And so - finally - it had begun to do. I fluttered open my eyelids. There was darkness, a gentle, comforting gloom, warm against my eyes, soothing the heaviness in my head. My surroundings hid coyly in the shadows, shapes not revealing their form, and I had no idea where I was. But I was safe, that much I knew.

"Hey babe."

I cried. Safety was assured. Carlee's hand caressed my face, her fingers trickling down my hot cheek and thumb smudging the tears into my skin. I cried - oh, how much I cried - as the memories of the previous day flooded through me, my body expelling its terror, its revulsion, its confusion. All the while, Carlee lay by my side, holding me, loving me, not speaking, simply supporting me through the pain. And I cried.

We made love. There, in the morning, amid the trappings of the past we forged our future. We made love, and it was special. We made love, and it was wonderful. Carlee wrapped her legs around me, long, cool, elegant, and her arms embraced me, her hands touched me, her fingers stroked me. I stretched and gave myself to her. I laid myself open, feeling more vulnerable than I had ever known, and yet completely at ease, trusting fully in the woman beside me. Her fingers scratched my neck as she kissed me, kissed me; her palm held my breast as her tongue traced lower, lower; my stomach churned and twisted as she licked, as she licked; and she explored me, controlled me, brought my body back to life.

We made love, Carlee and I. It was slow. It was beautiful.

In the afterglow we lay together, hand in hand. I felt her heat, the tidy rise and fall of her breath, and we watched the shadows of dawn, the creeping dark. We were as one. We had crossed the border. Perhaps only once in a lifetime you experience a bond so intimate that no preconception is inhered. It is not so much that your thoughts are in unison: there are, simply, no thought processes involved; the two of you become an organic entity and the lifeforce you create takes on a spirit of its own. I was not Harriet as we made love, nor was she Carlee: we were matter floating through time, aspiring to heaven.

And we found it, that day, in the melding of our hearts.

As we stretched together in bed, she waited for me to ask, and I wanted answers, but I didn't want the moment to end. While we lay, our bodies together, hearts beating in unison, it was possible to pretend that nothing had happened. The Hallow Road didn't exist; the Ripley House was nothing more than a derelict shell; and Jane was 3;

Well, yes - Jane was?

Jane was my responsibility. As she returned to my thoughts, the full horror of our experience the night before returned: Jane, my oldest, dearest friend - my first love - had slowly become a stranger to me in the last few days, as it became evident that I had never truly known her, that her suffering had been - and, indeed, remained - a mystery to me. Yet, paradoxically, this served to increase my determination to help: my childhood infatuation had been replaced by a mature sense of responsibility towards her. Love is a selfish thing: at first, in the initial flush of romance, you think of your lover in terms of yourself - as your love, in a relationship which is happening to you. From there, it can develop in one of three ways: it can wither and die, as most relationships do; or, as with Carlee and me earlier, it can break through narcissism and blossom into mutually dependent, romantic love; or, finally, it can develop into a platonic relationship, a deep-rooted bond, a lifelong union of souls. So it was with Jane; and I knew that, somehow, I had to help her. I stared at the ceiling, forcing myself not to cry. My fingers - entwined in Carlee's - tensed, and she felt, and she understood.

"Okay?" she whispered.

"What happened?"

"Honey, I booked us a season ticket in Accident and Emergency."

"Not again?" I had no recollection, I realised, of anything after my last encounter with Ripley. Instantly, I felt guilt for neglecting Jane and for causing Carlee so much trouble.

"Hell, yes. But at least the ambulance knew where to find us this time. Only took fifteen minutes. Still long enough to freeze my tits off. I'll never get used to this Brit weather."

I laughed. "Tell them you want the air ambulance next time."

