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Tanya lay propped up against fat white pillows in the sumptuous bed of the Didi Aldershoff suite, the most expensive suite in the hotel.

It comprised a large, harmoniously proportioned bedroom and sitting room, complete with fireplaces and the original white marble chimneypieces, a lavish bathroom and a walk-in wardrobe.

The ceilings were high and embellished with elegant plaster cornices, the walls covered in hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper depicting cherry blossom and hummingbirds.

The floor-length curtains, fashioned in a delicate blue silk, were drawn to shut out the streetlights, the windows closed to mute the noise of a city buzzing with activity, but Tanya got a delightful taste of what it must have been like to have lived at the turn of the last century, when this had been a private house.

Mr Stirling had, indeed, done an excellent job in restoring the building to its original grandeur, or at least in giving that impression.

What a pleasure it would be promoting the Aldershoff to the UK market.

She wondered whether she should cancel the second hotel she was going to look at because she couldn’t represent both, due to a conflict of interest, and her heart was already set on this one.

With its history and unique charm, it would have little competition.

She smiled with satisfaction and closed the novel she’d planned to read, placing it on the bedside table along with her reading glasses.

It was nine o’clock American time, but two in the morning UK time and she was exhausted.

She turned to switch off the bedside lamp.

Just as she did so, her attention was caught by a shadow moving slowly across the wall.

She blinked. She must be seeing things. She recalled the margarita cocktail she’d had in the bar and the red wine, more than one glass, she’d enjoyed with her dinner.

Certainly not enough to give her hallucinations!

She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Then she looked at the wall again.

The shadow was still there.

She stared at it, anticipating it moving again.

It had no defined shape. It was like a cloud or a smudge, and the size of a scatter cushion.

As she stared at it, her heart thumping frantically in her chest, it shifted.

She caught her breath and sat up sharply.

She looked around. She decided it must be a trick of light.

What else could it be? She blinked a few times and focused on it again.

To her astonishment, it began to grow. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in disbelief.

Surely, she wasn’t drunk enough to be seeing things?

She really hadn’t consumed that much alcohol. Had one of her drinks been spiked?

Just then the shadow seemed to morph into the shape of a figure.

It began to take on a human form. A head, arms, legs.

Tanya climbed out of bed, awake and alert suddenly.

She walked slowly towards the wall to get a closer look.

Her first thought was not that it might be a ghost, but that it was the effect of a breeze coming through the window and moving the curtains to make it look like a ghost. She put her hand against the wall and the shadow stopped moving beneath it.

It defied logic. Tanya was baffled. It appeared that the form was not created by something moving in front of a light, but was in the wall itself.

For a moment, both Tanya and the shadow remained still.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a cold draught encircled her ankles.

She felt as if she was being watched. Did she see the dark form of a hand in the wallpaper, reaching towards hers, or was it simply her own shadow?

When she stepped away in alarm, it vanished.

Pixie stood by the window and gazed out into the night.

The lights of New York shone brightly and she sensed the excitement in the heightened energy of this city built on rock.

It had a unique resonance that vibrated up from deep in the earth and into the soles of her feet.

She knew she wasn’t going to sleep much; the energy was too invigorating.

It was thrilling to be in New York. Pixie had never travelled this far from home.

When she’d been a child, living with her grandmother, they’d gone once to France.

She remembered white sand and pink shells, and burning, because her English skin was pale and unaccustomed to such strong sunshine.

Then, when she was at Manchester University, she and Ulysses, whom she’d met at a society for students interested in the paranormal, had made a trip to Bruges and stayed in a quaint little hotel on the canal.

She remembered sitting in a café in Burg Square and talking for hours over cups of coffee and chocolate cake.

She didn’t remember much about what they’d talked about, but she remembered the silences in their conversation very well, because they’d been comfortable.

The silence that settled softly about two people who were totally at ease in each other’s company.

She’d only ever experienced that before with her grandmother.

Pixie had never had a friend before, being so different to everyone else, and the sudden realisation that Ulysses liked her, perhaps not in spite of her eccentricities, but because of them, caused her instinctive mistrust to evaporate.

She’d experienced a dawning, like the blush of a first love, and at that moment she had allowed Ulysses into her heart, where his affection had expanded into the cold, dark corners and infused them with warmth and light.

He had done much to assuage her fears, old fears from a childhood scarred with unhappiness, but he wasn’t enough to dispel them completely.

No one could do that but her, and she wasn’t ready to face them.

Her thoughts drifted then to Cavill. His gentle face floated into the window of her mind and she closed her eyes to see him better.

His tender gaze, the colour of cornflowers, the jocular curve of his lips, the angular line of his jaw, the contours of his features over which she had run the tips of her fingers and committed to memory.

He came back to her, like a melody whose chords were at once familiar and unique, and she felt his energy as if he were standing before her.

A sharp pain stabbed her chest and she put a hand there to relieve it.

What had she done to deserve such an impossible love?

Now, having experienced it, she was certain that she would never find anything close to it in her present life.

She could tell herself a thousand times that he’d died decades ago, that she could scour the world and never find him, for he was gone for ever, and yet there persisted still a fragile flame of hope that no logic could snuff out, however rational.

For Pixie knew that if there was no time, if everything was happening in the now, then surely they weren’t separated at all.

It was only perception that kept them apart.

But how to shift her perception and find him, she didn’t know. Was she mad to think it could be done?

She drew away from the window and climbed into bed.

Tomorrow was going to be testing, she knew that.

She didn’t feel ready to slide. The last one had ended so traumatically, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to go through something like that again.

Yet, she knew she had to help Lester find his way home.

She couldn’t leave him, or poor Mr Stirling, whose business Lester threatened. And no one but she could do it.

She switched off the light and lay in the semi-darkness, gazing up at the ceiling.

She did not want to be disturbed by Lester, but she knew there was a good chance that he would come; sensitives like Pixie were bright beacons of light to lost souls like him.

Most came seeking help, but Lester appeared not to want help.

He appeared to want to create havoc, which was clearly a result of his unhappiness.

Now that he had been brought into this dimension, perhaps he was keen to explore the possibilities and see how far he could affect the living, who, up until now, had been unaware of his existence.

She lay awake and alert for some time, expecting Lester, but Lester did not come.

When she finally slept, she expected Cavill. But Cavill did not come either, not even in her dreams.