From the moment the sun rose, James knew that today would be a warm June day with the tantalising promise of a fine summer ahead. He stood in the corner of Emma’s room as she rolled to left and right with a sea-like rhythm, desperate to squeeze the last few minutes of sleep out of the night. A flourish of hair in every shade of brown from copper to plain chocolate swung across the pillow and seemed to grow like ivy over the smooth shoulder of her latest beau. James had forgotten his name, although Emma had yelled it several times in the small hours of the night- but then James tended to leave the room at that point, as much because he couldn’t bear to watch her with somebody else as out of a sense of modesty. And it never helped that she had never called his name out in quite that way, or for that matter, quite as often. In a day so long past, but then again almost yesterday, it had been his shoulder, his body beneath that same crisp, clean quilt and the filaments of hair had been going up his nose. For a moment he tried to remember the way she would smell in the morning, when her body had prevailed over the expensive shower gels and antiperspirants and asserted her humanity, her physicality and her womanhood. Strange, he thought, how not only the sense itself had faded, but the memory of that sense; he supposed that eventually he would be unable to remember the smell of anything at all, but then again, having no means of smelling these days it was only logical that one day he would forget how to do it, and then the memory of smell would die.

"She’s nice," came a voice from more or less shoulder height. The voice was unfamiliar, but at some level he could still recognise a Bristolian accent when he heard one.

"Sorry?"

"She’s nice. Pretty. Nice bed, nice bedroom...nice flat, really."

"Pardon me for asking, but who are you exactly?"

"Not am, was. Penny. Penny McLeod. Formerly of Redland Girls’ School, Southampton Uni and Blaise and Moorcroft Solicitors. And formerly engaged to this lump."

Penny leant over the male occupant of the bed as if to shake him into consciousness, but pulled away at the last minute as if afraid of the reminder of her insubstantiality would be too much.

"You had me round your little finger, didn’t you, you cheating little sod? Yes, Tim, no, Tim, three bags full, Tim, I love you, Tim, I trust you, I don’t believe her..." Her voice faded away into a sob, although no tears fell. James moved silently around the bed and found that he could put his arm around her, the final confirmation he needed.

"How did it happen?"

"We had a row," she forced out between gasps. "Becky from Corporate swore she’d seen him one night with someone when he said he was training- he plays rugby , you know-but no, I said I trusted him and I wouldn’t believe her. She’d had her eye on him ever since we started going out, you see, so I thought it was one of her tricks. Anyway, this one night I had to have dinner with a client, and I’m on my way home in a taxi when I see him out with her- this blonde bitch. Hand in hand, walking down Park Street without a care in the world. Boy, did we have a row when he came home. He admitted it then, the swine. I just got in the car and started driving. I drove and drove and didn’t stop until I went into the front of the National Express coach to Swansea."

James had his arm around her by this stage and squeezed her to him.

"I did it myself," he said softly, with more bitterness than shame. "We were friends since school. One of those things where you’re always there for each other when things go wrong, you’re always the one they ring when they get dumped. Us against the world. Except one day I woke up and realised that I was closer to her than I’d been to most of my girlfriends. That we were already doing the emotional part of a relationship, we just weren’t doing the official relationship part, if you understand me. We rang each other, hung out and watched telly, went out for dinner- so why not? Why not make it official and make everybody happy?"

He paused for a moment. "Because while she was having the emotional part with me, she was going out with a guy from her work and never told me. The one thing she never trusted me with. And she didn’t know that I found out until- I did it. Take one bottle of Scotch, one Swiss Army knife and one hot bath, mix well and call the undertaker."

Penny looked up at him, her irises the colour of black coffee and hair tightly back in a ponytail. "So we look after them," she said.

"We look after them," James agreed.

From the knots of people ambling together in brand new woollens towards a raging fire which devoured dozens of wooden pallets and old railway sleepers, James could tell that it was Bonfire Night. One advantage of his insubstantiality was that, while the ordinary members of the public queued to sort out their small change by torchlight to pay for admission, spectres were admitted free, and so he simply walked into the show field unchallenged. Penny was standing by a candy floss stall, watching the pink fluff being spun and the finished sticks placed in a rack, and James could tell by the expression on her face that she could just about remember how it had tasted. As it was early evening, the sun had set several hours ago and the various stalls- candy floss, burgers and hot dogs, variations on hoop-la and shove-hapenny, and one which seemed to be based around the purchase and discarding into the mud of multi-coloured tickets in an attempt to win a roughly life-size stuffed toy tiger. Nothing, then, for the insubstantial.

