Emily looked at her husband. He frowned back at her.

‘I’m getting another person now,’ Louise said. ‘Another woman. She’s been in spirit for a long time. She is very angry indeed. She’s – she’s just full of anger. Now there’s a man interrupting. He tells me his name is Harry. He’s telling me he used to drive the digger. He’s giving me a message for you. He’s saying, “Ask anyone, they’ll know about the digger.” Does that mean anything to you?’ She opened her eyes and looked at them.

Jason and Emily stared back at her, as pale as ghosts.

‘Digger?’ Emily asked. ‘Did you say digger?’

‘There is so much spirit activity. Was there a graveyard here before? That’s what it feels like. So much spirit activity. It really needs to be calmed down.’

‘When you say spirit activity, Louise, what exactly do you mean?’ Jason asked. ‘What do you mean by a spirit?’

‘A trapped soul.’

‘Soul?’

‘What I believe,’ Louise said, ‘is that all of us have guardian angels – guides – who look after us. If we die of an illness, or just old age, they take our spirits – souls – over to the other side. But sometimes, if a person dies suddenly – they’re murdered, or in an accident, for instance – and the guide is not around at that moment, then the spirit doesn’t realize the body has gone. It wanders around, lost, trapped here in this plane. It’s what we call earthbound. An earthbound soul.’

‘How long are they trapped here for?’ he asked.

‘Time is different in the spirit world,’ she replied. ‘We live in linear time, we go from A to B to C. You wake up in the morning, say at seven a.m., go for your bike ride, come home at eight a.m., have breakfast, work on a painting, have lunch at one p.m., and so on. It’s different in the spirit world; time has no meaning. For spirits it’s as if everything that ever was, still is. They go back in time and they go forward in time.’

‘Forward?’ he quizzed.

‘Oh yes, absolutely. That’s how they can sometimes show us things.’

‘How far forward, Louise?’ Emily asked.

‘I don’t believe there’s any limit,’ she replied. ‘They can go back years, decades, centuries – and forward just as easily, too.’

Jason smiled. ‘So, when we die we see the future?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Could be useful for giving horse racing tips to someone on the earth plane,’ he jested.

‘Oh, it’s been done,’ Louise replied. ‘But never with a good outcome – that’s a misuse the spirit world would frown on.’

‘Louise, if we have a spirit here in this house, what do we do about it?’

‘It will need rescuing.’

‘Rescuing? Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?’ he said, jokily.

‘999 and ask for the Spirit Rescue Service?’ grinned Emily.

‘You phone your local vicar,’ Louise replied, firmly.

‘Our vicar?’ Emily said. ‘We don’t even know who that is.’