“It will make you everything better. It may even make you able to see ghosts.”

Zen lifted her head and screwed it around to look at Zeno. “Ghosts?”

“Ghosts, or spirits. Yes, spirits would be a better word.”

“My friend Karma saw a ghost.”

“Did she?”

“It was after her granddad died. She saw him walking in the garden where they lived.”

“Was she scared?”

“I don’t think so. She went to tell her gran, but he’d gone by the time she fetched her.”

“Well, he wasn’t actually there.”

“She saw him.”

“I’m sure she did, but the only way you can see spirits is from the inner space.”

“There was a video called that,” offered Zen.

Zeno pressed on. “Like when you dream. You often see loved ones who have passed on. But they aren’t outside of you, are they? Not really.”

“You mean in the dream?”

“Yes, all the people in the dream are inside you—are part of your inner world. When you see a spirit and you’re awake, it’s almost the same thing.” He finished the narrow left foot and started on the right, gently rolling his clenched fist into the arch.

“But Karma saw her granddad outside. In the garden.”

“Look, when we go to the pictures, we see the film on the screen, but really the images are in the projector—on the film in the projector. It’s the same with ghosts. We only see the reflection.”

“So it’s like dreaming when you’re awake?”

“Kind of. Breath is like the light in the projector. In fact, it is light—the light of the senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting all happen by the light of the breath. What happens when you go to sleep is the senses turning their backs on the outer world and beginning to focus on the world within.”

“I’d like to see that,” said Zen.

“Well, that’s what I thought. And the first step is to learn about the rhythm of the breath.”

“Miss Davidson says my rhythm is not very good.”

“That’s absolutely not true. I distinctly remember you waving your little arms and legs in perfect rhythm as soon as you were born. You see, no one teaches us rhythm—we bring it with us.”

Zeno paused and gave his attention to a tight Achilles tendon. He caught his reflection in the mirror and saw the patch of greying hair on his chest. Perhaps she really wasn’t that interested in what her old dad had to say. In a few years he would be losing her to another man.

“Did you know that when you are hurrying, if you lose the regularity of your breath, you can’t think properly? Now if judges knew that, they’d have a few more breathing teachers and a lot less prisons.”

“Dad . . .”

“Oh, yeah,” Zeno said, remembering something else he wanted to say. “I was wondering—if you wore a thick pair of socks, do you think Raquel’s skates would fit?”

Zen squealed with delight. “Oh, Dad . . .”