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photographer said.
    ‘Phoooo!’ Red blew harder and my hair lifted up. My hand flew to my head to catch the rogue strands.
    I pretended to shiver, ‘I think there’s a draught in here, I’m a bit chilly, are you chilly?’ I eyed my friends.
    ‘We’ll put on the fireplace tonight, Sal, don’t worry.’
    ‘Phoooo!’
    And we have lift-off again. My hair flapped upwards and I shrieked.
    ‘My, oh my, we do seem to have some sort of draught in the room.’ The female photographer’s assistant glanced around the room, but my bet was that she wouldn’t find the source of the draught.
    I glared at Red and tried to mouth ‘stop it’ while keeping my lips still, as though I was a ventriloquist. One of those dodgy ones who audition for The X Factor and think they’re fabulous.
    ‘Why is your mouth going all weird?’ Lorena asked.
    ‘I’m, ah, just stretching it out after all the smiling. Who knew one’s mouth could get so sore from a photo shoot?’
    ‘Wait till your wedding day, hun,’ said Lorena. ‘You’ll need an intensive mouth massage by the end of it.’ She slapped Mel’s nearby thigh. ‘And she’ll probably get one later that night, hey!’
    ‘Girls! Not when we have company, please!’ I urged.
    ‘Keep thinking of something funny,’ the photographer said. ‘It’ll make the smile more natural and won’t ache as much.’
    Funny, funny…what on earth could I possibly find funny about this situation?
    I glanced at Red. She pulled her top lip inside out and made her eyes bulge.
    Nice try, ghostie .
    Okay, funny stuff…um, that Friends episode when Ross gets a fake tan on one side of his body. That was quite funny . I smiled, but not enough to make me laugh.
    ‘Getting there, now relax and flash us a great big laughing smile.’ The photographer snapped photos while I kept adjusting my facial expressions and pose, and Red kept pulling faces, none of which triggered a burst of laughter. Until she gave up directing them at me and pulled them at the photographer instead. She stood right next to him, shoved her face next to his and grunted, looking like a deformed monkey. A bubble of laughter tickled my throat. She then sat in front of me on the floor and squished her face together with her hands till she resembled a chubby baby crossed with an alien, and that did it. My stomach heaved and laughter burst forth, and click, click, click went the camera.
    ‘Bravo! That’s what I’m talking about,’ said the photographer. ‘Now I’ll just check some of these before we change location.’ He fiddled with his camera and frowned. ‘That’s odd.’
    The assistant approached him and peered at the screen. ‘Hmm.’
    ‘Hmm what?’ Lorena asked.
    ‘It’s okay, but we might have to shoot a couple more to replace a few of these. There’s a strange light imbalance in a few pictures.’
    ‘Can I have a look?’ I asked, launching from the couch and up to the camera.
    ‘Ah, sure,’ he said, holding the camera in front of me.
    Oh my God. Right where Red had been sitting in front of me was a warped stretch of light, like a smear of something on glass. He flipped through the images and each photo where Red was in the shot had a ‘light imbalance’ or whatever they called it. I gulped.
    ‘I don’t know where that came from. Look, the one before is perfect, and then an instant later the shot is disrupted.’ He fiddled with the settings on his camera and I looked towards my friends and shrugged. But inside my heart flip-flopped. This was evidence. Proof that Red wasn’t just in my imagination or a manifestation of some disease, she was really here. A ghost. In this house, with me.
    ‘C’mon, you sexy housewife you,’ said Lorena. ‘Let’s touch up your lipstick while they adjust the equipment.’ She led me towards the bathroom, and Red followed alongside us making The Twilight Zone sound effects and wriggling her fingers.
    Oh dear. I may not be sick or mad, and I wasn’t too sure about the sexy