Time to Say Goodbye. S.D. Robertson

take my hand.’

      I did as he asked and found myself inside a large wooden shed-like building. I looked around and saw a pile of cricket stumps and balls, a stack of hurdles, a rusty netball post and other sports equipment. There were no windows, but the gloomy day outside peeked in through two water-streaked skylights. Rain was beating down on the roof.

      ‘Grab a seat,’ Arthur said, gesturing to a pile of mildew-flecked cricket pads as he plonked himself down on a ragged deckchair.

      ‘Where are we?’

      ‘Don’t you recognize it?’

      Puzzled, I looked around again and the penny dropped. ‘Of course. The cricket pavilion.’

      That had been the somewhat misleading title attributed to the storage shed on the sports field at my old primary school. ‘Do they still call it that?’

      Arthur smiled. ‘They do, although it’s lucky to still be standing, if you ask me. The new caretaker doesn’t creosote it anywhere near often enough. It smells so damp these days.’

      ‘You can smell?’

      ‘Yes. Sorry, I didn’t mention that, did I? That comes back too if you stay. Again, it’s not the same as it was, but it’s better than nothing. It’s a bit like having a heavy cold the whole time.’

      ‘And taste? Do you get that back?’

      Arthur laughed. ‘I wish. No, that’s gone for good, along with eating or drinking anything. The smell is the closest I get to food these days. Sometimes it kills me, getting a whiff of hot buttered toast or freshly brewed coffee. Bacon’s the worst, mind. I still get cravings after all these years. I used to love my food. Not that it did me any good. It was clogging up my arteries that caused the heart attack that killed me. That and the fags, although I don’t miss them at all – horrible things.’

      ‘Do you think you still get to eat and drink on the other side?’ I asked. ‘You know, if you pass over.’

      ‘I’ve often wondered that myself,’ Arthur replied. ‘I like to think you do; that you can eat whatever you like, whenever you like, as often as you like, with no negative consequences.’ He licked his lips. ‘Now that would be bliss.’

      ‘So why did you stay?’

      He fell silent for a moment before replying: ‘I had my reasons. But don’t you think for a second that I chose not to go because of what it’s like over there. By all accounts it’s the most perfect place imaginable. I stayed here because I had to. It’s not something I’d recommend.’

      ‘It’s not all that bad, is it? You seem to be doing okay.’

      He snorted. ‘Do you really want to pass the rest of your days watching the world go by around you? Haven’t you felt the loneliness yet?’

      He stared at me, awaiting an answer. ‘Yes, I do feel it sometimes,’ I replied eventually.

      ‘It only gets worse,’ he said. ‘That horrible feeling of being invisible gradually eats away at you. It’s like you’ve lost your identity, your purpose, your self-worth. Many spirits over the years have let it get on top of them and lost their minds. Those are the ones that give us lot a bad name, carrying out the hauntings and so on. Maybe I’ll end up that way one day. I’ve come close before now.’

      ‘But don’t you keep each other company? Don’t you have any spirit friends?’

      Arthur shook his head sadly. ‘Nice idea, lad, but it doesn’t work like that. Those of us that choose to stay all have our reasons for doing so. You could probably call them our obsessions. We each have our little corners of the world and we rarely stray from them. Being a spirit here is a solitary life.’

      ‘So what are you saying, Arthur? Is your advice to abandon my six-year-old daughter and take the elevator upstairs without looking back? That’s what you’d do, is it? This is bullshit. I thought you were here to help.’

      ‘Calm down, lad. I wouldn’t feel qualified to offer such advice. I’m simply laying out all the cards in front of you. I didn’t mean—’

      Arthur stopped mid-sentence. His eyebrows crinkled into a look of concern and his pupils flicked from side to side as he appeared to listen for something.

      ‘What’s the matt—’ I started to ask before he held one finger up to his mouth.

      ‘Got to go,’ he whispered, looking backwards and then vanishing.

      I rushed to my feet. ‘Arthur? Arthur? What the hell?’

      A dark shadow fell across the skylights.