"Good Halloween?" Penny suddenly asked.

"Not really," James admitted sheepishly. "It’s difficult to know what’s expected of you on that sort of occasion. I just mooched around the cemetery, but nobody turned up."

"Think yourself lucky," Penny continued. "Yours truly was summoned up by three teenage girls in Lowestoft playing at being witches. Took all bloody night to explain what they had to do to reverse the charm." James looked at Penny, as her head bobbed along somewhere near his right shoulder, saw she was smiling and began to smile too. Before long they were both laughing like boyfriend and girlfriend- for which, if any of the passers-by had been able to see them, they would no doubt have been taken. The backs of the crowd seemed to part in front of James and Penny as they moved closer to the roped-off area around the bonfire, and as he could see Penny’s face glowing in the light of the flames, he briefly wondered whether he could feel the warmth or merely remember how it used to feel.

On the opposite side of the bonfire, he could see Emma and Tim; she, wearing one of her quirky multi-coloured woollen hats and a pink scarf with bobbles on the end; he more severe in a dark, heavy coat which seemed to be drawing him back into the darkness behind him. Tim held her with his arms folded around her middle, and occasionally she would turn around, mutter some term of affection and they would kiss. Glancing down at Penny, James could sense that they were feeling the same anguish at seeing their exes so happy with each other; almost instinctively he felt that he should put his arm around Penny and he was relieved when she leaned back into him. There were things he wanted to say, things he felt he should articulate, but then he looked down and saw Penny’s head nestling into his shoulder and felt that nothing was all that important.

From the cold, the hordes of shoppers carrying several bags each and the shops starting to close although it was barely past midday, James deduced that it was Christmas Eve. He followed Emma at a furtive distance, which reflected his feelings about following her rather than his intentions. In addition to her handbag, she was carrying one of those paper bags from fashionable boutiques which tend to us indecent amounts of paper to conceal the fact that one has only bought a pair of socks or underwear. Eventually she turned right and started up a pedestrianised shopping street, where the shoppers were beginning to give way to the first of the Christmas Eve partygoers, and before long turned left up the steps into what had formerly been the main post office and was now a particularly stylish and remarkably expensive restaurant. Glancing at the prices on the menu as he followed Emma in, James felt a distinct sense of relief at the fact that he no longer needed to eat.

During the months which had followed his decease, James had in fact become accustomed to the absence of any physical form or need whatsoever. He was surprised, then, to feel two hands grabbing hold of his jacket lapels and pulling him behind a smooth black lacquered example of modern sculpture.

"He’s only going to bloody propose to her!" Penny whispered harshly in his ear.

After a few moments of incoherent confusion, James recovered himself sufficiently to establish that Penny had spent much of the day following Tim around the jewellers’ shops in the city, looking at one diamond ring after another until he found one which was discreet, tasteful and yet sufficiently expensive to confirm James’s suspicion that he could never have afforded it himself. One advantage of his and Penny’s insubstantiality was that they, unlike Emma and Tim, didn’t have to wait to be seated in the restaurant, so they adjourned to the tasteful mezzanine level overlooking the main floor, where a few overflow tables for two had been laid. Since physical pain and mortality were no longer to be feared, they sat behind the wooden railings around the edge of the balcony, dangling their legs between the railings. They could see everything played out from a distance- Emma and Tim meeting at the bar, kissing, her sand-coloured suit so much softer than his harsh slate grey. A couple of drinks- expensive imported lager for him, Italian white wine for her judging by the pale greenish-yellow colour, and finally the waiter ushering them over to a discreet table. Menus, orders and then intense and intimate conversation, eyes locked on each other and hands meshed over the napkins.

And then the moment. Tim reached inside his suit and withdrew a small burgundy velvet box from his breast pocket; placing it on the table in front of Emma, he opened it for Emma and, James assumed, at that moment asked her the question. Shallow, heartless trollop, he thought as she leaned over the table and kissed him on the mouth. She went to take the ring out of the box, but he insisted on placing it on her ring finger himself, and they proceeded to eat expensive Italian food, make small conversation and gaze at each other with a mixture of awe, admiration and deep self-satisfaction.