The loft ladder was stiff, but Laurie managed to yank it down. She left boy Brahms propped on the landing as she ascended. The attic space was huge and cluttered and dusty. All the beams and plasterwork were new and there was no sign of fire damage.

Feeling like a fool she stood and closed her eyes, trying to feel Brahms's energy. Was this where he'd died? Where he'd suffered the most awful death? She saw the little boy huddled in a corner, choking from the smoke, his clothes igniting, his skin crisping, calling for his mother...

"Jesus, don't!"

Laurie glanced around, trying to clear her mind. There were old toys, ornaments, pieces of furniture, the clutter of a lifetime. She squatted down by a box of photo albums, lifting up the fattest. Inside were family snapshots taken by the Heelshires. And here was Brahms; six months old, one year old, five years old. One photo took her attention; one identical to the oil painting on the landing. Mrs and Mrs Heelshire and their son; her holding his little hand and Brahms staring dolefully into the camera lens, his cherubic face unsmiling, his eyes as flat and dead as the doll's.

"What happened to you?" Laurie whispered. "That you look so troubled?"

She turned more pages and there was Emily, blonde and unsmiling, Brahms behind her, slightly out of focus wearing that same sullen expression. She turned the photo over. Written in delicate copperplate were the words; Brahms and Emily. Brahms's 8th B,Day.

A creak behind her. Laurie spun round, dropping the photos. "Is that you, Brahms? Don't be afraid. I'm not afraid." But her hands trembled anyway as she inched towards the ladder. The attic gave her the creeps and felt claustrophobic, made suffocating by the hot sunshine streaming through the skylight. Swallows nesting in the eaves outside rustled and peeped. She kept her voice conversational, more to muster some courage than for any other reason. "I'm coming downstairs now, Brahms. Will you come with me?"

Safe on the landing, she picked up the doll. For some odd reason it reassured her; was becoming something of a security blanket, as though it might keep her safe in all this madness. But safe from what?

"You wouldn't hurt me, would you, Brahms?" she asked aloud.

The phone rang.

Laurie trotted to her bedroom and picked up. "Hello?"

Slight static. "Brahms, is that you? She thought she heard breathing. "It's alright, Brahms. It's safe to talk to me. There's nobody else here but me...and you?" She knew he was listening, waiting. She spoke breathlessly now as a ball of anxiety and anticipation gripped her. "Talk to me...Brahms...please..."

"I'd never hurt you, Laurie."

Laurie exhaled with a smile, tears stinging her eyes. "Hello, Brahms."

"I've been watching you."

"I know. Do you hear me speaking to you?"

"Yes."

She laughed softly. "Was that you the other day making scratches on the wall?"

"Yes."

"Did you hear me there? Could you feel me listening?"

"Yes."

"You felt so close...so real..."

"I was close to you, almost touching. Did you feel me, Laurie."

"Yes, I did. How can I help you, Brahms? Do you need help?"

There was a pause as though he was considering her question. "I need you," he whispered, and the timbre of his voice changed, deepened. Laurie was too exulted in this spirit communication to notice.

"I had a child once too, Brahms. I wish..." She broke into a silent sob, one hand clutching her throat.

"Don't cry, Laurie."

"I'm sorry..."

"You have me now."

Laurie squeezed her eyes shut, knowing this was insane, knowing she couldn't spend the rest of her life attending a ghost child, that this lost soul must one day pass onward and move into the light.

"Laurie?"

"Yes, Brahms?"

"Why are you sad?"

She smiled again, it was a child's nature to be self absorbed. "I'm not really. Sometimes people cry because they're happy too. It's silly, isn't it?"

"Do I make you happy?"

"Yes, Sweetheart, you do."

"You make me happy too."

"I want to help you, Brahms. Help you to move into a happier place? So that you're not trapped here like..." Like a butterfly in a killing jar. "There are places other than this house. Better places. Places of light and magic. Do you understand?"

She waited for his reply but the line went dead.

He came to her that night.