‘I’m sorry?’

‘Well, you know that Nelson and your predecessor had something going on before she died, right?’

‘What are you talking about, Achilles?’ asked Beverley.

‘Didn’t you know? He was quite taken with her. Or so he told me. They went out for drinks one evening, apparently. He was thinking of asking her to move in with him.’

‘Wouldn’t that have been a little premature?’

‘Well, you know Nelson. He got talking to her, so he figured, she’ll do. Anything to put off focussing on the obvious.’

‘And what obvious is that?’ she asked.

‘That he’s a bender.’

Beverley rolled her eyes and turned back to the ghost. ‘You’ll have to forgive my son,’ she said. ‘He thinks he’s being funny but, actually, he just likes to shock.’

‘You talk to each other in a curious way,’ said the ghost.

Beverley looked from her ghost to her son and back again, uncertain whether she was being insulted.

‘There’s nothing shocking about being a bender,’ continued Achilles. ‘Everyone is these days. I tried it myself once but, you know, there was just something missing. Or rather, there was something there that I wished was missing. You’ll never believe who it was, Mother.’

‘I don’t want to know, thank you very much,’ said Beverley, pouring herself a large glass of white wine but not offering any to either of her dining companions. ‘Your sexual shenanigans are of no interest to me whatsoever. Or, I imagine,’ she added, turning to the ghost, ‘to you.’

‘Not even slightly.’

‘Clearly, you already find us terribly strange,’

‘I do, a bit,’ agreed the ghost, which made Beverley frown. She’d been hoping for some backtracking.

‘My mother and I have always been close,’ said Achilles, wondering whether he could make her blush. ‘Tell her about Film Club.’

‘Oh, I loved Film Club!’ replied Beverley, looking nostalgic. ‘Why don’t we do that any more?’

‘Mum likes to stay cultured, so when I was about fourteen, she set a night aside every week where she and I would curl up on the sofa and watch films together, then discuss them afterwards.’

‘We started with that trilogy about colours,’ said Beverley. ‘Blue, White and Red. By that Polish man.’

‘It was about colours all right, but you’ve got the wrong ones. It was Fifty Shades of Grey.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Perfectly. My psyche still bears the scars. Remember, I tied myself up a few nights later and then I couldn’t undo the knots and Dad had to break down my bedroom door to set me free. Elizabeth took pictures and tried to upload them to Instagram, but they were deleted on the grounds of gratuitous nudity.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, shuddering. ‘I’ve tried to put that incident from my mind. And I shall ignore your inference about Nelson too. Until he tells me otherwise, I shall assume that he’s perfectly normal.’