The ghost looks less and less like Mum each time it comes. What was familiar and Mum-like decreases; the ghost gets thinner and its weight on top of me gets lighter. Then it starts going haywire. As if it were no longer properly charged, it crackles and bounces and its stories get muddled. Maybe ghosts have batteries, and if they aren’t charged, they go out in the end.

‘Once upon a time, there was a little sister who lost a key made out of a chicken bone,’ the ghost begins.

It always starts in the middle and chooses only the revolt-ing bits. I know this bone bit; I try not to think about it every time we’re eating chicken. Just as I try not to think about Bruno whenever the kitchen smells of rosemary.

‘What an idiot!’ the ghost snickers. ‘Nothing for it but snip, snap, snip. What did you lose the key for? Hands up, who’s got fingers? Ha, now it goes on, now it goes on. The little sister took a knife, cut off her little finger and opened the gate with it. And that’s the end of that.’

Auntie Annu always wanted to pull the wishbone. This involves two people gripping the bone with their little fingers and pulling till it snaps. The one who ends up with the bigger part can make a wish. I hated the snap and would have preferred not to pull. Also, Auntie had already won the lottery twice; she was hardly likely to need more wishes. If the bigger part did stay in my hand, as it sometimes did, I wished that Mum would send me a message. But she never did.

I don’t see any need for a game that involves breaking bones.

The ghost clicks its fingers. First it tugs them, one at a time, then it clasps its hands together and crunches every joint. Mum never did that. It gives me a strange feeling of strength when I realize Mum didn’t do that.

The ghost goes on with the story: ‘A shepherd came and found the bone on the shore. He used it to whittle a mouthpiece for a horn.’

‘You already said that was the end.’

The ghost stops and looks at me.

‘It’s finished already,’ I repeat.