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shape sounded like as – heedless of the fact he was watching – it began to move closer. He backed against the wall as it pressed its face up against the cubicle, a pale, grey face, split into bars by the distortion of the plastic. He could imagine her skin, dead but damp, like the soft white flesh of a verruca, ready to be pulled from the bone. One eye watched him, the other was a dark hollow, empty, he guessed, a passage for beetles, worms or whatever else made its home in a body as decrepit as this.
    ‘Jane?’ he asked. ‘Jane, why are you doing this?’
    His back nudged the water control and suddenly the heat was gone, replaced with a torrent of icy cold. He gave a startled cry, yanking the water tap off. The body outside the cubicle was gone, the bathroom empty.
    He sat on his bed slowly drying himself off. The stress of losing Jane was considerable, no wonder it had caused side effects. Were these apparitions the sign of a guilty conscience? Certainly he had grown to wish her dead during the last couple of months. There had been so little of the woman he loved in the brittle, bed-bound creature that had shared his home. It had breathed with all the desperate agony of a woman near-drowned, each breath of air snatched from the suffocating room as if it might be her last. Her eyes had looked on delirium. She had rarely known him, thanks to the painkillers. The doctors at the hospice had assured him that everything was designed to help ease her passing but it had taken little time for him to realise that there was no dignity left for the woman he loved. Just a descent into madness and living death.
    And still she wouldn’t let go.
    He dressed quickly, not wanting to spend any longer in the house than necessary, and soon he was back out in the rain, hiding from ghosts in the company of those who professed to be surrounded by them.
    This formed the pattern of his life for some time. He made a point of visiting every demonstration Aida Golding offered that was within easy commuter distance. This in itself was no great challenge as there was enough business in London to keep her occupied five nights a week.
    He watched her in public halls, gymnasiums, fringe theatres and the back rooms of pubs. She moved easily between them, from the chilly pretension of art-house stages to the beer-soaked velvet and dark wood of ancient taverns. And in every room her powers appeared on form, she passed on messages of love, advice and even recrimination from deceased loved ones , her audiences always willing to take what she offered. He found himself often seeing the same faces, eager for the next instalment from beyond the grave. Henry’s widow was a regular feature, forever dismissing the venues as beneath both her and her long-suffering husband. Despite his natural reservations, John found himself talking to her about Jane, though the older woman was, of course, far more interested in talking than listening. Alasdair was there of course, taking tickets and dealing with unruly guests (which, like the panicked Trevor on the first night John had seen Golding perform, were not unusual).
    And then there was Sandy. Despite the fact that he had become increasingly convinced that there was very little true about the girl’s story – including her name, he had no doubt – John was just as drawn to her after repeated meetings. The only thing about her that he believed real were the tears on her cheeks and the scars on her arms, though as to the underlying cause for these symptoms he couldn’t begin to say.
    Every now and then he came close to talking to her but was embarrassed to find that, like a nervous schoolboy, he clammed up as soon as he got near.
    But then, what exactly did he have to say? ‘Hello, I’ve become unhealthily obsessed with you and was just wondering if you would do me the kindness of telling me what really drove you to self-mutilate?’ Hardly.
    So what did he expect to gain from all this? What insight could he