One morning when I should have been attending a lecture and demonstration on marketing but was lying in bed instead, looking at the segment of pale sky above the wall, something set the wire hangers in the wardrobe jangling and when I turned round I saw a small old woman standing in the doorway. I didn’t scream, I was paralyzed with fright. A prior belief in ghosts isn’t necessary when you see a ghost. A ghostly manifestation would be a miracle and the laws of nature overturned. I thought, I’ve brought her back by talking to her. Like a medium might, I’ve conjured her up.

“Sorry to intrude, love,” she said, “but it’s my morning for cleaning down here.”

Of course there were no ghosts and of course old Mrs. Fisherton was dead and gone. I got up, I said to give me five minutes and I’d be dressed. I’d be ready and I’d make her a cup of tea. Her first name was Beryl and I never knew her by any other, though of course I found out later, when she gave me a home and looked after me, that she was called Mrs. Collett. She is still one of my best friends.

Old Mrs. Fisherton was past ninety when she died but Beryl wasn’t really old, though she seemed so to me then. I suppose she was still under sixty. She wore trousers that she called slacks and bright-colored sweaters. Her face was old and her hair thin and gray, but her figure was like a young girl’s, which I later learned she attributed to never having put on weight and never having lost any. Food she thought one of life’s nuisances and she ate little; she ate to live. She showed no surprise at my being there and being still in bed at ten-thirty. It was what she expected from “the young,” of whom she had several of her own.

“Nice smell,” she said while we had our tea. “I like a place to smell of cigarettes, it reminds me of my late husband. I don’t smoke myself and nor do the two still at home. I’ve tried taking it up, mind, but it didn’t agree with me.” She sniffed appreciatively. “Don’t you let the Professor catch you.” She always called Max “the Professor.” Presumably he had asked her to, or Selina had. “He’s a raving fanatic when it comes to smoking.”

“I know,” I said. “He said I wasn’t to smoke in here.”

“Girls will be girls is what I always say.”

It may have been that time or on her next visit that she remarked on the dim lighting. “Not very cheerful down here, is it, love? You’ll ruin your eyes, reading your college books.”