I stared at him, open-mouthed. I’d come here expecting ghost stories, not this. Excitement ran through me like an eddy in water but I kept my voice steady, remained calm.
“Keep going.”
He shrugged again.
“The fever and the vomiting went, after a fashion. But the clicking and buzzing and grunting—the animalistic sounds—they only got worse. Alice said she was most aware of it at night when the house was quiet. That’s when the noises became something else.”
He looked at me levelly with his pale brown eyes.
“A voice.”
I turn the vasein my hands so the late-afternoon sunlight slides over the surface like liquid. Oscar is standing with his head tilted, waiting for me to speak.“Tell me what the job is.”
“I met a journalist who’s working on a story forThe Herald.They need a child psychologist.”
“So why have they asked you?”
A sting, but I hold his gaze. Oscar gives me a weak smile.
“You know what I mean. You’ve only just graduated. So go on, what kind of investigation is it?”
“It’s working with a family, three young childre—”
“Bloody hell, Mina,whatkind of investigation?”
“A haunting.”
He snorts, shaking his head.
“There we are. There’s the crux of it. No wonder you look embarrassed. How much are they paying you?”
Tap, tap.His fingernails on the kitchen counter. Impatient. I feel a flush of irritation.
“It’s not about the money.”
He barks a single, disbelieving laugh.
“They’re notpayingyou?”
“That isn’t what I said!”
“You don’t need to. I can see very clearly what’s happened here. You’ve been finagled. Someone has found a way to use your expertise for free by spinning you some yarn about a haunted house, haven’t they? ‘Research,’ indeed. Goodness me.”
He shakes his head, still laughing. My voice is strangled sounding. It’s hard to swallow my frustration.
“You spend your life doing research, Oscar. I thought you’d understand how important it is.”
“You know I had this conversation yesterday with Lucy. The work we’re doing shapes the whole universe, Mina. Knownandunknown. It’s pivotal. Some would call it life changing.”
“Would Lucy?”
I’m waspish, can’t help myself. He sighs, as if he is suddenly weary.
“Would Lucy what?”
“Would she call it ‘life changing’?”
I’m talking through gritted teeth, feeling conflicted andsad and angry all at once. Then, I see it. The flicker of a smile on his face. This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned Lucy, the dark-haired undergrad who joined his laboratory in March. I’ve met her just once, at some austere party she threw last month. I’d worn a short dress and heels, my hair swept to one side. I copied the style from a magazine, which had called it “glamorous.” I blotted myself with Opium perfume and wore the gold and pearl earrings my parents had given me for my twenty-first birthday. Oscar was nervous, pacing. Drinking a gin with ice, checking his watch.“Finally!”he said, when I walked in. When we arrived at Lucy’s flat, it became clear the party was a gathering of other scientists, mostly older men in collarless shirts and tan slacks parlaying the same basic story about research funding back and forth to one another while everyone sipped warm wine. Someone asked me what time I was due on the set ofDynastyand Oscar laughed. Other than myself, he and Lucy were the two youngest people there by far. I got too drunk and had to leave early in a taxi, home by ten, feeling the redness creep up my neck, head spinning as I climbed into bed alone. Oscar came home in the early hours, creeping into the bedroom on socked feet. I pretended to be asleep. I am still pretending.