I can’t tell you how much I wish I could be like her.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m glad you like it. I was sort of worried. I mean, I know how you get about . . . well, old places.’

Old places are the worst for me because the older a building is, the more chance there is that someone has died in it, and that he or she is still hanging around there looking for justice or waiting to deliver some final message to someone. Let me tell you, this led to some pretty interesting results back when my mom and I used to go apartment hunting in the city. We would walk into these seemingly perfect apartments, and I’d be like, ‘Nuh-uh. No way,’ for no reason that I could actually explain. It’s really a wonder my mom never just packed me off to boarding school.

‘Really, Mom,’ I said. ‘It’s great. I love it.’

Andy, hearing this, hustled around the room all excitedly, showing me the clap-on, clap-off lights (oh, boy) and various other gadgets he’d installed. I followed him around, expressing my delight, being careful not to look in the ghost’s direction. It really was sweet, how much Andy wanted me to be happy. And I was determined, because he wanted it so much, to be happy. At least as happy as it’s possible for someone like me to be.

After a while, Andy ran out of stuff to show me, and went away to start the barbecue, since in honour of my arrival, we were having surf and turf for dinner. Sleepy and Dopey took off to ‘hit some waves’ before we ate, and Doc, muttering mysteriously about an ‘experiment’ he’d been working on, drifted off to another part of the house, leaving me alone with my mother . . . well, sort of.

‘Is it really all right, Suze?’ my mom wanted to know. ‘I know it’s a big change. I know it’s asking a lot of you—’

I took off my leather jacket. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but it was pretty hot out for January. Like seventy. I’d nearly roasted in the car. ‘It’s fine, Mom,’ I said. ‘Really.’

‘I mean, asking you to leave Grandma, and Gina, and New York. It’s selfish of me, I know. I know things haven’t been . . . well, easy for you. Especially since Daddy died.’

My mother likes to think that the reason I’m not like the traditional teenage girl she was when she was my age – she was a cheerleader, and homecoming queen, and had lots of boyfriends and stuff – is that I lost my father at such an early age. She blames his death for everything, from the fact that I have no friends – with the exception of Gina – to the fact that I sometimes engage in extremely weird behaviour.

And I suppose some of the stuff I’ve done in the past would seem pretty weird to someone who didn’t know why I was doing it, or couldn’t see who I was doing it for. I have certainly been caught any number of times in places I wasn’t supposed to be. I’ve been brought home by the police a few times, accused of trespassing or vandalism or breaking and entering.