Mrs Bird - Euphemia to her friends, Phemie if she really loves you, and you and I can call her Mrs Bird - is a stern and upright lady of some seventy or so years of age.
At least, she was when she died, and so she appears much the same to Lucas now. She wears a tightly corseted Edwardian floor-length dress in lavender silk trimmed with cream lace, and a wide brimmed hat to match, which is decorated with a large ostrich plume dyed lavender.
In my head, she looks a little like this:
But the highest form of satisfaction
She carries with her a large and exceedingly ugly carpet bag that mysteriously seems to contain everything she could possibly want or need, though she's most often seen taking out a paper bag filled with her favourite boiled sweets, mint humbugs.
Not, no that sort. More like this:
Image, uh, "borrowed" with thanks from Wikipedia
(photo credit By Willstewart - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65820726)
They are flavoured with peppermint and are a hard candy striped in two different colours, usually black and white. Some are more of a rounded rectangle in shape and have toffee in the middle, but the traditional ones are like this, and at the turn of the 20th Century, were often made in-house by confectioners on the British high street
This knack for finding food and drink whenever Mrs Bird wants it is rather a puzzle, even to her, as none of the other spirits she's ever met have been able to eat or drink anything. She, however, merely has to be in the right place - the pub for a gin and tonic, for example, or a fancy house for a roast dinner. But, she isn't going to question it, seeing as it's exactly what she wants.
Mrs Bird - or Mrs B, as Lucas calls her, though she used to wish he wouldn't - took Lucas under her wing (as it were) when he was a small boy confused by how not everyone could see and hear all of the people he could. She's guided his unwilling career as a psychic, and, unbeknownst to him, keeps the worst of the spirits away from him.
She could tell him, of course, and perhaps she should, but... well, he's so difficult to control as it is, and if he thought she's been lying to him in some way, he'd be impossible.
Not that she wants to control him, as such, more... steer his path in the right direction. There are so many ghost to help, and so few people able to help them, what choice does she have, really? And with a rebellious young man on her hands, the best, if not only option, is surely to be strict.
Oh, but I do like a bit of chaos...
She loves him dearly, though - something that will come to light in The Ghost Who Wasn't Dead - and only wants what's best for him. Without meddling too much, of course...
Mrs Bird has not always been the straight laced, prim and promper lady you see today, though. In fact, she had a rather wild youth and rebellious middle age - but, I'll leave that for the books.
Yeah, yeah, I know. But the thing is, it's important to the story, and we're not doing spoilers here, right? So...
Anyway, let's wrap it up here for Mrs B, but come back again tomorrow, as we're looking at another very important woman in Lucas's life - his mother.
Who also isn't quite what she seems....
Catch you then!
Love, Saff xx
P.S. If you want to meet Mrs B properly, then make sure to check out the Box Set on Amazon, which has the first three books in the series in one handy volume :)