Page 139 of Land of Ghosts

He was sitting on my bed when I entered my room. I grabbed my new phone from my bedside table and glanced at him. His eyes were brilliant green and wide with uncertainty. “I’m not sure your camera will capture me,” he said, his voice low.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m not really here, Beauchamp.”

“But I can see you.” I held up my phone, pressed the camera icon, and the screen opened revealing my bed—but no Tristan.

“Oh.”

Tristan’s face fell. “I told you,” he said quietly.

I pressed the shutter and took a burst of photos anyway, and when I lowered my phone, his expression was resigned but sad. “You’ll have nothing to remind you of me.”

“Why, are you leaving?”

He laughed. “No, Beauchamp. I could never leave you.”

I smiled. Pleased. “Good.”

“Looks like you’ll have to draw me after all.”

“It does. One day.”

That night, I lay in bed, contemplating a day that had started in France and ended peacefully in Chiswick via one ghostly meltdown, a startling newspaper article, and a failed photography session. Lulu had arrived in the early evening, and we’d gone out for dinner in Chiswick to a French restaurant. I’d even enjoyed the salad I’d ordered and decided that it wasn’t the time to ask Doctor Dyl for any details about the death of my parents.

That would have to wait until I felt stronger.

Dylan and Lulu seemed much happier, and she was staying the night. I was grateful they were sleeping at the front of the house where I couldn’t hear them.

I’d spent the afternoon in the company of Mr. Tristan Fairfax, deceased, and it had been wonderful. As I’d unpacked the crates, he’d asked me about each of the items, my books, and my music. I’d tried to take his portrait, but sadly that hadn’t worked, but I’d showed him photographs of my family: My mum playing her cello, my dad teaching and at the piano… Billy as a baby. Dylan as an adolescent.

“You are their memory keeper, Beauchamp. For all the Beauchamps,” Tristan had said. “They’re very much alive in your heart.” I’d smiled, and now I glanced at my family captured forever in a moment of high hilarity.

Memory keeper.

Was that what I was? I stared at the ceiling, and my mother’s face appeared in my mind’s eye.

“You are whoever you want to be,” she said, her hazel eyes twinkling.