Walking with Ghosts

was at RADA, and she must have wondered how he financed it. She grieved for him when he disappeared. She knew he didn’t want anything to do with her, and she blamed herself. I’ve always taken the line that he’s a shit, and we’re better off without him.’
    ‘Isn’t that simplistic?’
    ‘Maybe,’ she said defensively. ‘Our father killed himself because Dora took us away. Some people would say Dora did the right thing, and others would say she got it wrong. But when Dad killed himself that was enough of a punishment for her. At least that’s what I thought. But Billy wanted to punish her more. He withdrew his love. He disowned her. And he’s still doing it now.
    ‘I don’t want to rub that in. I didn’t want to tell her that he’d thrown out all her values, that he’d become a vicious little thug. That he was living at least on the edge of criminal society, if not up to his neck in it.’
    ‘Have you ever seen him, since he went away?’
    ‘Yes, once. It was on York station. Three years ago. It was summer. I was going to stay with some friends in Birmingham, and I was drinking coffee, waiting for the train. I saw Billy get off a train on the adjoining platform. Don’t know where he was coming from. He had a bag. He came in the cafe, but he didn’t notice me. He didn’t look around, it was as if he was alone in there. He got a drink and sat at a table.
    ‘Something told me not to approach him. I knew he would reject me. If I’d said something to him he’d have ignored me. He might’ve got up and walked away. Whatever, it was one of those situations where you have a sense of certainty. So I sat and watched him.
    ‘He was not one of us any more. He wasn’t my brother or Dora’s son. He’d set out to reinvent himself, and he’d gone away and done it. He’d changed. It was obvious from the first moment I set eyes on him, when he stepped down from the train. He still had that broad forehead, and his eyebrows met in the middle, but there was only a vestige of the Billy I’d grown up with. Like a ghost that clung to him something invisible. He’d actually changed physically, filled out and got a couple of inches taller. His features had changed as well, his nose was smaller and broader, and his eyes seemed closer together and darker. His hair was a shade lighter than I remembered.
    ‘He’d gone away to change, and he’d come back changed almost beyond recognition.’ She looked at Sam. ‘Do you think I’m exaggerating this?’
    He shook his head but didn’t speak.
    ‘I’m not exaggerating it in the least,’ she said. ‘He’d transformed himself. I thought about that saying, you know, when people say, “His own mother wouldn’t recognize him.” And I thought it was true, if he’d passed Dora on the street, she might have walked on by. Not even known he was there.
    ‘Except for the ghost, the aura around him. He’d probably changed the way he thought, but the thing that hadn’t changed about him was the core of disappointment. That was still there. Confusion and disappointment. He was steeped in it. He’d been like that as a child, ever since Dad killed himself, maybe even before that. Maybe he’d been born like it. I don’t know, I was too young to’ve noticed things like that. But when I was old enough to notice it, it was already embedded in his soul, and it’s not something he’ll ever be able to shake off.’
    ‘D’you have a photograph of him?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Yes, there’ll be some in Dora’s album. I’ll look one out. But he doesn’t look like that any more.’
    ‘And, something else,’ Sam said. ‘Why d’you think he came back to York, if he is here? I mean, if you’re right bout him not wanting anything to do with you. Is there something else here for him? A woman? Some friends? Why did he come back?’
    ‘He was friendly with a girl for a while before he went away. Pam. Pammy. Can’t remember her surname, it’ll come to me later. She was very keen on him, and he went along with it for a while. But he doesn’t make deep attachments. He could’ve come back for her, but I doubt it. I don’t really know why he came back. I’ve thought about it and I can’t come up with a satisfactory answer. But I think he watches us.
     

15
     
    The rat had been scraping and tapping at his door all evening. But when William got to his feet and opened the door it had disappeared. It left no droppings, not a single hair. There was no scrambling on the