Kevin Ansbro's Blog - Posts Tagged "ghost"
Fiona's Birthday
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Galumphing into the garden, Fiona Bagshaw generated a damp, stormy blur of blonde hair and bingo wings. Wrapped in a large towel and perfumed by shower gel, she stomped onto the patio, causing dahlia petals to scatter like pigeons.
"Where the bloody hell is he?" she muttered to herself before noticing that the shed door was wide open. The singular object of her pursuit, husband Donald, was last seen in the living room, surfing satellite TV channels dressed in a tiger print onesie.
"What on earth are you doing?" she thundered, finding Donald glumly inspecting a paintbrush, whose bristles had solidified into plastic.
"My brush has gone hard," he announced.
"Look, if that's some kind of childish euphemism I'm really not interested."
"I was hoping to paint the garage door this weekend—"
"Well, can't this wait? May I remind you that it is my birthday and that we're supposed to be at Adriano's within the hour!"
"Hey, relax, I'm always dressed and ready before you anyway," he smirked. "Oooh, has someone forgotten to take their little HRT tablets?"
So, Fiona, on her forty-ninth birthday, bellowed like a savage and sent him crashing into a stack of buckets with one violent shove of the garden rake.
"And, just so you know, James and Hayley have already arrived with the kids, so stop pratting about!"
"Babe, can you help me up?" he implored, showcasing puppy dog eyes and a large plant pot that helmeted his head.
"You can piss off."
"Sorry about that," Fiona said in a sing-song voice, apologising to her daughter and son-in-law and their two children, who had watched events unfold from the safe harbour of the conservatory.
"...Ooh, presents! Are they for me?"
***
After blow-drying her hair and squeezing into her favourite party dress - the one she bought especially to see 'Take That' at Wembley - Fiona studied herself in the full-length mirror: Only a small amount of podge and barely a wrinkle - not bad for forty-nine, she thought while smoothing the contours of the dress.
Once downstairs she was pleased to see that Donald had changed out of his onesie and was chatting with the others in the kitchen.
Steadying herself against the tumble drier, Fiona teetered on each leg, in turn, to slip on a pair of heels. From this low vantage point she glared at his Bart Simpson socks but noted that, otherwise, he looked sufficiently presentable.
"You smell nice," she said, sniffing Donald's neck with a cold suspicion that he might not have washed and deodorised himself. She deliberately neglected to mention that a large cobweb was conspicuously draped across his hair like a tatty doily. Judging by the duplicitous smirks on her daughter and son-in-law's faces, she wasn't the only one keeping this anomaly quiet.
Good, serves him bloody right, she thought, kissing her husband squarely on the lips and thanking him for being ready.
"Zip me up at the back would you?" she asked, pointing over her shoulder as if he might need reminding where her back was.
"Gordon Banks is the best goalkeeper in the world!" Five-year-old Connor announced on his return from the bathroom.
"Gordon Banks?" Donald whooped. "Maybe forty-odd years ago! Where on earth did you pluck that name from?"
"From the man in the ceiling."
"What man in what ceiling?" Donald asked, getting on his haunches to smile directly into his grandson's face.
"The man upstairs ... he said that England are playing West Germany in the World Cup Final tomorrow."
"You are hilarious, " Donald chuckled before picking Connor up for a Superman ride.
"Gordon Banks, eh? ... Right, who's ready for pasta and pizza? C'mon birthday girl, let's go."
***
29th July, 2015
~ precisely one year later...
Because today was her fiftieth birthday, and in the absence of an offer to join George Clooney aboard his yacht on Lake Como, Fiona took the afternoon off as annual leave from her job as project manager at Hammersmith and Fulham council. Donald had enigmatically assured her that there would be a 'surprise' waiting for her on her return.
One thing was certain, whatever the surprise, it wasn't likely to bestow bragging rights over Monica Sutton and Tina Hollins. Monica, of course, told everyone and anyone about her swanky fiftieth birthday at some lofty restaurant within The Shard, whereupon Tina crowed interminably about the fancy dinner her husband had arranged for her at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons.
"Raymond Blanc himself spoke to us in the herb garden, nuh, nuh, nuh," Fiona wittered to herself, impersonating Tina's supercilious tone while waiting for the traffic lights to change.
She pondered the pallid inevitability of her own impending celebration, squeezing the steering wheel as if it might somehow yield juice: Donald, with his customary lack of ingenuity, had booked a table at Adriano's.
"Babe, but you love it there, " he chirped when she suggested a break from the norm, "Leave it to me, I'll book your favourite table for 8 o'clock."
