This whole Grey Monk thing had arisen because of Huw needing an example of what he meant by ‘ imprints ’.

As distinct from ‘ visitors ’, who usually were parents or close friends appearing at your bedside or in a favourite chair on the night of their deaths, often a once-only apparition to say: Everything is OK. Or ‘ volatiles ’ – loose-cannon energy forms dislodging plates and table lamps, and commonly but some-times inaccurately called poltergeists.

When this place was a Nonconformist chapel, Huw had told them, the present women’s toilet had been some kind of vestry. Which was where Griffith the preacher – apparently helpless with lust for a married woman in Sennybridge – had been drinking hard into the night, was subsequently seen striding white and naked on the hill at dawn, and then had been found dead back here, his head cracked on a flagstone, the room stinking of brandy.

Sure – these things happened in lonely parishes. Merrily pulled down a paper towel and began to dry her hands, not hurrying – resisting the urge to whirl suddenly around and catch Griffith, crazed and naked, forming out of the dampness in the wall.

She would not be bloody-well scared. She would observe with detachment. Imprints were invariably harmless. They appeared, vanished, occasionally messed with the atmosphere, but they never accosted you. They were, in fact, unaware of you, having no feelings, no consciousness. Their actions rarely varied. They appeared like a wooden cuckoo from a clock, only silently. And, no, they did not appear to feel the need to pee.

If an imprint responded to you, then it was likely to be something else – a visitor or, worse, an insomniac – and you had to review your options.