She’s a British, non-disabled heterosexual – although a glasses wearer – but when I gave out the stationery order I gave certain items to other people that I didn’t give to her.’ Nigel motioned for her to continue as he stuffed half a Skinny Muffin into his mouth. Sighing, Lucy added, ‘I didn’t give her a paperclip storage container in the shape of a house with the company logo on it. It has a magnetic roof for easy access to the clips.’

There was silence. Nigel looked at her blankly at first, and then contorted his face into an expression of disgust.

‘You beast!’ he spat, cake crumbs falling from his mouth, his voice getting louder. ‘You foul, fucking beast. “Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes.” ’ People were staring now and he fell about laughing, flinging more Shakespearean quotes at Lucy to hold his audience.

The door burst open bringing in a gust of cold air and a pride of queens. They were talking animatedly, all androgynously skinny, all the under side of twenty-five with indie-band hair and skinny-leg jeans.

Nigel’s mood shifted dramatically and he complained about first the coffee and then the food, ending his monologue with, ‘And if I’d wanted to sit on a crap old sofa and look at a table coated in coffee rings I would have suggested we met at yours!’

When he saw how Lucy’s face had fallen, he tried desperately to backtrack. Lunch hour was nearly over and in an attempt to make peace he walked her back to the concrete office block where she worked, holding her umbrella over her chivalrously. He demanded her keys and held her hands, pleading with her.

‘I’ll have dinner waiting for you, wine and everything. Please forgive me. I love your flat. You know that. It just came out a bit wrong. I’ve had some of th. . .