Ten days after I’d started, Patricia came into the kitchen, where I labored under the regime of an old Greek woman with whom I could barely communicate. I’d never seen Patricia in the kitchen before. Like the obdurate adolescent I wanted her to see me as, I refused to meet her look. She had to tell me to stop peeling potatoes.

“Just stop now.”

“Patricia, I wouldn’t feel good about leaving half a potato.”

“To hell with potatoes! I am about to begin my dream workshop with the new group. I’ve decided that it’s time you joined us.”

“Me? Why?”

“I think you should learn something.”

“Oh, I don’t want to learn. I had years of it and nothing went in, as you pointed out.” She looked hurt, so I said, “What kind of thing is it?”

She sighed. “We free associate around people’s dreams. We might write around them, or paint or draw. Or even dance. I’ve seen you shake your butt, at the disco. The girls were certainly intrigued, as they are when you parade around the place with your shirt off. But you keep away from the workshop members, don’t you?”

“It goes without saying.”

“Even that idiot with the ghost?”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “That damned ghost.”

The ghost always cheered Patricia up.

One of the women who’d recently come to the Center and been allocated a room in town, as some people were, had stood up at breakfast and told us her room was haunted. Typically, Patricia imagined this was a ruse for the woman to be moved to a superior room with a sea view—not something Patricia could offer or fall for. Instead of moving her, Patricia had deputed me to sit, all night, in the doorway of the woman’s room, keeping an eye out for the revenant.

“Watching for ghosts is one of your duties,” Patricia had said to me, barely containing her delight. “When the bastard turns up, you deal with it.”

“Such work wasn’t in my original job description,” I said. “And do ghosts use doors?”

“Get lost and do it. Ghosts use all orifices.”

I had told Alicia, “Wait ’til they hear this back in London—that I’ve been employed on a ghost watch.”

That night, I’d stayed awake as long as I could but had, of course, fallen asleep in the chair. The ghosts came. Nothing with a sheet over its head bothered me, but my own internal shades and shadows, by far the most hideous, had become mightily busy. The woman I guarded slept well. By morning, I was in a cold sweat with rings the color of coal under my eyes. The women at the Center, when they weren’t being solicitous, found they hadn’t laughed as much since they’d arrived.

“Particularly not with the ghost woman,” I said now to Patricia.

“Good. You’re not included in the price of the holiday.” She went on, “Now, come along. People pay hundreds of pounds to participate. I want you to see what goes on here. Tell me. Surely you don’t believe that only the rational is real, or that the real is always rational, do you?”