“Are you eating healthily, Adrian?” called his grandmother up the narrow stairs of the terraced Burnley house.
“Yes Nanna,” replied Adrian from behind his closed bedroom door, shovelling cold baked beans from a tin into his mouth using a dirty fork.
Outside the rain continued to sleet down from a leaden sky. If there was someone to be angry at for this hell-hole, the weather, life, everything, Adrian wanted to know.
Bev looked out at the sodden London rain-scape and saw her Sphinx plant pot containing the pathetically brave English houseplants, even now being battered by the blast of London’s grimmest November weather. Curled up on her sofa, watching Channel 4 News and sipping a bitter mug of hot 99% cocoa, she could hardly know about the ancient Egyptian curse she had unwittingly brought back in her suitcase from her holidays. It would have been so much better if she’d declared the ancient artefact as she came through Customs. Centuries in the merciless heat had held the spectre at bay, but now, merry heck was about to be let loose in Bev’s compact and bijoux apartment as the rain lashed against the planter and, like a dried seahorse uncurling and coming to life, the primal phantom of Pharoahess Bromwyn would be knocking on her window pane just moments from now. Bev would get such a shock when she saw the image of her old boss, perched and sopping, outside her window on the balcony, but oh what a mistake, what a fatal mistake, to let her in…
