The three of us stood in a circle, hands entwined, and our eyes flitted from one to another. The streaking sun, cool and shallow, imbued our faces with a fresh optimism, painting on their anxious canvasses a thin wash of confidence. Even so, it was possible to discern in each of us the range of deep and varied emotions we held. I could recognise the confusion reigning in Carlee: for all her protestations, the night before, that she believed my story, she must have harboured considerable doubts, and to be confronted by incontrovertible proof must have been, at once, comforting and shocking. I stared into Jane's eyes, tried to read them, tried to understand her, but as always she eluded me. There was something in her expression which was different - a gleam in the eye, perhaps, or the cast of her mouth - and which, though ambiguous, suggested to me hope, or possibily anticipation, or perhaps simply satisfaction. Despite my inability to interpret it, the more I watched her, the greater the change I perceived: she seemed less ethereal, less distant, more at ease with her surroundings. Oh, but she was beautiful, so white in the winter sun.

And me? What did my eyes betray? Confusion, mostly, I expect. I was excited, certainly, that my past and present had become conjoined in such a thrilling way, that Jane, my beautiful, lost guide from my teenage years should be standing hand in hand with my present-day love: but beneath the tender satisfaction lay a gnawing, growling sense of unease. Through the cavalcade of emotions turning in my mind, one began to take pre-eminence.

Fear.

I was frightened - frightened for myself, and for Jane and for Carlee. These were not ordinary circumstances, and as we stood together in the clearing, the wind whipping at our faces, I felt a fragile detachment, a loss of control over events: we were heading towards a climax, but I had no conception of what that might be, or what it might mean. I was awash with uncertainty, and uncertainty leads inevitably to fear. As ever, my response was to hide in silence. Human nature generally reacts to such stimuli with a positive - either fight or flight - but such reactions depend upon a set of primary actions within an individual - appraisal, conclusion and response. My critical faculties become paralysed, however, leaving me incapable of anything but denial. If one is afraid of the answer, it is easier not to ask the question; and since all questions, by their nature, beg answers, the solution is to deny their existence in the first place. I suppose the instinct for survival is not strong in me: submission is more my thing.

And so, in retrospect, I can identify the fear that gripped me that fateful afternoon which launched us towards the terrible events that followed. At the time, however, I hid it - hid it from myself as much as from the others, and from this distance I really can't tell how much I was aware of the palpitating fears inside me.

I've replayed our conversation so many times, heard the voices of the past echo in my brain, watched and re-watched the slowly fading images in my mind. I am one of those curious people, impetuous themselves, who are predisposed to like certainty in others, and as I replay that afternoon I find solace in trying to identify the moment when our fate was sealed, the instant, the decision, the remark which finally sent our story spinning to its conclusion. Was it Carlee?

"Hope I can be of service, ma'am. I'll help in any way I can," she had said to Jane. Was that the decisive moment?

No, I don't think that was it. That was just Carlee, so kind, so thoughtful: however surprised she may have been by the appearane of Jane, however difficult she might have found the ensuing events, her offer of help was typical and, I knew, entirely genuine. The events which overtook us that November needed as their genesis something more dramatic, less selfless than that.

"Yes, I know you will, and I know you'll see it to the end," Jane had replied.

No, that wasn't the moment either, but what always struck me, afterwards, was Jane's assurance that day. She may have looked frail and pale, a slight teenager with a girlish appearance, but her demeanour was far from that. Carlee, that inveterate seeker of knowledge and understanding, had struck up a constant barrage of questions, while I was too awestruck by events to offer much in the way of lucidity: and that left Jane to assume a position of authority. She gathered my left hand, steadying herself with her stick, and with Carlee grasping my other hand, squeezing supportively, we continued down the Hallow Road. Jane patiently fielded Carlee's questions all the while, questions I had never dared ask and which I could barely bring myself to hear answered.

"Where are your parents, Jane?"

"I have no parents. They're both dead. I live with my guardian, Pater."

"Why do you call him Pater?"

"Because that's how I think of him - Father."

"And where do you live?"

"In the woods, not far from here."

"How do you live? How do you manage?"

"Oh, we do very well, thank you. Pater is very capable. And so am I."

"I'm sure you are. What do you do for education?"

"Pater taught me all I need to know."

"And health? And other services? Official services?"

"I don't think officialdom is very interested in me, Carlee. What do you think?"

