We were silent for a while (my mouth dry as the Gobi Desert) and then Miss Hahn sighed. ‘I’m dreadfully keen for you to return to Montserrat, Mr Huff …’

‘Monterrey,’ I corrected her.

‘… but the bad news is that Orla seems to have very different ideas. And for reasons which I can’t even pretend to understand …’

‘Sorry?’

I knocked a drop of sweat from the tip of my nose.

‘She doesn’t want you to leave, Mr Huff. She tried every trick in the book to stop me from returning you that rent money this afternoon.’

She paused.

‘Please, please tell me you haven’t gone and brought it back again?’

‘The envelope’s on your kitchen counter,’ I confessed. ‘Sorry about that.’

Another creak! I almost sprang to my feet, but then the urge to pursue this line of enquiry, this sudden chink in Miss Hahn’s previously steely armour (a chink aided, even abetted, I presumed, by the dizzying abundance of scalding steam) proved too much to resist.

‘When you say “Orla doesn’t want you to go,”’ I muttered, ‘are you referring to the … to what I might be given to understand is the … the ghost of Orla Nor Cleary?’

‘Heavens no!’ she exclaimed, horrified, and then, ‘Well, yes, but not … More the … the spirit, the … the essence …’ She grimaced, irritated. ‘I’m no expert in this area, Mr Huff, I can’t pretend to understand the technicalities of the thing.’

‘But then …’

(Breathe from the stomach, Franklin! That’s right. Yes. That’s better.)

‘… isn’t it possible you just …?’

Uh … How to put this politely? How to un-jumble the kaleidoscope of tumbling words inside my head? How to straighten them out into something approximating a straight line and then slowly, slowly, teeter my way along it?

‘Isn’t it possible that what you take to be a ghost,’ I finally gasped, ‘a … a … a spirit, an … an essence, as you say, is simply the expression of some … some deep-seated, unconscious desire of your own which is somehow compelling you to … uh …?’

‘Yes. I already thought of that.’ She nodded. ‘But it makes no real sense. Because I don’t want you to stay, Mr Huff. No offence intended, but at best you’re a problem to be solved, at worst you’re a threat. It’s nothing personal … well it is personal because you lied to me about your identity – you ran over my mother’s cat … Although of course that’s all water under the bridge as things currently stand.’

‘I’m not sure if you fully comprehend the meaning of the phrase “unconscious desire”,’ I still persisted (very bravely, slightly piqued). ‘And in point of fact I didn’t run over your mother’s cat—’

‘What you need to realize,’ she interrupted, ‘is that quite contrary to what you seem determined to believe, I’m not heading a passionate campaign to defend the honour – or otherwise – of Orla Nor Cleary against the cruel assaults of a secular world. This isn’t about that for me. It never was. What I’m actually doing is defending myself – and those I love. I’m maintaining a distance. I’m protecting myself from Orla.’