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in check. You think a man could work as closely with students as I do without numbing the senses?’ He took a deep drag. ‘It’s a health precaution and the buggers on the admin staff penalise me for it. My death will nibble at their consciences.’
    ‘You think they have any?’
    ‘I plan on haunting them anyway, not for me the passive route, I will make life hell for them when I’ve gone. A never-ending assault of loud noises and sexual advances. I will be like that ghost in
The Entity
, sexual appetite uncurbed by death, desperate to throw an ethereal fuck-all up a Barbara Hershey.’
    ‘She on the admin staff now?’
    ‘Sadly not, which I admit will likely dilute my appetites. Even the dead can close their eyes and imagine, though.’
    ‘A reassuring thought.’
    ‘On the subject of the dead, how did your conversation with them go?’
    ‘Well,’ John settled back against the thin windowsill, trying to get comfortable, ‘I wouldn’t say it was a conversation exactly but it was certainly interesting.’
    ‘She a crook?’
    John didn’t really doubt the answer to that but his innate politeness made him pause before answering. ‘I’d say so,’ he admitted, ‘she used a lot of the usual tricks, misleading replies, Barnum statements …’
    ‘Barnum whats?’
    ‘“There’s something for everyone”, more accurately called the Forer effect. Phrasing statements in such a manner that they seem specific and yet could actually apply to lots of people. Astrologists are particularly fond of them.’
    ‘Well now,’ Ray smiled, ‘you just don’t believe in anything, do you?’
    ‘I’d like to,’ John admitted, ‘but nothing has presented itself just yet.’ Nothing except the constant presence of your long-dead wife, said a voice in his head, let’s not forget that.
    ‘That’s the problem with thinkers, they’re never satisfied. So you won’t be going again?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ John admitted, picking at the flaking paint of the windowsill.
    ‘If she’s a fake then what’s the point?’
    ‘I’m intrigued by part of the act, a stooge she uses …
think
she uses.’
    ‘Well, if you need someone to hold your hand and buy drinks for then I’m happy to help.’
    John smiled and nodded. ‘I’ll let you know.’
    Ray pressed the tip of his cigarette against the wet glass, painting it with a spiral of black ash. ‘Make sure you do.’
    He turned and walked back across the courtyard, the rain splashing off his waterproofed body, causing a fine spray that made him appear to be smouldering.
    John sprinkled the pieces of loose paint he’d picked out of the open window, feeling absurdly like a naughty child. He closed out the rain and returned to his desk to sip at a lukewarm mug of coffee and try and get his head straight.
    He had pretended to be uncertain as to whether he intended to visit Aida Golding again, which wasn’t in the least true. He planned on attending another of her ‘demonstrations’ that evening, alone this time; he was critical enough of his own behaviour without having Michael assist. Or Ray, for that matter. As sympathetic as he was he couldn’t bear the idea of the technician thinking he was just a pathetic old man mooning after a broken girl. Because it was more than that, wasn’t it? What was the word he had used when talking to Ray? Ah yes …
intrigued
.
    He finished his coffee trying to wash away his own self-deception with the last sugary mouthful.
    The rain still hadn’t stopped by the time he left his office. He tugged a bright yellow rain-slicker over himself, straddling his pushbike and yanking the ends of his waterproofs over the handlebars. Jane had used to laugh to see him ride up the driveway, ‘like a cheese on wheels’ she had announced, stepping back to let him clamber through the door.
    These days there was nobody to greet him but his vaguely insolent cat, Toby Dammit, a light-coloured Maine Coon that had always put John in mind of Terence Stamp, so