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near it. What’s the betting he was on that train, the one the local train smashed into? They haven’t named all the casualties yet, there were horrific injuries. Minty’ll be devastated, it’ll about break her up.”
    It did. She got the letter when Jock had been missing a week.

Chapter 3

    THE GHOST CAME into Immacue. Minty was in the back, ironing shirts but keeping an eye on the shop while Josephine had popped down to Whiteley’s. She heard the bell and came out. Jock’s ghost was there in jeans and black leather jacket, reading the card on the counter that gave details of their special offer to pensioners. One free of charge if you bring in three items. She screwed up her courage to speak to it. “You’re dead,” she said. “You stay where you came from.”
    It raised its eyes to look at her. They had changed color, its eyes, being no longer blue but a pale, washed-out gray. She thought its expression threatening and cruel.
    “I’m not afraid of you.” She was, but she was determined not to show it. “If you come back I’ll find ways of getting rid of you.”
    The bell sounded as the door opened and Josephine came in. She was carrying a bag of food from Marks and Spencer and another one from the shop that sold cut-price makeup and perfumes. “Who were you talking to?”
    She could see through the ghost to Josephine on the other side. It was fading, blurring round the edges. “Nobody,” she said.
    “They say it’s the first sign of madness, talking to yourself.”
    Minty didn’t say anything. The ghost was melting away like the genie going back into the bottle in the pantomime Auntie took her to when she was little.
    “But I see it this way. If you’re nuts you don’t know you’re talking to yourself. You think you’re talking to someone because you see things normal people don’t see.”
    Not liking that sort of talk, Minty went back to her ironing. It was five months since Jock had been killed. She’d been out of her mind with worry, though, funnily enough, she never thought he might have been in that train crash. It hadn’t sunk in that the express was coming from the West Country, and even if it had she hadn’t known where Gloucester was or that Jock’s mum lived there. Besides, he’d said on the phone he wouldn’t be coming back till the day after. Lists of casualties appeared in the papers but Minty didn’t often read a paper. Laf brought round the
Evening Standard
when they’d finished with it but mostly she made do with the telly. You got a better idea from seeing pictures, Auntie always said, and there was always the newscaster to explain things.
    She didn’t get many letters either. Something coming in the post was an event and even then it was mostly a bill. The letter that came when she hadn’t heard from Jock for a week had
Great Western
printed along its top in big sloping letters and it was done on a computer. Well, Laf said it was. It addressed her as
Dear Madam
and regretted to inform her that her fiancé Mr. John Lewis had been among those traveling in the Gloucester express who were fatally injured. Minty read it standing in the hall at 39 Syringa Road. She went out just as she was, without a coat, letting the door slam behind her, and into next door. Sonovia’s son Daniel, the doctor, who’d been out on a late night and had stopped over, was sitting at the kitchen table eating his breakfast.
    Minty thrust the letter into Sonovia’s face and burst into a storm of tears. Crying wasn’t something she did much of, so when she did it was a violent explosion of long-pent-up misery. It wasn’t just Jock she was grieving for, but Auntie and her lost mum and being alone and not having anyone. Sonovia read the letter and handed it to Daniel and he read it. Then he got up and fetched a drop of brandy in a glass that he personally administered to Minty.
    “I have my doubts about this,” Sonovia said. “I’m going to get your father to check up on it.”
    “Don’t let