The Smile of a Ghost by Phil Rickman

he’d still be alive. I’ve always said that.’
    ‘Dad, for Christ—’
    ‘Andrew, we gotter face facts. We’re all terrible sorry ’bout what happened, but it en’t no use blamin’ ourselves for ever and a day, is it? Boy was a bloody dreamer, head in the clouds, no gettin’ round it.’
    ‘All right, Dad,’ Mumford said, desperate. ‘We’ll go to the pub, you and me, eh? Half an hour, Mrs Watkins, will that be all right?’
    Merrily nodded, grateful.
    ‘Now, I know I had something to show you,’ Mrs Mumford said. ‘Where did I put it?’
    Merrily had made tea for them both. The kitchen wasn’t as clean as it might have been; she’d wondered if there was a home help. Mrs Mumford didn’t seem to be disabled, but she was very overweight.
    ‘Look in that top drawer, would you?’ She seemed to be accepting Merrily, now they were on their own, but not as a priest; she wouldn’t be ready for that. ‘No, no, not that one… the long one… that’s it.’
    ‘This?’ Merrily opened the drawer and found a hard-backed sketch pad inside.
    ‘There it is. Will you bring it over?’
    ‘Phyllis… why’s this picture turned to the wall?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘The picture.’ Merrily touched it.
    ‘No! You leave that alone!’
    ‘OK.’ She drew back, took the sketch pad to Mrs Mumford who put it flat on her knees. Merrily pulled up a dining chair. An envelope fell out of the sketch pad and she caught it and put it on the chair arm.
    ‘Don’t know what that is,’ Mrs Mumford said. ‘Now, look at these. He spent hours on these. You’ve got to be careful not to touch them or it’ll all come off. He had a spray, he did, but it still comes off.’
    They were charcoal sketches. The first one was clearly of St Laurence’s Church, but its size was exaggerated so that the townhouses seemed like dog kennels. The second had been drawn from directly below, so that the tower resembled a rocket about to blast off. The perspective looked, to Merrily, to be spot on. There was light and shade and he’d smudged the charcoal to produce mist effects.
    ‘He was very talented, Phyllis.’
    ‘Sit there for hours, he would, drawing pictures of the church and the black and white houses. The others… we never sees them, they never comes to see their ole gran. Only Robbie.’
    ‘He loved being here with you, didn’t he? What’s this one? Is that what they call the Buttercross? With the little clock tower on top.’
    ‘Town council meets there. That one’s the Feathers Hotel.’
    Mrs Mumford was much calmer now, leafing through the drawings, some identified underneath: Castle Lodge, The Reader’s House, the Old College.
    ‘Did he sit outside with his sketch pad?’
    ‘Too shy. He went out, see, and he looked at the old houses for a long time and he’d walk all round them and then he’d come back and he… you know… what do you call it?’
    ‘Drew them from memory?’
    ‘That’s it.’
    Either Robbie had had a photographic memory or he’d really studied these buildings, come to know them intimately. Whichever, it was remarkable. Merrily said this to Phyllis, and Phyllis began to cry silently, the tears just coming, her cheeks swollen and shiny like the pouches that fed hospital drips, and Merrily held her hand, and Phyllis said, ‘He’s dead,’ looking up at her, as if pleading for a contradiction.
    ‘You’ll see him again, Phyllis.’
    ‘No.’ Phyllis’s fingers tightening in a spasm, flooded eyes gazing past Merrily now, at the picture turned to the wall.
    The atmosphere in the room seemed brown and felt dense, as if the air was flecked with clouds of midges. The sketch pad slid to the carpet.
    ‘Phyllis, will you say a prayer with me?’
    ‘The only one of ’em ever come to see his ole gran,’ Phyllis said.
    Did she mean still?
    ‘Can I say a prayer?’
    ‘When’s the Bishop coming?’
    ‘I’ll make sure he comes,’ Merrily whispered. ‘I’ll bring him. I promise.’
    ‘Can’t see the Bishop