And this time, Jane was by my side.

Again, I felt a curious mix of sensations. The fear of the unknown was briefly usurped by an aching happiness as I viewed the simple room, so homely and plain. It was a room where plans had been made, where dreams were hatched, beliefs nurtured. It was empty, but the presence of Mary Ripley was everywhere, woven in the fabric of the furniture and framed by the angle of the walls, whispering hope into the air. Without knowing her, without even seeing her, I felt a wellspring of love for Mary Ripley.

It was a baffling response, but as quickly as it entered my consciousness it was gone, replaced by a brooding sense of disquiet. There were currents in the room, contrasting contexts that existed at the same time and in the same space, but independently of one another, and which were jostling for prominence, battling for superiority. It had been the love emanating from Mary Ripley that registered first, but almost immediately it was overtaken by a menacing silence, an intense but unspoken expression of anger: this, clearly, was a far greater force, and with an ache in my heart I realised that in the battle for supremacy it would easily emerge triumphant.

And, of course, I knew where that would lead.

Jane was silent, slowly circling, observing once more the room she had briefly known, so many years before. Her perfect moon face, usually charged with a beneficent smile, was sombre and rueful, its pale complexion adding to the register of sadness. As the day had progressed she had become more and more withdrawn and I wanted to reach out to her, but already I knew she was sliding from my grasp. She was different, growing more remote all the time, a stranger adrift in her own misadventure, and I knew that the happy, intense friend from my own childhood was now lost to me. She was a thirty-six year old spirit in an eighteen year old body, but her dismal experience was enough to span a century.

There were photographs on the sideboard and the mantelpiece, and in the alcoves which flanked the fireplace, and hanging from every wall, inhabiting every space. Smiling faces populated the room, frozen images from the past projecting their happiness, vainly trying to influence the present. But the present was not a place for laughter. Jane picked a photograph from the sideboard and stroked her finger across the glass frame. It was Mary - her mother - seated in the grass on top of what looked like a disused railway embankment. She was rested easily on her left hand, a relaxed smile enlivening her face, and the contrast with the solemn eyed gaze of her daughter as she looked down on this memento mori was harrowingly poignant. With her right hand, Mary was stroking a dog, a black labrador puppy which was stretched contentedly by her side. Her hair was long and curled, swept back in a nineteen-fifties style, and her face was fresh, her features vivid. There was love in those eyes - and merriment, a casual delight in the ease of the moment. I began to cry. I cried for Jane, the child silently holding a picture of a mother she never knew; and I cried for Mary, whose dreams were to be cruelly discarded; and - without knowing why - I cried for myself.

The currents in the room were buzzing, generating an almost electric sense of foreboding, building to a peak of distraction and insinuating themselves into my mind, layer on layer, until they began to fill my head, my ears singing with dread anticipation. There was a cold taste in my mouth and my stomach was churning like a river in flood. History played itself out again, and I, the unwitting and unwilling observer, stood by.

My eyes tracked to the door in the instant before the handle rattled. I saw it turn, heard the hinge creak and watched, once more, as the door opened and Mary Ripley entered. I was struck again by her beauty, by the sadness and serenity which underpinned her gentle expression in that unguarded moment before her face was transformed by the surprise of seeing me. She faltered and stood in the doorway, her eyes directly on mine, and in that instant I was transformed from observer to participant. I readied myself to assume my accustomed role while the familiar episode began to unfold and I found myself, yet again, drawn into that curious conversation. "Oh, you startled me," she would say. "What are you doing here?" And then she would walk around me quizzically, before telling me to light the fire.

Only this time she didn't.

Where, before, she had fixed my gaze and stared at me as she spoke, this time her concentration seemed unsettled. She looked first at me, and then, more pointedly, at Jane, but her expression seemed unfocused, rootless.

"What on earth are you doing with her?" she said to me. "In the name of God, take her upstairs. Are you mad?" I was taken aback because this was a different response from previously but, just as before, it seemed oddly disjointed, somehow inappropriate. As she spoke she seemed to be looking not quite at me, but to the side, or into the distance, as though she were out of synch with the moment. It served to make her more vulnerable, and I felt a pang of remorse for this poor woman. In her mind she still harboured ambitions and aspirations, she planned, she hoped for the future; but I knew that in two hours she would be dead. That is a dreadful knowledge to have. The melancholy glint in her eye, that emblem of faith through adversity - but one that I knew to be utterly, utterly futile - is an image I can never erase. The only sight more affecting than the expression of the condemned is the expression of those who are condemned, but don't yet know it: to recognise the mortal fate of another before they themselves do is to peer, unbidden and unwelcome, into their souls. I looked away, unable to bear the betrayal of her dreams.

