So we sat Eamonn Mitchell down, after I cleared off a chair, and Cathy poured some of her life-saving coffee into him, and bit by bit we got the story out of him. He relaxed a little, once he realised we were prepared to take him seriously, no matter how strange his story seemed. But he still preferred to talk mostly to his coffee mug rather than look either of us in the eye.

"My... hauntings weren't exactly ghosts," he said. "They were quite solid, quite real. Except... they were me. Or rather, myself at a younger age. Wearing clothes I used to wear, saying things I used to say, used to believe. And they were angry with me. Shouting and pushing, haranguing me. They said I betrayed them, by not becoming the kind of man they'd intended and expected to become."

"What kind of person are you, Mr. Mitchell?" I said, to prove I was paying attention.

"Well, I work for a big corporation, here in London. I'm quite successful, I suppose. Good money ... And I'm married, with two wonderful children." And then nothing would do but to interrupt his story to get out his wallet and produce photos of his wife Andrea, and his two children, Erica and Ronald. They seemed nice enough, good ordinary people just like him. He smiled fondly at the photos, as though they were his only remaining life-line to a world he knew and understood, then reluctantly he put them away again. "I was coming home from work this evening, on the tube, checking over some last bits of paperwork.