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“Okay,” I agreed, desperate to appease him. I didn’t like keeping secrets from him, but I didn’t have a choice. Dylan would never believe me, and if I tried to explain Tristan, he might have me committed.

I switched on the washing machine and followed him into the kitchen. There, I helped him unpack the shopping while avoiding the tall, smirking ghost who watched my every move.

When we’d finished, I grabbed the hangers.

“I’ll go hang my clothes,” I said to Dylan as I headed out of the kitchen.

When I got upstairs, Tristan was lying across my bed, looking thoughtful. “You seem to be getting along well with the son of a bitch.”

“Of course I get on with him. He’s okay.”

The thought stopped me in my tracks. Dylan. Unreadable Dylan. Frustrated Dylan. Angry Dylan. Musical Dylan… Caring Dylan.

He was more than okay. Much more than okay.

He was a good man, and he was all I had.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” I said while putting my clothes on the hangers.

Tristan gazed at me speculatively, though he said nothing.

I shut the wardrobe door. “Done.”

“Hey,” he said and smiled.

“Hey.” I couldn’t help my face-splitting grin. “I know nothing about you. You know all about me, especially with your dubious spooky invasion-of-my-privacy trick, so I’d really like to even the score. Tell me about yourself?” I sat down at the end of the bed.

He smiled and propped himself up on one elbow. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” I crossed my legs and gazed down at him.

“Well, before… I was on a gap year. I was supposed to go study computer science at Imperial.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have taken you for a nerd.”

“Beauchamp, I’m bloody nerdy and proud of it.”

I laughed. “I thought you might do something like, I don’t know, in the arts.”

“Well, I was what you’d call an all-rounder. I had it all.” He stopped for a moment and flopped back on the bed. The bed didn’t move, but his hair flopped into his eyes.

Tristan is defying physics.

“Yeah. Everything. My parents had such lofty ambitions for me. I could have gone to Oxford, but since I grew up there, I didn’t want to, and because I grew up there, I couldn’t go to Cambridge.” He shuddered.

“You grew up in Oxford?”

“Yes, with my folks and my brother and sister.” He frowned and his voice faded.

“So what were you doing in Chiswick?”

“I was working as a runner on a film that was shooting around London. Saving some money before I went traveling. It was the best job. I’d moved into this house. My mate Christopher had a room here. He was on a gap year too. He was working in a bar in Soho. We had a good time.” He gazed at the ceiling, and myriad emotions crossed his face. “I still have my memories.”

“Did you know Pete the intruder?”

The question brought Tristan back to me. “Not well at all. He was a shitty character. Mean and aggressive. He was some casual acquaintance of one of the other guys who lived in the house and who worked with Chris in the bar. He would crash here now and then, and he’d occasionally sell weed.”

“Weed!”