"Babe, there ain't gonna be a next time. I'm not letting you out of my sight again. Every time I do you disappear into God knows where and come back some kind of a wreck. At least you didn't have a cracked shin this time. But it was that same nurse on duty, you know - in the hospital. Gave me the same goddamned look, as well, like I was the Boston Strangler and Saddam Hussein rolled into one. And if we don't get a visit from the FBI, or whatever they're called here, my name's not Carlee McCord." Carlee was making light of the affair, but her concern was evident in the flitting of her hand over my abdomen and the curl of her fingers in my hair. She watched over me solicitously.

"Don't you worry about that nurse," I laughed. "I'll sort her out for you."

"Don't you worry, I sorted her myself. 'Sister, if I wanna hear from an asshole,' I told her, 'I'll fart.' She shut up after that."

I hugged her. "You're incorrigible, woman." The warmth of her humour was a comforting balm, and it would have been pleasant to maintain the levity of the moment, but I still needed answers. I looked away, my gaze alighting on the cobwebs twined round the ceiling rose, afraid of what I might hear. "And Jane?" I asked. "Jane - what happened to her?"

"I've no idea, babe. Never saw her again. I walked round the house and when I came back a minute later, you were writhing on the ground, throwing up, and Jane was nowhere to be seen. I haven't seen her since."

Fear iced through my body. At the culmination of the events of the day before, I had somehow managed to break out of Ripley time, but had Jane? Or was she still trapped in that void? The most hideous terror swept through me as I considered whether she might still be imprisoned in the hell of her own past. Could she be constrained there, condemned to watch her own death unfold before her for eternity? I sat upright in alarm, a sheet of cold sweat washing down my brow and across my body.

"Jane!" I shouted.

"Hey babe, it's okay. She'll be alright. She's not like us, remember. She'll have found her own way back, into her own space - wherever that is." Carlee smoothed her hand up and down my spine and flicked my hair away from my eyes. I nodded, though I was far from convinced. A chill had settled on the room and I was conscious of the beating of my heart. Through the window, a swirling wall of early morning fog had washed the world grey and indistinct, as though it shared my uncertainty. "I'll go get us some orange juice, I'm thirsty," Carlee said, and I agreed distractedly.

She slid out of the room and I lay back in bed, closing my eyes and trying to escape reality. It was disheartening that the joy of my relationship with Carlee seemed to be inextricably bound to the horror of the Ripley House. I had brought her home to glimpse my past, but I had no wish to inflict on her my nightmares. I wanted to share the happiness of my childhood - a quiet walk along the Hallow Road, the little house with the red door at 29 Millbank Street - but not those dark, grim reminders of alienation which had reared up at us in the past few days: Margot Paterson was a name etched in the loneliness of my childhood, and there it should have remained. The Ripley House, too, belonged to a different time; it had no place in my adult life. It may have been naive, but I wanted to banish dark memories and concentrate on the positive, and the way that they had become conjoined was deeply unsettling. It was as though I could only enjoy the latter by enduring the former. I wanted the horrors of the last few days to disappear, to leave us free from the ghosts of the past, ready to embrace the promise of the future. I knew, now, that this would mean leaving behind Jane; and, galvanised by my love for Carlee, I was finally prepared to do so, but as long as I had no idea of her fate I was unable to cut the ties: I wanted to let go, but couldn't.

"Harriet," Carlee shouted from outside. "Could you come through here, please." Her voice sounded strange - strained, an unwonted edge to it which made me uneasy. I think I knew immediately what had happened. Leaping from the bed, I pulled on my dressing gown and went through to the living room.

There, standing beside Carlee, as I suspected she would be, was Jane.

She looked terrible, her face gaunt and drawn. Her eyes, usually dark and mischievous, were hollow pools, blank and hopeless. Even her hair, normally wild and tumultuous as it swept around her neat, round face, lay lank and expressionless. I pulled her into my arms and hugged her, pressing my face to hers and kissing her. She was wretchedly cold, her skin taut and smooth but lifeless to my touch. I was losing her, or she was losing us, her spirit failing, hope dying. She was unrecognisable from the girl who had re-entered my life barely two nights before.

