A Pocket Full of Posies (Book 2)

Chapter Two

"What I really want to know is what happened to my Irish accent," I say as I rip my naan bread apart, and dip it into the sauce leftover on my plate. The one thing vegetarians have down to a T is curry. "How shit is that, eh? To go from an Irish accent to a bloody northern one."

"I don't think that should be at the top of your list of concerns right now, you moron," Jamie mutters as he picks at the fillings of his burger.

"Don't interrupt a man when he's mourning," I argue back. "Wait, does this whole fraudulent parent thing mean my degree won't be legit? Well, assuming I graduate, which isn't looking likely at this point, let's not kid ourselves. Wait, wait... Am I an illegal immigrant?"

"I don't know why I even consider humouring you at this point," Jamie scoffs.

Not an answer to my question, but okay. We've stopped somewhere along the M1 for lunch, with the whole not staying in one place for too long mantra in mind. I'm half kidding about my accent, but it does spark another thought.

"In fact, hang on, shouldn't Annabel have the accent? I get me losing it because I was so young, but Annie was sixteen. Even if we'd moved to Sheffield a few years before the accident, surely she'd still have traces of it?"

Everyone turns to Ava, who we assume would know the answer to this, but might just be as clueless as we are. She is a ghost expert, not a linguistic one, after all. She twirls one of her braids around her finger as she thinks.

"It could make sense," she begins. "As Annabel lost, like whoa, all recollection of her life before she passed away, she would've been more susceptible to post-death influences."

"Is that a thing?" Tom asks with a mouthful of food.

"Yes, spirits with poor life memories are like blank slates, almost like young children in a lot of ways. That's common knowledge," Ava says, not realising that anything to do with the spirit world isn't, in fact, common knowledge to ninety-nine percent of the population. "She would've had the accent initially, but you wouldn't remember it as anything distinct enough to remember, as yours would've been the same at the time. As yours changed, hers would've followed suit because you would've been her main influence. Her personality is likely different to what it was pre-death too, especially with how poor her memory of life is."

"Seriously?" It's Annabel who butts in this time.

"Seriously?" I repeat for her.

Ava nods. "Pretty groovy, isn't it? Her spirit personality will be heavily influenced by yours."

"Ha! Sucks for you." I snigger at my sister.

She responds by throwing one of Tom's chips at my face, which Tom isn't too happy about. Annabel's revelation doesn't necessarily mean anything significant in the grand scheme of things, other than the fact we'd have to book a flight to Belfast to have any chance of sparking her memory via location familiarity. Kato and Mosi are pretty much single-handedly paying for our runaway road trip, and a flight to Ireland may be stretching it.

I guess my entire family being dead isn't the only reason they couldn't be traced after I woke up in hospital. The whole changing identities thing also means that whatever did happen to my family all those years ago could be even worse than we originally thought, considering we'd been trying to escape whatever was chasing us for a lot longer than we'd assumed.

Whatever the case, our next point of call remains to be a pain in the arse to get to island just off the north of Scotland. I did question why we can't just call this family, but apparently they're so shut off from other spirit talkers that they don't have a phone, and physically going there is quicker than a letter. I get the feeling it's not just other spirit talkers they avoid, but people in general. As I watch Tom pick his nose, then rub it on the side of his plate, I can kind of understand why.