I smiled to myself as I watched Carlee try to maintain a rational argument: she would lose, I knew, just as I had lost, so many years before. Jane was an enigma, a living mystery. Logic held little sway with her - her world was not like ours. I was awash with conflicting emotions: to walk hand in hand with Jane along the Hallow Road, reliving my childhood, breathing the sharp air and delighting in the rain-washed colours and sounds and smells, was something I had dreamed of so many times, a star-bright fantasy leavening the dull uniformity of adulthood. I was elated, excited beyond measure, my feet floating across the leaf-strewn paths and my stomach churning with happiness. But also, there was trepidation: not merely the generalised sense of foreboding which my subconscious was trying so hard to deny, but also a specific, heart-stopping alarm that we were headed unstoppably towards something I didn't understand, and couldn't control.

And the root of this fear was obvious: we were walking, slowly, inexorably, to the scene of the accident.

Jane seemed oblivious as we walked towards it. It hoved into view, dark and dangerous, a curious - frankly unnecessary - kink in the path which took it closer to the river, overhanging it as though part of an adolescent dare. My feet started to drag, my grip on Jane's hand loosening, and finally she became aware of my discomfort.

"It's okay, Harriet," she said. "I come past here every day."

"Not with me."

"But it's okay."

Carlee sensed the shift in mood. "Is this where 3;?"

Jane nodded. "It just happened."

"What do you mean, 'it just happened'?" Once more, Carlee refused to give in where so many times before my courage had failed me.

"Just what I say. It happened. It was ordained."

"Ordained? What the hell does that mean?"

Jane pulled her hand from mine and stood on the exposed ridge, poised at the very place where eighteen years before she had teetered back and plunged deathwards into the waiting river. My heart froze, a physical pain pounding through my veins and muscles and sinews and bones. I studied her face, remembering the look I had seen then, that frozen, stunned expression, the blank lack of comprehension which was etched on her face as she was engulfed by the icy water and swept from my life. I was rooted to the spot, my mind screaming, hands stretched imploringly towards her. Memory is such a cruel thing: time without boundaries.

Jane continued, regardless. "Just what I say: it happened because it had to happen."

"Okay girl, stop talking in riddles."

"Girl?" Jane laughed, tossing her black hair behind her. "Looks can be deceptive, Carlee my dear. I may look like a girl, but just remember how long I've known Harriet. Far longer than you, in fact. I've been around a lot longer than you might think."

Carlee bristled. "Yeah, you're right, hun. And I may have the look of someone who likes being patronised but hey - looks can be deceptive, right?"

"I'm not patronising you, Carlee."

"Okay, lady, enough. Harriet may be all starry-eyed over you, but I'm not, so let's cut the crap here. Don't give me any of the melodrama, honey, save it for Harriet: she gives a shit. Just tell me what in the name of hell's goin' on here." Carlee strode angrily past Jane downhill to where the path was wider and safer. "And get away from that edge, goddammit. Don't you know you could fall in, for chrissakes."

There was a momentary pause and Jane roared with laughter. She turned to me, her eyes bright with amusement. "I'm beginning to understand what you see in her, Harriet."

I smiled wanly. This was not going well. Carlee was slow to anger, her gentle personality generally giving people the benefit of the doubt in most situations but, being undemonstrative by nature, she became suspicious of others when she thought they were grandstanding. That, I had to concede, was exactly what Jane was doing: her dramatic exhibition beside the riverbank was unnecessary and, in truth, rather unpleasant. I felt as though I were a prize being fought over by two proud individuals. And I had no idea who, if anyone, I wanted to win.

Ahead was a small clearing where a tree had been cut down, the trunk chopped into nine or ten small chunks. Carlee began to wrestle with them and turned three on to their ends, forming impromptu stools. "Sit!" she commanded, propping herself on the largest of the three.

"Okay," said Jane, sitting on a log and picking self-consciously at a thread on her dress. "You're looking for answers, Carlee. What do you want to know?"

"Everything. Who the hell are you? What is this place? What's going on at that house? How are they all connected? Just tell me - what's going on here?"

Jane laughed again. "I wish I knew the answer to some of those." Carlee rose from her perch, ready to launch herself once more, but Jane waved her hand mollifyingly. "But I can give you some answers, Carlee - and Harriet. I ought to have told you long ago, shouldn't I? I don't know how much you know, how much you've guessed?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, really." I felt so stupid, inadequate.

"How are things connected?" Jane turned to Carlee, repeating her question. "The house and me. You know the connection?"

"No."

"You must do."

"Jeez, stop with the tease routine, will you?"