After unlocking the front door and flinging her keys onto the hallway dresser, she immediately became aware that the sum total of his 'surprise' was a bottle of Tesco Prosecco, festooned with a pink bow, and a small CD-shaped parcel which looked as if it might have been wrapped during a rollercoaster ride.
Alarmingly, despite her not expecting there to be anyone else in the house, she heard a series of loud metallic noises emanating from upstairs.
Fiona tentatively placed one foot on the bottom stair and craned her neck to listen to the commotion.
"Donald! Is that you?"
She instinctively grabbed the wooden giraffe figurine brought home from Kenya and held it like a baseball bat before venturing further. When she reached the landing, the hatch to the loft was fully open and a large spanner lay directly beneath. Furthermore, the metallic clangour therein was accompanied by some exuberant whistling from a person as yet unseen.
Perplexed, Fiona couldn't immediately understand why Donald hadn't warned her about work being carried out in the house, and also wondered why there wasn't a tradesman's van in the driveway.
"Hello! Hello-o! It's Mrs Bagshaw ... Can you hear me!" She shouted, crowding her hands around her mouth in the manner of an Alpine yodeller. Then the clanging stopped and a young male voice rang out from above.
"Oh, hello madam. You must be the lady of the house?"
"Yes, I am. What exactly are you doing up there? Clearly my prat of a husband has forgotten to warn me."
"I'm plumbing in a new water tank," he answered, his face partly shadowed.
"Oh? So what was wrong with the old one?"
"Uh, don't rightly know madam ... now you've got me—"
"Did my husband get in contact with you? Was he here earlier?"
"Um, I'm fairly certain he left me a key—"
"Fairly certain? Have you developed some form of amnesia young man?"
Fiona, increasingly concerned at the vagueness of this whole improbable turn of events, stared up at the rafters, hands on hips, hoping for answers. Crouching down, his face appeared in full light. She noticed the man was fresh-faced and handsome and, as he leaned forward, an errant tendril of hair tumbled from his otherwise-slick coiffure.
"Could you please do me a favour madam? Throw me up that spanner would you?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure," she answered, bending to grasp the tool, before hurling it towards his outstretched fingers.
"Cor, great throw missus!" he chuckled, waving it as if it were a flag.
From what she could see of him, Fiona guessed the plumber to be barely into his twenties and for such a young lad he had an old-fashioned way about him, which she instantly found endearing.
"Could I offer you a tea, coffee, soft drink?" she called, watching the heels of his work boots disappear from view.
"Ooh, lovely," he chirped, his broad smile reappearing from the shadows, "tea, please. White, two sugars."
While waiting for the kettle to boil Fiona called Donald's mobile for some clarification, but it went straight to voicemail. Returned to the landing she took a chair from the guest bedroom and stood on it while elevating his mug of tea. Why hasn't he used the loft ladder? Must be one of those daft health and safety rules they have to adhere to.
"Tea's ready!" she yelled, watching a recalcitrant wasp batter itself against the loft's fluorescent light. And why hasn't he switched on the light? How odd.
"Oh, thank you so much, just the ticket," he said, liberating the mug from her grasp with a pincer movement. Fiona was struck by the familiarity of his face, she'd definitely seen him before somewhere.
"I bet your old man is looking forward to the big game tomorrow. I've managed to bag a ticket and I'm so excited."
"Oh, what game is that?"
"England against West Germany, World Cup Final! ...What game, indeed."
"Ha, ha, very funny ... although I'm female I do know that the last time England were in a World Cup Final was the year they won it, in 1966. And I should know, my father died on the way to the game, hit by an ambulance."
"Forgive me, madam ... I don't want to disrespect the memory of your father, but how could he have been run over by an ambulance on the way to a match that hasn't happened yet?"
Exasperated by his game-playing nonsense, Fiona stepped down from the chair, shaking her head. Though initially likeable, the boy's vagueness and his weird sense of humour had become irksome.
"OK, I shall leave you to carry on!" She shouted brusquely.
Then, just as she was about to try Donald's number for the second time, the young man called down to her.
"Thanks for the tea, I'd better crack on as I need to get home early - it's my daughter's first birthday today."
"Oh? It's my birthday today as well!" She countered, her interest rekindled. "What's your daughter's name?"
"Fiona," he replied, disappearing from view.
Fiona was immediately thrown by the stark curiousness of his remark.
"What? ... Wait! What did you just say?"
She positioned the chair under the hatch.
"Hey!! What did you say?" Her voice was urgent now, as she remembered where she'd seen his face before: the black and white framed photograph on her mother's mantelpiece.
Kicking the chair to one side, she snatched a hooked pole from the airing cupboard and scrambled the loft ladder down onto the carpet.
Frantic, she clambered up the rungs.
The fluorescent light was off.
