Agnes looks up at the wooden beam and offers a soft smile to the girls who are standing on it looking down at them. She has a silk scarf wrapped around her head. Agnes does not cover her all-white eye but occasionally she blinks to see them more clearly again. Her skin is soft and lined. Archie’s face is wracked with worry for his wife. He cannot intervene but he can tell this is far beyond the normal Sunday seances they have held in their home and some of those knocked her out for weeks. Dora Noyce’s face is set with determined strength. Each of the five sisters raises her right hand at the same time and points directly at Mr Udnam.

– Mr Udnam, the girls are pointing at you. Can you see this?

– Yes.

– The message coming through today is for you. Are you willing to receive it, Mr Udnam?

– No, no, no, no, no!

The old man shouts at her. The parrot pecks at his bars – he is wide-eyed and pacing.

– Mr Udnam, you only have one chance to hear the truth.

– I don’t want to.

– We do it in this world. Or, we do it in the next…

– I’ll wait.

– If you do it in the next when you’ve been offered a chance to repent in this life, you will be treated far more harshly for your sins.

Archie intervenes on his wife’s behalf.

– Can you afford that, Mr Udnam? How bad can it be? Just take the message. This is causing my wife distress. Her health suffers for this!

Colour has drained from Mr Udnam entirely.

– I don’t know what to do!

– You are an old man, ready to pass soon yourself – do you not want to show you have at least tried to hear the truths against you before it is your time to seek the light?

– Yes! Okay…

He spits blood into his handkerchief.

His chins wobble down to a long turkey neck.

His head is bald.

Partially spotted.

Mr Udnam’s eyes are sunken with folds of skin in a darker shade underneath. Dark age spots mottle his cheeks and he coughs into the handkerchief again. The girls note this. Nothing goes past them where he is concerned. Agnes struggles to contain the huge energy radiating down from that beam. If she does not keep it together right now, the haunches of the building will lock into each other and glide upward. An undeniable sense that this whole building wants to stand up and walk away. Unendurable sorrow. Mr Udnam’s eyes grow even darker. It is clear to Agnes that if he doesn’t hear this he will pass from here to limbo. The man is too frightened to open his heart. Worse still he sees no wrong in his soul.

– We have been following you for years, Mr Udnam, one of the twins says.

– Who lit the match?

– Our mother was asleep.