At around eight o'clock, Ava flutters into the bar. She stands in the entrance bobbing her head around, and freezes when we're in her line of vision. I wave her over with a cheesy grin, but she's not smiling back. Uh-oh.

"Whoa, guys, we were meant to meet at reception at eight, where have--" She pauses. Her eyes narrow as she looks between Carmen, whose legs are stretched out over my lap on the sofa, and me. "Have you been drinking? Are you drunk?"

"Huh? It's not even half seven yet," I reply as I check my phone, only for the screen flash back at me displaying eight fifteen. Oops. "Hm, shit, sorry."

I try not to laugh, but it's really damn hard, so I clamp my mouth shut until my lips are forced into a really thin line. Wait until I tell her about Annabel's new best friend, she'll love that. Ava's eyes flash to Carmen.

"Carmen! You're meant to be the sensible one, you know what he's like!"

Um, excuse me. Rude. I frown. I'm sensible. Carmen starts apologising, but small bursts of laughter trip out of her mouth in-between the apologies, so it's not satisfying Ava a hell of a lot. We probably shouldn't tell her we've been here since four in the morning. Her glower doesn't waver for a second as she orders us to leave our unfinished drinks and stand up, then marches us out of the room.

A few hours later, as we're standing on Aberdeen harbour in a long queue for a ferry with tickets in hand, the drunken euphoria has turned into a nauseous haze of exhaustion. This boat journey is six hours long. Six hours. Nah. I thought it would be a half hour job, there and back. This is not what I need right now. My head aches and I can barely keep my eyes open. Why do I do this to myself?

Annabel's even more irritated with me than Ava, and I've barely said two words to her new friend because of the degree of effort it takes. I'll address the whole missing person thing later. It demands too much brain energy to think about now. Carmen's in no better state than I am, so when I suggest enquiring about renting a cabin in the boat so we have somewhere to sleep, she reacts like she's been crawling through a desert and I've just offered her a gallon of water.

I can smell the salt in the air as we near the ship, which would usually be lovely, I'm sure, but it makes me gag. The rumours about Scotland are true. It's bloody freezing. It doesn't help that the sky is grey with clouds threatening to empty, so the sooner we get on this thing, the better. There are plenty of spare cabins available when I ask at the front of the queue, so I jump right on that.

I take in barely any of my surroundings once we step onto the ship, partly due to me charging straight towards the cabin I've booked, but primarily due to the fact I feel too ill to take my eyes off the floor. I briefly take note of how the ferry reminds me of a budget hotel, just with more wood. Carmen and I have found our cabin within minutes. We rush in, fall onto the double bed, which is only a few inches smaller than the cabin itself, and I'm out like a light.

Four hours of the deepest sleep I think I've ever had later, I find myself slowly waking up. Carmen is still fast asleep beside me. I sit up, and right on cue, Annabel flashes into the room. It's actually terrifying how she does that sometimes. I yawn as I rub my eyes, and stand up to stretch my poor, withered limbs.

"Finally! God, you're an idiot," she groans. "Lucy has lost all in faith in you. I would say I have too, but that ship sailed years ago."

"Nag, nag, nag," I mutter as I awkwardly shuffle through the small space between the bed and the cabin's wall. "Alright, Mum, calm it. Nice nautical pun, by the way."

That doesn't make Annabel calm it. In fact, it does the complete opposite. She starts snapping at me about being irresponsible, and stupid, and ranting about it being dangerous to get drunk right now. I was being sarcastic when I made the mum comment, but she doesn't half live up to it sometimes. I motion for her to leave the room as I leave it myself, and emerge into the outside corridor. This is frustratingly narrow too.

"I know it was dumb, okay?" I say to my sister as she follows me down the hallway. "We didn't mean to get drunk, it just happened. My bad." I turn to Annabel, but she still has a sour look on her face. "I'm sorry, genuinely."

She scans me for a few moments, and eventually sighs. She still seems agitated, but a lot less so. It's something, at least. We leave the corridor to find ourselves standing on the deck of the boat. Shit, yeah, we're on boat. Never been on a boat. This is pretty cool. Annabel's saying something, but I zone out to take in the surroundings I was too exhausted to pay attention to earlier.

We're on the side of the ship, so there's not much to see other than railings and the vast ocean, and there's no one else around. Perfect. I spot a bench a little way towards the front end of the ship, so mosey on over to that and sit down. The sound of the boat crashing through the water is making me feel a little drowsy again.

"Right, yeah, Lucy," I say, finally snapping back to reality, and looking up at Annabel as she watches the waves below. "What's the deal with that? You didn't tell me she was missing."

"I didn't know," a voice says quietly beside me, and it's not Annabel.

