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be able to get up – I’d just assumed I’d play dead at the foot of the stairs until she told me otherwise. But my arm was killing me, and I was beginning to need the loo. Just as I was about to sit up I felt a swish of movement down by my feet.
    Someone was still in the hall, watching over me. Someone had stayed behind from the rest of the group and was silently observing me, looking for clues as to how I died. I forced myself to stay put, to ignore the throbbing pain in my arm for just a few more minutes.
    Whoever was standing there began to move around me as I lay still on the floor. I couldn’t hear their footsteps but I could feel them moving close to me. I felt a presence by the top of my head – they must have been standing right above me, looking down onto my face. I willed my eyes to stay closed as whoever was there bent down and came closer to me. Suddenly the air around me seemed to thin out, and I became more aware of the sound of my own breathing. There were no draughts there in the hall, but it suddenly felt like an ice-cold wind was sweeping all around me. As I felt the stranger move closer to me, a chill crept along my spine and I couldn’t help but shudder. With the other guests I had felt their warm breath on my skin, but this was different. It felt like icy tentacles were creeping around me and squeezing the breath out of me. I forced myself to lie still a moment longer, but the sensation grew more intense. I felt the hairs on my body stand up and my heart began to thump furiously inside me. The silence was broken by the creaking of the old staircase and the wind rattling against the domed glass skylight overhead. On impulse my eyes shot open and I sat bolt upright. I spun around, searching the hallways for whoever had stood over me, but there was no one there. No one in the hallway, no one walking up the stairs. I was completely alone.
    Another shudder ran through me. I’d imagined the whole thing. The sensation of someone standing over me, breathing their icy breath over my face. Eventually I stood up, brushed down my scullery-maid skirt and headed towards the kitchen. I rooted around in the fridge for some of the guests’ dinner leftovers and washed it down with a glass of cold water. I was alone in the kitchen; I had no idea where my aunt or cousin, Nell or Katie were. I tried to shake off the feeling of unease that crept through my veins. I tried to convince myself that whatever had just happened to me whilst I lay in the hallway had been in my head.
    I put my dirty plate and glass in the sink and headed out of the kitchen and up the stairs towards my room so that I could change into my own clothes. I put on a short blue cotton dress that I’d made the summer before. I’d spent hours sewing sequins onto the straps – a few of them had fallen off in the past year but it was comfortable and cool.
    Desperate to distract myself from whatever had just happened, I picked up my notebook and pen and climbed onto my bed. The light outside was soft as I sat on my bed and read through what I’d written that day – notes about the girls who lived in the boarding school in my head. I began to make notes on the side of the page about things I should probably change when I began to write it properly – who was friends with who, who was the bitchy girl and who was the doormat. I invented lives for the girls on my page, personal histories and wishes for their future. Thinking about them was so much easier than thinking about myself and the disturbing sensation I’d had whilst playing dead in the hallway earlier.
    After a while I had to turn my bedside light on to write as it was getting too dark outside. I think it must have been gone ten o’clock when I finally put my pen down.
    I walked over to the window to pull my curtains shut. The curtains that someone else had opened for me that morning.
    As I stared out into the darkness, movement on the ground