Page 49 of Unalive On Air

“What’s Hot Fuzz?” Trystan asks.

“Oh my god!”

My life flashes before my eyes. Of course he’s never seen it. The movie came out in 2007. Suddenly I’m faced with the very real prospect of showing someone the greatest film of all time for the first time ever.

How many times have I wished for the ability to scrub my brain clean so I can watch my favourite media with brand new eyes? I’ll live—unlive—vicariously through Trystan. An actual dream come true. I just have to figure out how we can get our dead hands on a copy and play it on one of the hotel’s TVs.

“Okay, before I solve your murder and you fuck off to the after-afterlife, there might be a few movies I need to show you.”

Trystan smiles, then turns his face away from me, but I’m sure I caught his cheeks flaring pink. “Sure, which ones?”

“The Matrix was ninety-nine, did you see that?” I say. He shakes his head. “Shit, I can’t believe you’ve never seen The Matrix. What about Amélie?”

“Nope.”

“Howl’s Moving Castle?”

“I don’t recognise any of these names.”

I bite my knuckle, overwhelmed.

“Oh my god, holy fucking shit. You won’t have seen The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Extended Edition.”

Trystan laughs. I can’t tell if it’s through bemusement or fear. “The cartoon? Yeah, I’ve seen that.”

“Oh, no. Oh, my sweet summer child, this is so, so much more than that. It’s live action. Eleven‑plus hours in total. The cast and crew spent like three years in New Zealand filming. Epic. Absolutely epic. One hundred per cent the reason for my bisexual awakening. Well, that and Neo and Trinity.” And . . . oh shit, I’ve said too much.

Trystan doesn’t respond to my bisexual comment. I’m praying he didn’t hear me.

“So, uh . . . do you want to take the steps up to the hotel, or do you want me to carry you again?” he says. I can barely hear him over the tumult in my stomach and the ghost blood rushing in my ears.

I glance over to Jacob’s Ladder. Fuck, it’s so far, and so high.

I close my eyes, give myself one second to compose my teenage panic. Okay, Gary, we can do this. We can slot inside his arms and let him fly us three hundred feet into the air without developing any feelings for him. You’ve got this.

“Carry me?” I say weakly.

thirteen

Til Death Do Us Part

Any notions I might have nurtured about Franny Driscoll being the Paragon murderer disappear the instant I see her.

“That’s Franny?” I ask, pointing to what could be the smallest woman I’ve ever seen.

“Yep, that’s her,” Trystan says, bobbing up onto the balls of his feet.

The housekeeper is, in every sense of the word, petite. She stands at approximately four foot nothing, has the equivalent body fat of a praying mantis, and I would hazard a guess at her age being anywhere from late sixties to centenarian. She has the type of leathery white skin that hints at a lifetime spent outdoors, or with a cigarette against her lips. Or both, maybe.

I wouldn’t exactly describe her as frail. I bet she could stand up for herself in a pub brawl, but there’s no way in the seven hells she killed all those people and then carried or dragged their bodies to various other locations.

“When you were alive, how much did you weigh?” I ask Trystan, not taking my eyes off Fran.

She’s doing some kind of inventory check in the cleaning supplies cupboard. Peering around bottles, tapping the end of her biro against her mouth, humming to herself, and occasionally jotting something down on her clipboard.

“About thirteen and a half stone. Or a hundred and ninety pounds in the USA. Why?”

I don’t immediately answer him. “How much do you think Franny weighs?”