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on one occasion. When Tom was around he often managed to deflect her anger. Without him we were horribly exposed. She was impatient, humourless, cruel.
    The following week, the week after the funeral, it snowed for the first time. Harry stood in wonder at the bedroom window. ‘Snow,’ he whispered. He had woken me up to see it. My enthusiasm was less than his. I was thinking more of the ice that would surely follow, the slippery pavements, my clumsy leg.
    At eight o'clock in came Marge in her blackest mood. She threw the blankets back from Harry's bed, wrinkled her nose and yelled. (He was on my bed already, behind me.) ‘I'm sick of this!’ She snatched the wet sheet from the bed and the rubber sheet beneath and hurled them to the floor. ‘Sick, sick, sick!’
    Two nights later I woke in the half light, the curtains partly open, a clear sky, a moon, light bouncing up from the frosty snow. Harry was stumbling out of bed, feeling his way with Tom beside him. They left the room. I followed. The lino beneath my feet was freezing. The clock downstairs struck twice. I could hear Rufus groaning in his sleep.
    I found Harry in the bathroom, his pyjama trousers around his feet, having a sleepwalking wee. Tom was there. Somehow I knew better than to interfere. Tom glanced at me over his shoulder. He had a hand on Harry's shoulder. (Could Harry feel it?)
    I left. Minutes later Harry came back to bed, his eyes half shut, alone. I fell asleep then and dreamt my usual dream or one of them. Mum and I were at the seaside tucking our dresses into our knickers, splashing in the waves. Dad was in the distance… calling.
    The next night Tom came again, and the next and the next. He arrived at different times: twelve-thirty, two o‘clock, three. He got Harry up, or Harry got himself up, and led him to the bathroom. Each night Harry had a wee. Each morning Harry's bed was dry.
    I struggled to make sense of what was happening. Tom was taking Harry to the toilet. How did he accomplish this? Could Harry feel Tom's hand upon his shoulder? (Rufus after all had leapt straight through him.) Could Tom communicate with Harry? Was Harry hearing more than I was? For I was hearing nothing, not a sound. On that second night, for instance, Tom returned to the bedroom and stood at the window. The moonlight caught his springy tousled hair. His collar was still up. Harry had dropped straight back into sleep. I sat up in bed and called Tom's name, an urgent whisper. ‘Tom? Tom!’ He turned to face me. Once more his mouth was open. He spoke, or tried to. Once more the plate of glass between us. No sound.
    But the next night there was a sound, though one I'd rather not have heard. It was a slow growling sound, like something played at the wrong speed. ‘Frr.’ For the first time, I remember, I was really afraid. I pulled the bedclothes over my head and held my breath. ‘Frr.’ When I peeped out later, Tom was gone.
    The thing is, it was Tom who was making this awful noise, all the while with a serious, almost hopeful look in his eyes as though he expected me to understand it. Well, I believe I may have sensed something then or begun to. It was my brother I was hearing, seeing – yes of course my brother, my loving brother, my graceful, quiet, clever brother. But then again, not quite my brother now. It was my brother's ghost.

The Fight
    I T'S OCCURRED TO ME (just now, as I write) that really so far I have not described exactly what it was that Harry and I saw when we saw Tom. The main thing is, you see, Tom was never transparent or wispy like the ghosts you sometimes get in the movies. He was no apparition. You might walk through him, but you couldn't see through him. (At least, we couldn't. Others it seems couldn't see him at all.) So you could say the way he looked to us was completely normal. The only exception to this was sudden movement, quick changes of direction. At such times Tom's outline, the edges of him, would quiver and blur like a swimmer