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serve his tea.
    Callie was in the kitchen talking to her daughter, a heavy girl with a pregnant stomach bulging out of her sweat pants.
    ‘You shouldn’t be drinking that stuff now you’re expecting.’
    ‘Ooo says?’
    ‘Everyone says. And I suppose you’re going to hang about till I feed you?’
    The girl shrugged and plonked herself and her can down at the kitchen table. ‘This stuff’s crap. Got any wine?’
    Callie ignored her. She liked having her family all around her and she needed to know what they were all doing. She was making a real dinner – pasta with mince and instant sauce. She knew that once they’d eaten it, they would be off to the various Pelliter outlets for their doses of fatty kebab or deep fried faggots. But this was still their Friday night gathering. She put her cigarette into the ashtray and went to the door between the kitchen and the living-room.
    ‘You, get your boots off that sofa now! Yes, I mean now. And put that can in the bin or back in the fridge if you haven’t drunk it all.’ Her son lurched upright and staggered towards the kitchen.
    Good, Callie thought with satisfaction. They all needed a boot up the bum. Except her youngest, Jonty. He had come along when Callie thought she was past it, and she had saved the best till last. He was the cleverest of her kids and her pet. Jonty would go far. He had his mum’s forcefulness. And forceful she certainly was! Callie thought with satisfaction that it was her drive and Liz Rudder’s experience which were keeping things going at St Mungo’s, where soppy Ray Findley had his eye off the ball just because his wife was cracking up. That afternoon, for example, Callie had been irritated to find that a schoolroom was in use without her say-so.
    ‘What’s going on here? Have you got permission to do that?’
    A harassed mother injecting a diabetic child in Year Four jumped back. ‘Mr Findley said we could use this room.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ Everyone knew that Callie was in charge of room organization , and no one had told her about this. Kids with health problems like that should be in special schools. Callie had stared down the mother who looked as if she was about to cry. Stupid cow.
    But when Callie turned to leave she saw Becky Dixon staring at her, with that funny look of hers. The child should have been off the premises by now, but Miss MacDonald let the kids hang about till all hours on their so-called ‘art work’. Becky Dixon looked questioningly at Callie and then turned away, showing no fear. Becky gave Callie the creeps. She gave lots of people the creeps. Jonty had hated Becky Dixon ever since Miss MacDonald had put her in charge of the classroom printer instead of him.
    Thinking about Becky’s little white face made Callie shudder, so now she jabbed her grown-up daughter between the shoulder blades.
    ‘Hey, take this garlic bread.’
    Then Jonty came sidling around the door. ‘Mam?’ he asked in a wheedling voice.
    ‘What is it, lad?’
    ‘Can we do the ouija board after tea?’
    Callie smiled. The ouija board! That was always good fun.
    ‘Good idea, son.’ And Callie laughed out loud, assured of some sport.

Chapter Four
    But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils
    Luke 11:15. Folio 166r. Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
    A n hour later, Callie McFadden turned the lights out in the cluttered living room, except for a reddish lamp in the corner. She’d given the usual lecture on how the ouija board was just a bit of fun and not really messages from the spirits of the dead, and how they shouldn’t take it too seriously – all delivered in a very serious voice.
    ‘Have any of them been murdered?’ Jonty asked. ‘Or tortured?’
    Callie’s daughter popped her headphones from out of her ears and rolled them up into her pocket.
    ‘Loada rubbish,’ she said. But she stayed by the board.
    Callie had made the board herself years ago. It was a big