Ghost Route Letters

The first letter arrived on a Tuesday, which I remember because Tuesdays are dead at the salon and I had time to stand at the window and hold the thing like it might bite me. My name and address in handwriting I hadn't seen in six years. Elliott's handwriting. I'd know that looping mess anywhere, because I spent six months reading it off takeaway menus and grocery lists he'd leave on my counter.

We dated for six months when I was twenty-eight and he was thirty. It ended because he took a job up north and I had the salon and neither of us was the type to say come with me. We said nice things at the train station and then it was over. Well, not that, because here comes the letter.

I wrote back that same night. I want to tell you what I put in it, because apparently I'm the kind of person who writes letters to ex-boyfriends now.

Dear Elliott,

You absolute menace, you can't just send a letter out of nowhere. I read it three times in the window of the shop before I even opened the door. Yes, the salon's still there. Yes, I still do Mrs. Boyle's blue rinse every Friday. Yes, I still think about you sometimes, which is a strange thing to admit on paper, but you started it.

I had a bad date tonight, which is why I'm writing this at eleven at night instead of sleeping. His name was Graeme. He talked about his fantasy football league for two hours. Two hours! At one point I went to the toilet just to sit in a cubicle and breathe. When I came back he'd moved on to his views on airport lounges.

Anyway. Where are you? What is this about a bus? You mentioned a bus and a piano and I have questions, so many questions. Write back or I'll assume you've been kidnapped.

Jackie

P.S. I still laugh at your jokes, in case that's what you were nervous about asking. I can tell it's what you were nervous about asking.

He replied fast, which surprised me, from a service station somewhere on the road north.

Dear Jackie,

Menace is fair. The bus is my mate Dougie's, and before you ask, yes, it's the ghost tour bus, the one from the telly that time. Blue and cream, benches inside, a PA system bolted to the ceiling. He said drive it up to Inverness, pick up a piano, deliver it to a village hall in the Highlands, don't crash it. I have a week off between fire contracts, and I've already used a few days, so here I am, a firefighter driving a haunted bus with a piano in it.

The piano is strapped upright against the wall like a very grand hostage. Every time I brake it gives this low hum through the floor, like it's complaining. I've started apologising to it, which is probably a bad sign.

Here's the strange bit. I was sweeping out the bus before the pickup, and under one of the back seats I found a hearing aid. Just sitting there, little beige thing, in a case with the name Agnes written inside in felt pen. No idea who Agnes is. Dougie doesn't either. So now I've got a hearing aid and a piano and a hundred miles of road, and I keep thinking Agnes might be the actual ghost of this operation.

Do you remember that chippy near your old flat? I drove past the street on the way down and had a strange half second where I nearly stopped. Then traffic behind me honked and the moment passed. Tell me about Graeme. Was he at least fit?

E

P.S. The jokes have improved. You've been warned.

I wrote back between clients, sitting on the little stool in the back room with a cup of tea going cold next to me. That one took longer, because I made the mistake of being honest in it, which I usually regret.

Dear Elliott,

Okay, the piano humming is going to live in my head now. And poor Agnes. Keep the hearing aid safe, you might have to return it to a very confused family someday.

The salon update you didn't ask for: a woman came in Thursday, maybe fifty, wanting it all cut off. Short, shorter than I'd normally go on a first visit. I asked twice if she was sure and she said do it, and about halfway through she just started crying. Not loudly. Just sitting there with foam in her hair, crying while the clippers hummed. She told me she'd finished her cancer treatment in March and this was her, all her, growing back on her own terms. I stood there holding scissors thinking, this is the actual job, this bit, and Graeme with his airport lounge opinions has no idea this bit exists.

I haven't dated anyone seriously since you. There, it's on paper now. It's not a grand statement, I just realised I was writing around it, so there it is. There have been men, there have been Graemes, there was one in February who brought his mother's photo to dinner, but nobody who made me want to keep them.

You still haven't said what made you think of me after six years. Be honest. Was it Dougie daring you?

Jackie

P.S. If the piano hums in a minor key, pull over.

His next letter came from a lochside, and I could tell from the paper he'd written it sitting on the bus step with his knees up. He told me later the midges nearly ate him alive writing it, which I believe.

Dear Jackie,

Parked at a loch tonight, one of the small ones with no name anyone's heard of. The fog came off the water around nine and now the whole place looks like the inside of a kettle. The piano has been quiet, which is somehow worse.

Here's tonight's story. A tour group pulled into the lay-by, eight of them, all in matching waterproofs, asking if this was the famous ghost bus. I said it was a bus, and there was a piano, and I was delivering it. They decided that meant yes, it was haunted, and asked if they could sit inside. So there I am at ten at night with eight strangers on the bench seats, holding my phone torch under my chin, making up a story about a piper who drowned in the loch and a piano that plays one note when it's sad. The piano chose that exact moment to hum when one of them leaned back against it. You have never heard eight tourists scream like that. I laughed until I had to sit down on the wet ground.

One of them, an American woman, asked if I did weddings. I said I do pianos. She gave me her card anyway.

It made me think of you because you'd have loved it, and you'd have made it better. You always were the one who could hold a room. Remember the karaoke night in Oban? I still say you were robbed on the scoring.

Two more days to the village hall, and then I'll have a few days left before my week off ends. The piano and Agnes's hearing aid and I are getting along fine. What are you doing this weekend? Don't say a date. Actually, do say, I deserve the details.

E

P.S. Fog plus ghost bus plus loch is a combination I don't recommend after a full day of driving. Every shadow has opinions.

I read that one twice at the window on Friday morning, with Mrs. Boyle's kettle going behind me and rain on the glass. Then I got out paper, because there was a question in it I hadn't answered yet, and a weekend coming up, and a village hall