And when she pulled the switch cord,
her father was gone.
*** THE END ***
.
Galumphing into the garden, Fiona Bagshaw generated a damp, stormy blur of blonde hair and bingo wings. Wrapped in a large towel and perfumed by shower gel, she stomped onto the patio, causing dahlia petals to scatter like pigeons.
"Where the bloody hell is he?" she muttered to herself before noticing that the shed door was wide open. The singular object of her pursuit, husband Donald, was last seen in the living room, surfing satellite TV channels dressed in a tiger print onesie.
"What on earth are you doing?" she thundered, finding Donald glumly inspecting a paintbrush, whose bristles had solidified into plastic.
"My brush has gone hard," he announced.
"Look, if that's some kind of childish euphemism I'm really not interested."
"I was hoping to paint the garage door this weekend—"
"Well, can't this wait? May I remind you that it is my birthday and that we're supposed to be at Adriano's within the hour!"
"Hey, relax, I'm always dressed and ready before you anyway," he smirked. "Oooh, has someone forgotten to take their little HRT tablets?"
So, Fiona, on her forty-ninth birthday, bellowed like a savage and sent him crashing into a stack of buckets with one violent shove of the garden rake.
"And, just so you know, James and Hayley have already arrived with the kids, so stop pratting about!"
"Babe, can you help me up?" he implored, showcasing puppy dog eyes and a large plant pot that helmeted his head.
"You can piss off."
"Sorry about that," Fiona said in a sing-song voice, apologising to her daughter and son-in-law and their two children, who had watched events unfold from the safe harbour of the conservatory.
"...Ooh, presents! Are they for me?"
***
After blow-drying her hair and squeezing into her favourite party dress - the one she bought especially to see 'Take That' at Wembley - Fiona studied herself in the full-length mirror: Only a small amount of podge and barely a wrinkle - not bad for forty-nine, she thought while smoothing the contours of the dress.
Once downstairs she was pleased to see that Donald had changed out of his onesie and was chatting with the others in the kitchen.
Steadying herself against the tumble drier, Fiona teetered on each leg, in turn, to slip on a pair of heels. From this low vantage point she glared at his Bart Simpson socks but noted that, otherwise, he looked sufficiently presentable.
"You smell nice," she said, sniffing Donald's neck with a cold suspicion that he might not have washed and deodorised himself. She deliberately neglected to mention that a large cobweb was conspicuously draped across his hair like a tatty doily. Judging by the duplicitous smirks on her daughter and son-in-law's faces, she wasn't the only one keeping this anomaly quiet.
Good, serves him bloody right, she thought, kissing her husband squarely on the lips and thanking him for being ready.
"Zip me up at the back would you?" she asked, pointing over her shoulder as if he might need reminding where her back was.
"Gordon Banks is the best goalkeeper in the world!" Five-year-old Connor announced on his return from the bathroom.
"Gordon Banks?" Donald whooped. "Maybe forty-odd years ago! Where on earth did you pluck that name from?"
"From the man in the ceiling."
"What man in what ceiling?" Donald asked, getting on his haunches to smile directly into his grandson's face.
"The man upstairs ... he said that England are playing West Germany in the World Cup Final tomorrow."
"You are hilarious, " Donald chuckled before picking Connor up for a Superman ride.
"Gordon Banks, eh? ... Right, who's ready for pasta and pizza? C'mon birthday girl, let's go."
***
29th July, 2015
~ precisely one year later...
Because today was her fiftieth birthday, and in the absence of an offer to join George Clooney aboard his yacht on Lake Como, Fiona took the afternoon off as annual leave from her job as project manager at Hammersmith and Fulham council. Donald had enigmatically assured her that there would be a 'surprise' waiting for her on her return.
One thing was certain, whatever the surprise, it wasn't likely to bestow bragging rights over Monica Sutton and Tina Hollins. Monica, of course, told everyone and anyone about her swanky fiftieth birthday at some lofty restaurant within The Shard, whereupon Tina crowed interminably about the fancy dinner her husband had arranged for her at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons.
"Raymond Blanc himself spoke to us in the herb garden, nuh, nuh, nuh," Fiona wittered to herself, impersonating Tina's supercilious tone while waiting for the traffic lights to change.
She pondered the pallid inevitability of her own impending celebration, squeezing the steering wheel as if it might somehow yield juice: Donald, with his customary lack of ingenuity, had booked a table at Adriano's.
"Babe, but you love it there, " he chirped when she suggested a break from the norm, "Leave it to me, I'll book your favourite table for 8 o'clock."
After unlocking the front door and flinging her keys onto the hallway dresser, she immediately became aware that the sum total of his 'surprise' was a bottle of Tesco Prosecco, festooned with a pink bow, and a small CD-shaped parcel which looked as if it might have been wrapped during a rollercoaster ride.