I was, though, perplexed by the change in events. Why had Mary reacted differently? Why had the conversation altered? It was presumably because of the presence of Jane, but I couldn't comprehend why that should make any difference. I looked at Jane in confusion. She was motionless. Her entire body seemed drained of spirit, her features frozen in shock and her limbs rigid. She stared, open-mouthed, at Mary Ripley - that is, at her own mother. I tried to understand the emotions which would be running through her mind, but the concept was too great to grasp. Jane, poor Jane, an orphan murdered thirty-six years before, a spirit wandering restlessly through time, and now confronted by the afternoon of her death, confronted by her own mother as she unknowingly entered the final throes of her life; and confronted by the hideous certainty of the violence about to be unleashed.

Time stilled, the world stalled, as the pulse of eternity fizzed to a halt: this encounter was too raw to be measured in moments. Jane's face was deathly white, her plump lips - usually a glistening vermilion - the colour of ash in a morning grate, and a fallow rim edged her eyes, emphasising their loss. Long, lustrous hair swung around her shoulders as she turned to face me. Her lip trembled as she fixed me with the most awful stare I have ever seen: such pain there was in those eyes, decades of hurt and loneliness, an endless pool of torment. And something more, something deeper, more sinister, though in the shock of the moment I couldn't deduce what it might be.

"Well, don't just stand there," said Mary Ripley as she turned to the door. "Do something useful. Light the fire. Can't you see there's a storm coming?"

I was partly relieved that we had returned to the familiar script, but the implications lurched caustically in my stomach: it meant, of course, that I would be confronted by James Ripley in a matter of minutes. Suddenly, I realised how foolish we had been - and how much danger we were in. We should never have come: I knew that now. I had fared badly in my last encounter with James Ripley, and this time I had Jane to consider. I tried to calculate how much time we had before he appeared, but it was impossible - I had replayed this episode so often over the years that any concept of the natural passage of time was lost. Panic began to rise in my stomach and chest, filling me with a bloated, heavy feeling of helplessness. But I knew one thing: we had to get out.

"Jane," I shouted, "Jane, get out. Now." She was still anchored where she had stood when Mary Ripley entered the room, and gave no indication that she had heard me. She was staring, uncomprehending, face blank with shock, her beautiful features masked by the flow of time. I shook her arms roughly and shouted: "Jane, quickly, get out!"

Finally, she seemed to free herself from the stasis which had gripped her. A ripple of distaste swept across her face, her eyes dark with fear, and animation returned to her features. She nodded.

"Get out," she repeated, but she was still listless, her body heavy and her thoughts confused. Rain had begun to sleet against the window, heavy drops thudding raggedly against the glass - portents of the imminent storm - and during the passage of Mary's and Jane's history the room had grown virtually dark. The confused undercurrents within the room still clashed and collided, but the malevolent forces were gathering for the final assault, and I knew it would erupt any moment.

As, indeed, it did.

The slam of the front door shattered our nerves and I screamed in alarm. Ripley. It was Ripley - and his shotgun. I looked for somewhere to hide, but instantly the room seemed the smallest space in the world; the walls closed in, the furniture shrunk and only the door - through which James Ripley would burst any moment - seemed to loom over us like the entrance to Tartarus.

"We're trapped," I said.

"No, there's an exit, feel it." Jane was pressed against the far wall of the living room, her hands slithering over the wallpaper. "This is the way I came in, the first time. It's here somewhere." Her dark hair swished around her as she desperately groped along the length of the wall, her fingers, long and slender, deathly white, scrabbling in search of the impossible.

"It's too late!" Despair washed through me, a deadening weight of certainty which left me sickened and afraid. I looked at the door, willing it to remain closed, praying for time to trick itself and choose a separate path.

Jane was frantic, her hands sliding along the wall, displacing photographs and smudging the wallpaper with sweaty fingerprints. "Here!" she cried. "It's here!" My vision was torn between Jane and the closed door, that flimsy barrier between us and destruction. Despite my prayers, the door handle rattled and began to turn. I looked at Jane despairingly. She turned to me, tears in her eyes, silently pleading. Around her, the air shimmered like the haze of a summer's day and as the door swung open, Jane seemed to float, weightless and translucent. In that instant she was beautiful, the mask of tormented sorrow ripped from her to reveal the fresh-faced hope which had so seduced me eighteen years before. My heart ached as I finally - fully - recognised the change that had come over her in the last two days. She hovered for a moment, imperfectly bridging time, and in the moment when James Ripley entered the room her spirit elided and her body disappeared into the walls of the house.

On to part twelve