"You called me, Harriet. And here I am. I told you, all you had to do was call me." She smiled, her pain etched in the curl of her mouth, the faint spidering of the skin around her eyes. She was right - I had called her. All those times in the past - when I had called out to her and she hadn't come - I now realised had been for my own benefit, not hers.

"I'm so, so sorry," I said.

"I know."

We sat together for some moments, holding hands, staring into each other's eyes: I wanted to understand her, and through that to help her, but I was lost in the mystery of her past and the pain of her present. My moon child looked so terribly alone. Carlee appeared with a pot of tea and perched herself in the armchair opposite, and the three of us sat, watching the sunlight breaking through the morning fog, slowly revealing itself, burning through the detritus of night and claiming the day for its own. I thought of the day before - but how long ago it seemed! - when we had stood in the clearing, three women hand in hand, a hopeful embrace, our lips together in sisterhood as we faced adversity. Now we were congregated in silence, rocked by experience and riven by pain. Jane sat with her head bowed as I explained to Carlee what had befallen us in the Ripley House. It felt tawdry, as though by repeating the episode I was bringing the past to life yet again: sometimes words can cut as deeply as the actions they describe. Carlee shook her head, weeping openly and fumbling for Jane's hand to comfort her.

"I don't understand, Jane," she said, when I had finished. "Why does this happen? Why does it keep happening, I mean? How can you keep going back in time?"

"It's not because I want to, believe me," replied Jane. "I'm trapped. I'm not here because time keeps replaying itself: time replays itself because I'm here. And it's not me going back in time, it's time coming forward to meet me."

"Sorry, you've lost me."

"All this is happening because I'm still here. I should be dead: I died thirty-six years ago - but here I am, and all this stuff happens because of me."

"So why didn't you die?"

"Ah well, there's the question, Carlee. I've spent two lifetimes trying to work that one out." Jane fixed Carlee with a steady stare, confrontational and confessional at the same time. "But I'll tell you why. I know it now: I'm here because I cannot rest. I'm not allowed to." She licked her lips pensively, as though uncertain of herself, and then continued. "It's my father."

"Ripley?"

"Yes, Ripley."

"Why? How?"

"He won't let me rest. He wouldn't let my body live, or Aileen's, I suppose I mean. We heard that, we saw it, yesterday. He didn't want her to grow up to be a whore like her mother - or so his delusions told him. So he killed her. He wouldn't let my body live, and as a result my spirit cannot die. I've been here ever since, floating round the world, looking for peace."

"Can't what-his-name help?"

"Who?"

"Janies, Janice 3;"

"Janus? Janus Pater. No, no, not really." Jane laughed lightly. "I don't think you fully understand about him. About us. We're spirits, Carlee. Not real people. We have bodies, sure. And they grow and age, just like yours, but this 3;" She gestured to her body, stroking her hand down her arm and across her breast. "This isn't really me. It's not really here, this body, it's just an inconsequential part of me. Normally, it wouldn't exist at all, except as some theoretical presence. It's only because Harriet called me that I appeared to her. Or seemed to. The real me - I'm 3; there 3;" She opened her arms, hands gesturing, palms upraised, indicating space. "A piece of air, a thought floating in time. This body, it's like a uniform I have to wear, or an appendage, but it's not the real me. I'm a spirit: we don't interact like you do. We're like bubbles of existence, little black holes in time. And because of that, because we only exist in and of ourselves, we can't really do things. Do you understand? There's nothing Janus could do to help me. The spirits can't change anything. We only exist."

I had been largely quiet up till this point, but Jane's comments were unsettling. "All the times we used to play?" I faltered.

"Yes?"

I wasn't sure what I was asking. "You're not real, not a real body 3;"

"No. At least, the body is always there, just not in the way you perceive it. Not in any physical sense. So I made myself appear. Just for you. I used to see you often, walking alone along the road, and you seemed as lonely as me. Somehow, you reached out to me - even before you knew it, actually. And I made myself come to you."

"So when you weren't with me 3;"

"I was nowhere, and everywhere. Floating in space. Hovering round the Hallow Road - I never travel far from the house."