"Do you know who I am?" Another question, but somehow we knew this wasn't part of a tease: her sincerity was evident in her mournful expression, so far removed from the posturing we had witnessed by the river's edge. We made no reply. Jane seemed suddenly remote, and I wanted to reach out and hold her but didn't dare, for fear that she wouldn't be there. "Think about it. The fire was when? Thirty-six years ago. You first met me when, Harriet? Twenty years ago. And I was how old? Sixteen. Sixteen, twenty - thirty-six." An icy fear shivered through my body, a dizzying numbness filling my mind. Jane's gaze was fixed on the matted and clotted trail of sawdust on the clearing floor, but I had no idea what she was seeing. "Who died in the fire? Mr and Mrs Ripley - and who else?" She faltered, her voice breaking. "A baby, not much more than a few weeks old, little Aileen. Dead before she lived." Jane raised her eyes and stared into mine, then into Carlee's. She was crying, and in those eyes I saw the pain of eternity. Her lip trembled, cheeks impossibly pale in the weak sun. She pressed her stick against the sawdust, breaking the strings, rubbing them into the earth as though erasing them from existence.

"And," Carlee whispered.

"And I am Aileen," Jane replied.

The three of us sat in silence as hazy sunlight basked the clearing. Around us, the trees rippled in the light breeze, leaves whispering confidentially, as though relaying the news the length of the Hallow Road. The river, sleek and cold, darkly aloof, paid no heed.

"Aileen died," said Carlee, coldly.

"Yes she did. Horribly, painfully, suddenly. And for some reason - I don't know why, the suddenness of it, the violence, I don't know - her soul didn't. The poor, demented soul hung around the house after the body was removed, after the place was cleaned up, after it was all hosed down, after everybody left. Left it alone, and lost. And it cried and it cried. I cried and cried. And that was when Pater found me."

"Pater?"

"Janus Pater. My father. Janus guards the doorways, watches over beginnings and departures. And he saw me, alone and terrified, a lost soul alone in the world, a beginning that had no future, an entrance that led to nowhere. I was everything he was supposed to prevent. And so he took me for his own, protected me, gave me a body, a life, a meaning. Gave me love - and attention. You don't know how precious those are." My heart was throbbing as Jane recounted her tale. The notion of Janus, the guardian of the gates of heaven, adopting the tormented soul of a recently deceased baby was powerfully poignant, heroically sad.

"So you're not real?"

"I'm as real as you are, Carlee. Feel me."

"But not human?"

"No, not really. I died in a fire, thirty-six years ago. My soul lives on - I don't know why."

"And you never age? You're always eighteen?"

"Oh no, I do age, just like you."

"But you're the same now as you were when Harriet first met you."

"Only because I've aged that much again."

There was silence as we digested what Jane told us. I felt sick to the depths of my being. 'Only because I've aged that much again.' Which meant what? That she had died? Again? And started living, again? The trees, once friendly, stolid companions by the riverside, seemed to brood, press closer, their leaves rustling ever more insistently, a sly chorus of disapproval, a muted whispering of accusation.

"So." I faltered. "So, when you 3; fell in the river 3;"

"I died again, or at least my body did. I became a baby once more. I've spent eighteen years growing all over again."

"But I saw you, every night afterwards. You came to me."

"In your dreams, Harriet; I connected with you in your dreams. I wasn't there."

I burst into tears. I had always known that Jane had died in the accident, but somehow her presence afterwards, joining me every night in a joyful reverie, managed to assuage the pain. I was able to reflect on the accident more in terms of my loss than Jane's, and self pity is an easier emotion to overcome than guilt. But now, hearing of the physical impact I had wrought on her, my remorse redoubled.

"Harriet, no," she said, stroking her hand on my arm. "Please, it just happened."

"Why do you keep saying that?" exploded Carlee.

"Because it did. And because I don't understand it either." A momentary flash of temper registered in Jane's eyes. "Don't you think I'd like to know? Don't you think I'd like to know why I'm still here, still on Earth, a soul looking for a life, when that life was destroyed thirty-six years ago? You keep asking for answers, Carlee. Maybe you ought to stop for a second and think that I might want those answers too. And maybe I've got more of a right to know them than you have."

Jane was shaking, her head lowered, hair shrouded round her face. As she spoke, as the depth of her despair became evident, a chasm emerged between us. I realised then that I had never known her, that she was a mystery, not only to me but to herself, and I trembled as I tried to comprehend the aching, despairing loneliness she must have endured in her tortured life. I stepped towards her and swept her into my arms, feeling her slight and shivering frame fold into mine. She sobbed, racking sighs rending her breast. In my years, I had known unhappiness and isolation, but Jane, her fragile frame heaving against me, represented depths I hadn't known existed. Nor, I thought, should they be allowed to exist.

"Help me," she whispered, just as I had done to Carlee the night before. I held her head, my hands riffling through her hair, and looked over her shoulder at Carlee. She, too, was sobbing for the loss of innocence represented by the wretched form of Jane.

"We will," I said. "We will."

And that, I think, is the moment, the decision, the statement which defined our fate, sent us towards the nightmare which was to come.

On to part ten