"How can they sort out their differences when she can't see him or speak to him?" A strong breeze whipped up the street, flattening our skirts and petticoats to our legs. We both slapped a hand to our hats to keep them from blowing away. We lived on Druids Way in Chelsea and it's always windier than everywhere else in London. It must have something to do with the length and orientation of the street as well as the height of the houses lining both sides of it. None of them were less than two levels and all showed signs of neglect. Much of Chelsea was still occupied by the reasonably prosperous, but our street seemed to have slipped into obscurity some years ago. Paint flaked off front doors and the brick facades were no longer their original redbrown but had turned almost black thanks to the soot permanently shrouding our city. All one had to do was turn the corner and see streets swept clean and houses tenderly kept but Druids Way was like a spinster past her marrying days-avoided by the fashionable set.
I hazarded a sideways glance at Celia and felt a pang of guilt for my unkind comparison. At thirty-three she was unlikely to find a husband. She seemed to have given up on the idea some years ago, preferring to dress in gowns that flattered neither her slim figure nor her lovely complexion. I'd tried many times to have her dress more appropriately for an unwed woman but she refused, saying she'd prefer to see me in the pretty gowns.
"We'll pay a call on Mrs. Wiggam tomorrow," Celia said, bowing her head into the wind. "Perhaps Mr. Wiggam will have tired of his wife and be willing to cross over by then. Will that satisfy you?"
"I suppose so." What else could we do? I couldn't simply let the matter drop. Not only had we failed to return Mr. Wiggam to the Waiting Area, we'd left him with a person who despised him. There was no handbook for spirit mediums when it came to summoning the dead, but I knew deep down that this situation wasn't acceptable. Celia and I had no right to rip souls out of the Waiting Area and reignite emotional wounds in this world. It had never been a problem in the past, so I'd never given it much thought. Besides which, the ghosts we summoned at our drawing room séances had always willingly returned to the Waiting Area afterwards, and they'd done so feeling content that their loved ones could move on too.
Or so I liked to think. The Wiggams' situation had shaken me. Celia and I were fools to think we could control the deceased, or the living for that matter.