Lucy sits beside me on the bench, her lips downturned. Great, this complicates things. She looks younger than she did in the darkness of the hotel room last night, and her features look a lot more pinched. She has a small nose but bug-like eyes, and her white turtleneck jumper is splattered with mud stains. Her jeans are equally as dirty. Everything about this reeks of something suspicious.

"I don't think I've been..." Lucy hesitates, clearly struggling to say the word. "I don't think I've been dead long. I don't--I can't remember what... I don't know how I ended up like this. Yesterday I was at home, I... I swear I was."

Her missing poster said she's been gone over a week, so she's definitely wrong there. Whether she only died yesterday, I wouldn't know, but she definitely wasn't at home yesterday. As sensitively as I can, I explain to her that she's been missing a while, but it's good she knows she's dead because that's usually the biggest obstacle for someone her age. I don't say something sketchy may have happened to her, but I sense the moment that realisation hits her based on the sudden drop in her facial expression.

"How could I not remember something like that, I--I don't get it." Lucy shakes her head, her blonde eyebrows furrowed. "When I saw Annabel last night, I swear I'd only just woken up from... from, I don't know. I just remember wandering around the streets, confused."

Despite her features making me think she's younger than Annabel, the way she carries herself makes me wonder if she's older. I can't quite figure it out. I'll have to ask Annie later. I go to try and get Lucy to elaborate further when I spot someone standing by the railings a few yards away, and clamp my mouth shut, only to realise it's Tom. Lucy panics at the sight, and disappears.

"Sorry, I didn't wanna interrupt," he says. "What's the protocol when you're in ghost mode? Should I say something? Like a code word? Oh, we should do that! Something funny... Can it be tequila?"

"Or you could just say hi," I offer as I stand up.

Tom rolls his eyes. "Nah, c'mon, that's boring. How about towel? In honour of my nan."

Again, I suggest we just use 'hi', to which he objects, so with a sigh, I settle on 'towel'. He drapes his arm around my shoulder as I walk with him, and despite it being uncomfortable and unwarranted, at least he's not treating me like an alien anymore.

"What took you so long?" is the first thing Jamie says to Tom when we find him and Ava sitting at one of the tables in what looks like some kind of function room on the boat.

The decor here is a bit dated, and it kind of reminds me of an old community hall in Sheffield where all the care home kids would throw their birthday parties because it was cheap as chips to do it there. I don't think I ever went to a single one that didn't depress me, including my own. Everything from the walls to the chairs are made of wood, and the slightly musty smell is even eerily similar to the community hall. The only notable difference is a stage towards the end of the room, and the tiny bar next to it.

Light spills in from the windows that run all along the walls, illuminating dust particles as they swirl through the air.

"He was talking to Annabel's dead friend," Tom explains as he sits down onto the table, despite there being plenty of chairs around. "I can't just interrupt him when he's ghosting, Jamie."

"Oh, you know about that?" I question as I sit down next to Ava.

Ava nods. "Yeah, it's groovy, we spoke for a bit. She seems sweet. Very confused, bless her."

Even though I experienced her talking to Clara at the manor house, I keep forgetting Ava can genuinely speak to dead folk. I'm facing a window, so have to lift my hand to block the sun from my eyes. Weirdly enough, I didn't think I'd need to bring sunglasses on my trip to Scotland.

"What do we do in this kind of situation?" I ask. "With her being a missing kid and everything? I figure we probably leave it until she remembers more, then go to the police when we have enough to give them a solid story. Probably anonymously, y'know, so we don't get accused of child murder."

Ava sways back and forth in her seat, almost as if she's trying to mimic the ship's motion. She's silent for a minute or so, but eventually nods in agreement. I think this type of situation is new to both of us. There was me thinking this Lucy business would be light distraction from the darkness of everything else. Turns out I now need to solve a probable murder case while also trying to prevent my own. Life's just so full of so many wonderful surprises, I'm honestly so spoiled.

Disembarking the boat is a lot faster than embarking it was. We had to go and wake Carmen up in the end, which took a good ten minutes or so because of how deep of a sleep she was in. The second our feet meet solid ground, Ava's charging ahead with her focus solely on finding this family. It's just gone five in the afternoon, and I didn't really have lunch so I'm kind of hungry, but don't say anything out of the sheer fear of her wrath.

We go to collect the car from the underbelly of the ship, and not even five minutes after disembarking, we're on the road. I know it's a remote island off the north of Scotland, but c'mon. Talk about stereotypes. Pretty much the first thing I see is a sheep, and as we drive towards the centre of the island, stretching out as far as the eye can see are vast fields. The harbour area was relatively built up, but the further inland we drive, signs of life gradually begin to disperse.

We've been driving towards the west side of the island for barely even ten minutes when Jamie announces he needs a pee. Well, not exactly. He mumbled it more so than announced it, and referred to it as a need to 'relieve himself'. Naturally, Tom made a masturbation joke.

