And if it had been disclosed, would that have made a difference? Would they have still bought the house if they’d known it had a ghost?

Whatever ghosts were . . .

He wasn’t so much frightened by the idea of the house having a ghost, as intrigued. But Caro wouldn’t have agreed to buying this place in a million years if she’d known.

He stared at the paper, at the headline of the article in the ‘News Review’ section. As if it had been planted there by an unseen hand.

DO GHOSTS EXIST?

He grinned at the coincidence. Then, before he had a chance to start reading, he felt Caro’s fingers trace softly down his navel, then further down still, and she turned and nuzzled his ear. ‘We’ve been here over a week,’ she said. ‘We haven’t had a date night and we haven’t done anything naughty in all that time. That’s far too long.’

‘Far too long,’ he echoed, feeling suddenly deeply aroused. They’d promised each other when they had got engaged that they would not become like some couples and let the romance in their relationship ever fade. As part of that resolve they had a date night once a week and had rarely missed one, except in the period around Jade’s birth. That had been a terrible time in which Caro had nearly died, and she had been left unable to conceive again.

With her free hand she switched off the television, placed the remote on her bedside table and began lifting sections of the paper and magazines off the bed and chucking them on the floor. Then her left hand moved lower still, and he winced in pleasure, then gasped as she closed her fingers around him.

He leaned away from her, for an instant, to turn off the overhead light, leaving just his bedside table lamp on. Then he turned back to face her. ‘I love you,’ he said.

She stared at him, as if examining his face, with a quizzical look. As her reply she kissed him.

Minutes later, lying on top of her and deep inside her, Ollie had the sudden sensation of being watched. Distracted, he turned his head, suddenly and sharply, towards the door. But it was closed. There was no one there.

‘What is it?’ she murmured.

‘Sorry – I thought – I thought I heard Jade come in.’ He kissed her and held her tightly, his arms round her, pressing their cheeks tightly together. ‘I love you so much,’ he said.

‘You too.’

Afterwards, Ollie fell asleep within minutes. He awoke a while later from a bad dream, drenched in perspiration, confused, unsure for some moments where he was. A hotel room? Their old house in Brighton? The green glow of his clock radio was the only light in the room. He saw the time flip from 2.47 to 2.48. Outside, an owl hooted. Moments later it hooted again.

Fragments of the dream remained. The old woman in a blue dress chasing him down the corridors of the house, then appearing in front of him, making him turn back. Then running into a tiny room and realizing he was trapped, turning round and seeing the old man with the briar pipe glaring at him, malevolently.

He wriggled up the bed a little to try to shake the dream away, and reached out in the darkness for the tumbler of water he kept by the bed. Caro slept deeply beside him, on her stomach, her arms round her pillow as if it were a life raft. She always slept soundly; she was capable of sleeping through a thunderstorm, and he envied her that. He envied her untroubled sleep right now, as he listened to the sound of her rhythmic breathing and the occasional little put-put sound of air bubbles through her lips.

He sipped the water and replaced the glass then, suddenly, a deep, paralysing chill gripped his body. He heard the click of the door opening. Then someone – or something – entered the room. He held his breath. He could just make out the dark shape moving, then stopping and standing right in front of the bed, staring at him. It was motionless. Goose pimples rippled down his skin and the hair rose up on the back of his neck. Was it a burglar? What weapon could he grab? The glass? The bedside lamp? His phone? His phone had a flashlight – he could flip it on.

Slowly, as silently as he could, he moved his hand towards the phone.

Then he heard Jade say urgently, from the foot of the bed, ‘There’s someone in my room!’

11

Monday, 14 September

The alarm clock radio came on at 6.20 a.m., as it did every weekday morning. Ollie, as usual, rolled over and pressed the ten-minute snooze button.

Caro, who had slept fitfully after getting up in the middle of the night to settle Jade after her nightmare, was instantly awake, and thinking about the full day she had ahead of her at work. She kissed Ollie on the cheek, then climbed out of bed, went into the bathroom and ran the elderly, noisy electric shower.

It took some moments for the water to heat up sufficiently, then she stepped in and ducked her head beneath the shower head, grateful for the stream of hot water that was waking her more every second. She reached for the shampoo, tipped some into her hand, and massaged it into her hair.

Then she smelled the pungent reek of burning plastic.

The water stopped.

She heard the crackle of a fire.

Opening her eyes, stinging from soap, she saw to her horror flames shooting around the blackened shower controls.

‘Ollie!’ she shrieked, pushing open the shower door and stepping back into the bathroom. She stood transfixed like a rabbit caught in headlights, as flames licked the controls then died down, acrid black smoke rising around them.

‘Ollie!’ she called out again, running through into the bedroom, dripping wet, shivering, blinking away the soap. He was sound asleep.

‘Ollie!’

He did not stir.

She ran back into the bathroom and peered into the shower. The smoke was dying down. ‘Fuck!’ she said, watching the control unit warily. The last wisps of smoke rose and then there was nothing.

‘Fuck,’ she said again, touching her soapy hair, and walked over to the washbasin. She turned on the mixer tap and, to her relief, water poured out. She waited until the temperature was OK, then ducked her head under the stream.

As she rinsed off the shampoo she suddenly felt a sharp tug on the left side of her head. Then a harder tug that hurt, making her cry out in pain.

Something was yanking her hair, pulling it down.

She tried to raise her head, but she was being pulled down further. Further. Further.

It felt as though a hand was trying to pull her down into the plughole.

‘OLLIE!’ she screamed, trying desperately to raise her head, feeling her hair tugging painfully against her scalp. ‘OLLIE!’

Then she heard his voice. ‘Darling, what is it?’

‘HELP ME!’

The water stopped, abruptly. Ollie said, ‘It’s OK, darling. It’s OK.’

She felt his hands on her hair. Then, suddenly, the pain stopped. Gingerly, she stood up. ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

‘You’re OK, darling. You’re OK. You just got it caught on the plughole.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘It freaked me out. I really felt like someone was pulling it.’

‘Why didn’t you use the shower?’

12

Monday, 14 September

It was a warm morning, the heatwave continuing. An hour and a half later, as Ollie drove Jade for the start of her second week at school, she told him about her nightmare last night in which a woman, with an expression of menace, was standing at the end of her bed.