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love,’ my mum said, too tired to move off her armchair. It was a comfy armchair, old and squashy, covered in worn brown velour with burnt orange tassles dangling off it. It would have looked right at home in the living room of any granny flat, parked in front of the telly. Which is exactly where I wished I was, after spending a restless night at Father Dan’s cottage.
    Instead, it was behind the counter in my mother’s ‘boutique’. The boutique in question was actually a set of trestle tables in Liverpool’s ‘famous’ Riverfront Market, down at the docks.
    The Market takes place in a barely converted former warehouse every weekend. It’s damp and cold and very, very old. But it’s still one of my all-time favourite places in the city, and judging by the crowds that flock there, I’m not alone. There’s nowhere like it for atmosphere, and you can buy anything from second-hand crime thrillers to brand new designer trainers. Not only can you furnish your whole house, you can get your eyebrows done and have your Tarot read, all under the one moist, cavernous roof.
    My mum, Mary McCartney, has had a stall there for donkey’s years. She’s like one of the fixtures, but less rusty. She sells what she terms ‘clubwear for the curvaceous clubber’. In other words, a lot of brightly coloured lycra for the bodyshape-challenged.
    She’d done a roaring trade that day – Halloween is a big clubbing night in town these days, and she’d had my creative cousin Susan whipping up a special range of low-cut mini-dresses with fluorescent skeleton bones painted on them. They glowed in the dark, and went up to a size 28. Who says we have no class in Liverpool? I suspected it was the first time some of these ladies had seen their ribs in a while, so I wasn’t surprised they were popular.

    The day was drawing to a close, and the traders were all packing up, boxing their gear and loading it into vans and storage. She was having her traditional post-business cuppa while she cashed up. I was in charge of fetching the tea, and counting copper – I get all the good jobs.
    She took the bag of coins from my hand, holding it in her palm – she always says she can guess how much just from the feel of it. The bag probably weighed more than she does – despite being a purveyor of plump party frocks, she’s built like a sparrow herself, with delicate features and jet black hair. The latter comes out of a bottle, the same brand she’s used since she was twenty-four. She has no clue what her real hair looks like underneath it all now (neither do I), and is convinced if she stopped colouring it, she’d go bald.
    ‘Twenty-eight quid,’ she pronounced, then tipped the coins out onto her lap and started counting. She can talk while she counts as well, which makes her some kind of savant in my eyes. I finished the tower of tuppences I was working on and sat down on a far less comfy bar stool, next to a plus-sized mannequin draped in a diamanté bikini and a feather boa.
    ‘So this fella claims the girl could have been killed by a ghostie, does he?’ she said, piling the coins up in small stacks on the bulky arms of the chair. I nodded, expecting a tirade of cynicism and warnings about lunacy being catching.
    ‘Well, you never know, hon. There are stranger things in heaven and earth, and some of them have stalls here. But be careful. Your Auntie Doreen always claimed your Uncle Les was possessed by a demon.’

    ‘Uncle Les was possessed by the bottle of Thunderbird he kept hidden in his glovebox, Mum, and we all know it. Don’t you think it’s a bit far-fetched?’
    ‘’Course I do. That doesn’t mean it’s not true. I know nothing about all this ghost crap, but I know you, and you’re a good judge of character. If you think he’s talking sense, he is.’
    ‘That’s the problem. I’m not sure he is. But then again, I have clients – paying clients – who want to know what happened. Even if they don’t like the answers,