"Why didn't you go on the ferry?" Ava questions, struggling to hide her annoyance.

Jamie mumbles something intangible, so I respond with an, "eh?"

"The swaying makes it difficult to... aim. I didn't want to make a mess."

I poke my head round Carmen to look at him and laugh, and Jamie's face is bright red. He scowls at me, telling me to shut up, but his quip is drowned out by Tom's laughter.

"Can't you wait?" Carmen asks with raised eyebrows.

"No." Jamie's reply shoots out of his mouth before Carmen has even finished speaking. "No, please, I really need to go."

His voice is strained, and despite the prospect of Jamie pissing himself being hilarious, I don't want to run the risk of it spreading over to my side of the car. Ava reluctantly agrees to pull over. Jamie requests we stop at a restaurant or somewhere equally pleasant to perch his posh little buttocks on, but everyone scoffs at that, so he has to make do with the side of a country road.

He refuses to go anywhere we, or anyone else, can see him so walks half a mile down the road before he finds somewhere he deems appropriate. The car's a bit stuffy now there are seven people occupying it, even if two are dead, and our luggage is making it feel more and more cramped every day, so I step out while Jamie's doing his business.

I'm sitting on an unstable wooden fence running along the narrow roadside when I spot Lucy in the distance. I can't blame her for taking advantage of an opportunity to leave the car; her current seat is the literal boot, wedged in-between our bags and cases, but I have to double take when I notice another spirit with her. It's a guy, I'd guess around my age, and there's something not quite right about him.

The weird thing about dark spirits is that there's no physical difference between them and the good kind, but I can immediately tell which side of the coin they're on. Ava distinguishes it from the way she senses them, something to do with the energy they give off, but I can't sense a spirit without physically seeing one first, let alone sense the tone of its energy. I've got no idea how it clicks in my head. It just does. In an attempt to avoid the dark spirit noticing me, I wave at Lucy to motion for her to return to the car. My plan doesn't quite work out.

"What?" she shouts, a look of complete confusion on her face.

The dark spirit turns slightly so that he's facing me, and tilts his head in what I figure is intrigue. I sigh. I jump off the fence and hurry over to them, conscious of the fact Jamie can't possibly be much longer, and the last thing I want is an arse-whooping from Ava.

"Lucy, we need to head off," I say as I stop beside her, purposely not acknowledging her new friend.

"Shit, you weren't lying," the male spirit says to Lucy before she has a chance to respond. His eyes scan me up and down before he speaks again. "Sorry man, I was just checking you guys weren't lost."

He's standing with his arms crossed, a smirk slapped onto his face, and I briefly wonder if he actually is a dark spirit, or just a teenager. His confident posture doesn't waver as he glues his eyes to me, and it sends a chill down my spine.

"We're fine, thanks." I motion for Lucy to follow me as I turn away, and she says a hasty goodbye before heading back to the car with me. Once we're out of the spirit's earshot, I say, "don't trust everyone like you."

It takes another fifteen minutes to reach our final destination, and it's not what I expect. I'd assumed it would be just like Ava's family home, and we'd arrive at some gigantic, grand thing, but we pull up outside a tiny terraced house. I then feel immensely stupid for assuming this family would have money streaming from their eye sockets just because Ava's does. Mine were hardly millionaires. I guess I'm still getting used to the idea that this paranormal stuff is related to my whole family, not just me.

Ava suggests she knock on the door alone because five random teenagers, most of whom look like they've not slept in several days, is probably the last thing this family would want to see on their small doorstep. I'm too nosy to leave her to it completely though, so I crank the window down as I watch her exit the car and walk up the steps towards the front door.

Ava knocks lightly, and it never ceases to amaze me how everything she does is so graceful and controlled. I could do with a drop of that. There's no response for a few minutes, so she tries again, knocking a little louder. This time, I spot a netted curtain move in one of the upstairs windows, and a minute or so later, the door opens. Standing there is an older woman, who I'd not really describe as bedraggled, more like she's above fussing over makeup and keeping her white, curled hair tamed.

She stands tall, her long black dress creating the illusion of her floating on the spot. Her arms are crossed, her lips pursed, and I'm instantly glad Ava decided to knock alone because this woman is terrifying, and I'm not exactly known for great first impressions.

"Whoa, hello, sorry to dist--"

"What do you want?" the woman cuts Ava short, and her voice sounds a lot less haggard than I'd have guessed. Still terrifying, though.

Ava clears her throat. "We're looking for the Gruffudd family."

The woman narrows her eyes, and as they land on Ava, they narrow even more. "They moved out of here years ago," she says, suddenly abrupt.

With that, she slams the door shut. Well that's a great start.