Alarmingly, despite her not expecting there to be anyone else in the house, she heard a series of loud metallic noises emanating from upstairs.
Fiona tentatively placed one foot on the bottom stair and craned her neck to listen to the commotion.
"Donald! Is that you?"
She instinctively grabbed the wooden giraffe figurine brought home from Kenya and held it like a baseball bat before venturing further. When she reached the landing, the hatch to the loft was fully open and a large spanner lay directly beneath. Furthermore, the metallic clangour therein was accompanied by some exuberant whistling from a person as yet unseen.
Perplexed, Fiona couldn't immediately understand why Donald hadn't warned her about work being carried out in the house, and also wondered why there wasn't a tradesman's van in the driveway.
"Hello! Hello-o! It's Mrs Bagshaw ... Can you hear me!" She shouted, crowding her hands around her mouth in the manner of an Alpine yodeller. Then the clanging stopped and a young male voice rang out from above.
"Oh, hello madam. You must be the lady of the house?"
"Yes, I am. What exactly are you doing up there? Clearly my prat of a husband has forgotten to warn me."
"I'm plumbing in a new water tank," he answered, his face partly shadowed.
"Oh? So what was wrong with the old one?"
"Uh, don't rightly know madam ... now you've got me—"
"Did my husband get in contact with you? Was he here earlier?"
"Um, I'm fairly certain he left me a key—"
"Fairly certain? Have you developed some form of amnesia young man?"
Fiona, increasingly concerned at the vagueness of this whole improbable turn of events, stared up at the rafters, hands on hips, hoping for answers. Crouching down, his face appeared in full light. She noticed the man was fresh-faced and handsome and, as he leaned forward, an errant tendril of hair tumbled from his otherwise-slick coiffure.
"Could you please do me a favour madam? Throw me up that spanner would you?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure," she answered, bending to grasp the tool, before hurling it towards his outstretched fingers.
"Cor, great throw missus!" he chuckled, waving it as if it were a flag.
From what she could see of him, Fiona guessed the plumber to be barely into his twenties and for such a young lad he had an old-fashioned way about him, which she instantly found endearing.
"Could I offer you a tea, coffee, soft drink?" she called, watching the heels of his work boots disappear from view.
"Ooh, lovely," he chirped, his broad smile reappearing from the shadows, "tea, please. White, two sugars."
While waiting for the kettle to boil Fiona called Donald's mobile for some clarification, but it went straight to voicemail. Returned to the landing she took a chair from the guest bedroom and stood on it while elevating his mug of tea. Why hasn't he used the loft ladder? Must be one of those daft health and safety rules they have to adhere to.
"Tea's ready!" she yelled, watching a recalcitrant wasp batter itself against the loft's fluorescent light. And why hasn't he switched on the light? How odd.
"Oh, thank you so much, just the ticket," he said, liberating the mug from her grasp with a pincer movement. Fiona was struck by the familiarity of his face, she'd definitely seen him before somewhere.
"I bet your old man is looking forward to the big game tomorrow. I've managed to bag a ticket and I'm so excited."
"Oh, what game is that?"
"England against West Germany, World Cup Final! ...What game, indeed."
"Ha, ha, very funny ... although I'm female I do know that the last time England were in a World Cup Final was the year they won it, in 1966. And I should know, my father died on the way to the game, hit by an ambulance."
"Forgive me, madam ... I don't want to disrespect the memory of your father, but how could he have been run over by an ambulance on the way to a match that hasn't happened yet?"
Exasperated by his game-playing nonsense, Fiona stepped down from the chair, shaking her head. Though initially likeable, the boy's vagueness and his weird sense of humour had become irksome.
"OK, I shall leave you to carry on!" She shouted brusquely.
Then, just as she was about to try Donald's number for the second time, the young man called down to her.
"Thanks for the tea, I'd better crack on as I need to get home early - it's my daughter's first birthday today."
"Oh? It's my birthday today as well!" She countered, her interest rekindled. "What's your daughter's name?"
"Fiona," he replied, disappearing from view.
Fiona was immediately thrown by the stark curiousness of his remark.
"What? ... Wait! What did you just say?"
She positioned the chair under the hatch.
"Hey!! What did you say?" Her voice was urgent now, as she remembered where she'd seen his face before: the black and white framed photograph on her mother's mantelpiece.
Kicking the chair to one side, she snatched a hooked pole from the airing cupboard and scrambled the loft ladder down onto the carpet.
Frantic, she clambered up the rungs.
The fluorescent light was off.
And when she pulled the switch cord,
her father was gone.
*** THE END ***
