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like I did that time when he – whoever he is - kissed me. Sometimes I turn off the music or pull over just to check the sound isn’t something in the car, a faulty stereo or my phone acting up.
     
    The strange experiences continue right across Christmas when, despite the festivities at Mum’s house, I come down with the most awful ‘flu and am laid up in bed at my family home with my iPod, while they celebrate downstairs.
     
    Richard phoned this morning to wish me a Merry Christmas. It was the early hours of the morning in Denver; he had waited up especially. Poor Richard, away in a strange country for such a long time. He’d sounded lonely.
     
    So now I lay propped up, full of snot and surrounded by a mountain of dirty tissues. I gave up aiming for the bin sometime around 3am this morning. I’m also a bit lonely, spending a lot of time by myself with just my music and my strange secret for company. My ghost kisser seems to visit most during track five of Town Full of Heroes’ album and – get this – track five is a song called “Love Twin”. So I start to think of him as my love twin. After all, we have some kind of connection.
     
    It is freaking me out a bit that I might be having liaisons with a dead guy. Obviously I can’t talk to Richard about it, especially not over the phone. He loves me but he won’t tolerate ‘psychic shit’ at the best of times and he can be quite jealous if he thinks I find someone else even vaguely attractive. It would be interesting to see which he would mind more – me kissing someone, or the other man’s lack of a pulse.
     
    And it’s considering this, which sparks off a realisation – I heard his heartbeat when we kissed that first time, interlaced with the thwack of the windscreen wipers. My ghost might not be a ghost . Is it possible that I am being haunted by someone who is alive? I Google ‘haunted by a live person’ and other combinations on the same theme but all I find are rambling forum posts, silly articles and web sites selling psychic services. I try to dismiss the idea and decide my auditory hallucinations have been brought on by the ‘flu.
     
    *****
     
    By the second week of January I am back in my own home and back at work, though still white as a sheet and feeling truly hideous. I am dizzy when I stand and I’ve had a temperature for three weeks now, with alternate chills and night sweats through the night meaning I haven’t slept well.
     
    I look disgusting. I have a cold sore on my top lip, I’m on today’s second box of Balsam-infused tissues and I smell strongly of menthol oil. I don’t feel up to working; I came in this morning on autopilot.
     
    I’m sat at my desk looking out at grey sky and grey buildings and even greyer people, when I see the first flakes of snow begin to fall, settling softly on the pavement.
     
    “Shhh!” I hear, close to me. I look to my right - No one is there.
     
    It’s him.
     
    I sit up straighter in my chair, pen to my lip, wondering what and who it is that I am hearing. Without knowing the answer, I stand to put on my coat and gloves. “Just popping to the shop,” I tell no one in particular, my voice thick with cold. I have no intention of buying anything. The romantic in me wants to feel the snowflakes on my hot skin. I grab my iPod, pop the earphones in and hit Play as I step outside into the chilly air. I don’t know where I’m walking to.
     
    The first snowflake touches my lip, and then a second rests on my forehead. More fall onto my hot skin like cold kisses from my secret twin. I keep putting one foot in front of the other, the beginnings of a small smile upon my lips, until I near the open grassland that folds itself over the hill. I feel a kind of quiet excitement, a pull towards something unseen. And then I see a man standing under the Sycamore tree about 100 metres ahead of me.
     
    I quicken, stumbling over the clumps of frozen grass as I make my way towards him. As he turns away, I