He squeezed her hand again. ‘You exist.’

‘Do I? Can you prove it? Can you prove you really exist?’

He stood up, walked around the table and kissed her on each cheek. ‘OK? Is that real? Do I exist?’

‘I could have imagined that.’

‘Want to see my driving licence? Passport?’

‘How would I know they’re real? Are they any more real than the woman we’ve both seen and you’ve just shown me?’

He sat back down and picked up his glass; immediately he put it back down, untouched. ‘I can’t drink any more; I have to work. Jesus.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s an ancient Mesopotamian saying, that four fingers stand between the truth and a lie. And if you measure that, you’ll find it’s the average distance between a person’s ears and their eyes.’

‘Meaning?’

‘What you see is what you know to be the truth.’

‘So, this woman you drew is the truth? She’s what you saw. What I saw? We both saw a ghost.’

‘Or…’

‘Or?’

They both heard a sound above them. Footsteps. Like boots walking across bare floorboards.

Jason froze. Emily looked up, then at him. ‘Wh-what? Who – who’s that?’

He stood and stared up at the ceiling.

Clump. Clump. Clump.

She was staring at it, too.

Clump. Clump. Clump.

‘Which – which room is that?’ Her voice was trembling.

He ran out into the hall, sprinted up the stairs, onto the landing and into their bedroom. Stared at the king-size bed with the white cover, the pillows, and the ragged, once-fluffy bear that Emily always placed between the cushions when she made it. Teddy Boy: the comforter she’d had since early childhood. He looked around at the mirrored doors of the wardrobe that ran the width of the room. The darkness of the night against the windows; the antique chaise longue they’d bought years ago for a song at an auction, then had re-covered in a light grey fabric. The studded chest at the end of the bed. The white rug on the bare oak floorboards.

‘Jason!’ Emily called out. ‘Jace, are you OK?’

Everything seemed normal. He walked through into the en suite bathroom, looked at the walk-in shower and the large, Victorian-style bathtub. Stared at his reflection in the mirror above the twin basins.

Silence.

He went back downstairs. Emily was standing at the bottom. ‘What – what – was—?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Probably as I said before; the oak flooring moving.’

‘Moving?’

‘You know oak takes a long time to settle in. Remember when we had that oak flooring put down in North Gardens?’

The tiny, Victorian semi-detached cottage in the centre of Brighton they’d lived in previously, where he’d had his cramped studio. That had been a wreck when they’d bought it, and they’d floored the entire living and dining area in oak. They’d had to keep the planks for several months in the house for seasoning, on the advice of their builder, before having it laid. ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly.