The Ghost Page B

restaurant after his dining companions had gently mocked his clumsy chopstick technique. (“You need to get a grip, Dorian!”)
    Now, he was being drawn deeper away from centre-stage, blending and fading into the background. He had regressed from the boiler-room bustle of the news desk to the templated mediocrity of copy-fitting, fact-checking and adjectival preening. His ego offered spasms of resistance, but he knew it was all means to an ultimate end – of shadow and silence and, crucially, anonymity.
    He tapped out a response, accepting the commission with an uncharacteristically affable request to discuss details ‘over coffee’. Almost immediately after sending the message, his email alert sounded again – a notification from
PastLives.com
, as if in rebuke to his buoyancy. He navigated from email subject line to website to message.
    Hello, Dor. I saw you on TV! Totally by accident, mate. You don’t look that different! At least I know you’re definitely still alive! Hope you’re actually reading my messages (it says you are on the Read/Unread list thing). Drop me a line mate. Please. Don’t worry – I’m not after money! Den.
    The mention of money at least gave Cook a sense of what he was now dealing with – a friend in need. He typed a formal but sympathetic reply, saying that he would love to help but didn’t actually have much money himself. At worst, Cook hoped he could avoid a meeting and just transfer a token payment that would feel reasonable but final. His curiosity about Brereton – and Mountford’s predicament – could probably be satisfied with a couple more messages. He would then delete his account and move on.
    He scrolled the reply window and noticed that Mountford’s original message was automatically quoted underneath – with an extra line Cook had missed, a few returns below the main chunk of text.
    PS. It’s about the ghost.

14. Corporal Punishment

    June, 1974
    â€œTwo times two is four! Three times two is six!”
    This was ‘maths’ – a modulated drone-through of the first twelve integers and the results of multiplying them all by each other. Cook sat with chin on desk, arms flat and sprawled, laminated number-grid propped upright.
    â€œSit up straight, Dorian!”
    The children knew that Mr Butcher had plenty of potential bite behind his bark, and so, as Cook jerked himself upright, most of the others instantly mirrored – a conditioned pulse that, for Butcher, vindicated his hive-mind regime. The class resumed its synchronised chant.
    Cook felt something brush against his shoe. He glanced down and saw a small, multicoloured rubber ball that David Brereton had kicked along the floor. Brereton was smirking and nodding towards the front of the class, where John Ray sat, within ear-cuff distance of Butcher. Ray was in a reverie of recital, gossamer hair bobbing and wafting as his bloodless lips launched the words up into the air above Butcher’s desk.
    â€œSix times two is twelve! Seven times two is fourteen! Eight times two is sixteen!”
    This enthusiasm wasn’t just for Teacher’s benefit. Ray had a head for figures to go with the body for bullies. Numbers, for him, had rules and form and structure, while people were volatile and amorphous. For his classmates, the times-table repetition was numbing and medicinal – an educational analgesic. To Ray, the effect was ecstatic, psychotropic.
    â€œTen times two is twenty! Eleven times two is twenty-two!”
    Cook scuffed at the rubber ball with his shoe, sending it rolling towards Ray’s desk. It bounced off a chair-leg, skittered up and landed in Ray’s empty inkwell, where it settled with pleasing snugness. Butcher looked up from his text-book. A movement had flashed across the edge of his vision – had something been thrown? The ball’s pink and blue swirls alerted him to Ray’s usually unadorned