"I am so sorry." The full horror of Jane's existence was beginning to dawn on me: she wasn't alive, not really; rather, she was a jumble of synapses and memories and responses left over from another life, floating in limbo, ghosting around the fringes of a world she couldn't inhabit. The staggering loneliness of a life outside life was too awful to contemplate. I shivered, tears forming in my eyes.

"It's okay," Jane said, her voice soothing, hand stroking my thigh. I bristled. It wasn't meant to be like this: I was meant to be supporting her.

"Jane 3;" I paused. Finally, I was forcing myself to ask of Jane the questions I should have asked too many years before. Her expression, the pale yearning in her face, the shimmer of helplessness in her eyes, told me the answer even before I formed the words. "Are you happy?"

"Happy?"

"With your existence? Your way of life?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it must be hell. I can't begin to imagine how awful it is."

The childish puffiness of her face emphasised her sorrow. Tears welled in her eyes and she looked too young and vulnerable to be flayed by such torment. "You're right. You can't begin to imagine. Think of the things you've hoped for in your life, Harriet: little things - a doll on your birthday, a good grade in your exam. Bigger things - a job you really wanted, a lifestyle, a lover. Family: a mum and dad to love you, kiss you goodnight. Plans: think of all the plans you've made, the times you've dreamed of what to do with your life. And think of the happiness when they happened. The delight when you opened that letter from the exam board and saw your results in black and white; the phone call offering you that job; the first date, the first kiss, the falling in love. Think even of the bad things, the disappointments, the pain, the loss. Because even they're important: they're all experiences. All part of living. All part of life.

"I've never had that. I've never hoped for anything. I've never received anything. I've never experienced anything. Apart from my times with you, Harriet, all those years ago - and Jesus, they seem a long time ago, I'm telling you - emptiness, that's all I've ever known. An eternity of emptiness. Am I happy? That's a peculiar question to ask a shell."

As Jane related the bleakness of her world, I thought of the day before, and of my terror when I had been trapped between times, when I was in the grip of unending blackness; and I realised, with a shiver of repulsion, that this was Jane's world - this was her existence. I had endured it for a matter of moments - unwillingly - and it comprised the worst, most terrifying episode of my life: and Jane faced it for eternity. Finally I knew the answer; finally I knew my role.

"You've never hoped for anything?" I asked.

"No."

"Nothing?" I sensed the evasion.

She nodded. "Yes. One thing."

"What?"

"To die."

I knew this was going to be her answer, but even so it shocked me. Carlee sat back in her armchair, silenced by the sombre drift of the conversation. I stared at Jane, fixed her gaze in mine, focused on the soul residing deep within the blackness of her pupils. "Is that possible? Can we do it?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

Her eyes remained locked on mine, but I could tell she was not looking at me; she was a lifetime away, in her own space, her own world. Finally, she spoke. "I can't do it myself: I've explained already - I can't make things happen. I need you to do it. It's up to you, Harriet. You can make it happen - if you want."

"And how do I do that?"

"I can't die until I'm allowed."

"Until you're allowed?"

"Yes. I'm here because my spirit is trapped here. It needs to be set free."

"And how do we do that?"

"My father. Ripley. He's still here, his anger is still alive. He won't let me rest."

"Ripley's still here? He can't be, he died, didn't he? After the fire?"

"Oh yes, he's dead. But he's a spirit too, like me. Floating around in misery, driven crazy by jealousy and spite and anger."

"Have you seen him?"

"No, but he's here. Don't you see? He must be, for me to still be here. If it wasn't for him, I would have died by now."

"So until Ripley lets you, you can't die?"

"No."

"And we have to make him?"

"Yes."

Carlee sat forward. Her face was white, muscles tense with shock. She reached for my hand, and then for Jane's, and we sat once more, a trinity of hope. Carlee looked first at me, then at Jane. "So what you're telling us is - we kill your father?"

"Yes."

On to part sixteen