 
# DEFUNCT

# Jonathan Pidduck

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# Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Jonathan Pidduck

**Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes**

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I must admit to being a little anxious when I woke up in darkness, to find that I'd been buried alive. I had a panic attack which must have lasted for hours. I'd never had a panic attack before; I've always been a rather down-to-Earth sort of chap, and don't hold with all that gasping into-paper-bags sort of thing. I'm sure people just do it for effect. But I would have happily given a paper bag a try, had someone had the foresight to tuck one away in my coffin before nailing down the lid.

But the worst part, if I'm honest, was the boredom of being down there for nearly three months before anyone saw fit to rescue me, with no-one but myself for company the whole time. I'm not the most talkative of people as a rule, so I wouldn't have been my first choice of companion. A country singer or two, or one of the Osmonds at a push. They'd still be alive, I'd stress; I'm not suggesting that they should be buried with me like those poor servants of pharaohs in ancient Egypt. They'd just visit me, possibly on a rota of some sort (they could work that out between them, as it would be difficult for me to draw up my own in the dark). It would have been something of a squeeze in there, having up to six of us to a coffin (seven if Marie were to join us), but it would have passed the time to have someone there to sing for me whilst I was awaiting rescue. Boredom is a terrible thing, believe me.

I say "buried alive", but I wasn't actually alive, of course. Not in the strict sense of the word. I had died on the operating table. I remember feeling my soul leave my body. I'd hovered over myself for a while, looking down at my corpse, the surgeon, all the other people in the operating theatre (I was surprised and flattered how many people had put in an appearance for my demise). I was on the point of fluttering off towards the light (not that I could see one, but I assumed it would be around somewhere if I looked hard enough), but then I got frightened. Maybe it was best to stay with my body until I knew quite what it was I was supposed to be doing next? I didn't want to get a ticking-off from some spirit or angel, demanding to know why I was jumping the queue of dearly departed when I was supposed to be waiting patiently for the next place in the Afterlife to become available. You have to queue for everything, after all. Why should Heaven or Hell be any different?

It would have been presumptuous of me to assume I was going to the former, anyway. I'd had my fair share of parking tickets, and once I'd noticed a restaurant had forgotten to add my drinks to the bill, and I paid up without mentioning it. That's theft, I think you'll find. Just imagine how embarrassing it would have been to make my own way to Heaven, only for someone to take me to one side and explain in hushed tones that I'd come to the wrong place, and that if I didn't leave immediately I'd be escorted off the premises and on to the downwards escalator.

So, all things considered, I opted to stay put. Play it safe, like I always do.

And then everything just faded out. It was probably my fault. Maybe I should have floated away while I had the chance. But when I opened my eyes again, everything was black, and I couldn't move my arms or legs more than a few inches. I was in a box, and not a particularly roomy one either. Maybe it was for the best that the Osmonds weren't down here with me after all.

It wasn't long before I worked out what had happened. They had buried me. I was six feet under (maybe less, those grave-diggers are a lazy lot) and would die unless I got out quickly. I didn't know how much oxygen I had left. I thrashed around like a lunatic, I shouted, I cried like a new-born baby with colic. But it was hopeless. No-one heard me. Or if they did, they couldn't summon up enough courage or energy to come and dig me out.

All those films you see on television, where someone gets buried alive but manages to kick and punch their way to freedom. Nonsense, I'm afraid. I couldn't even dent the coffin-lid, yet alone shift the two yards or so of earth which was heaped upon it. So I contented myself with weeping instead. Loudly and vigorously. It didn't help much, but at least it passed the time for a while.

I think I spent the next two or three days crying, though when you're in perpetual darkness it's pretty hard to measure the passage of time. My watch had luminous hands, but they'd taken that off me before I was buried. When you bury someone, leave their watch on, that's my tip. Or a mobile phone would be better still, supposing you have a signal down there (which seems unlikely, as my wife only ever seemed to get a signal on hers whilst standing outside the post office on alternate week-days, which wasn't much use to anyone, I'm afraid. Those things are so big and cumbersome, anyway).

It was during those few days of self-piteous sobbing that it gradually dawned on me that I ought to be dead. And then it dawned on me (equally gradually, I'm afraid, as I'm not known for being the sharpest pencil in the box) that I already was. Maybe this was Hell, I thought? An eternity stuck in a mahogany box clamped tight in heavy earth, fretting about my lack of a watch as the worms munched their way through the rotting coffin towards my slowly decomposing body. That made me weep even more, I'm ashamed to say. Worms scare me, what with all their cut-me-in-half-and-watch-me-wriggle-off-in-different-directions shenanigans. Mind you, I wouldn't have been in this predicament if I'd have been able to do the same thing (although if I'd have wriggled away with only half a body it may have been rather alarming for my wife).

I cursed myself for staying with my body in the operating theatre. If I'd made a break for it, there's no knowing where I'd have ended up, but I wouldn't have been here, and anywhere else would have been better than this. I also cursed the NHS for letting me die, but then I felt guilty and took it all back. It was my fault I was here, and it was unfair to blame anyone else. I had voted Tory every election since my eighteenth birthday many, many years before, so I had no-one but myself to blame on that score. Besides, I had been given a chance to get away, and I'd blown it, just as I'd blown everything else life had served up for me. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but caution had stuffed him in a coffin for all eternity, without so much as Little Jimmy Osmond for company.

Actually, I could have done with a cat down there. They say that stroking them calms you down, which would have been quite useful, given the circumstances. Then again, it would no doubt have tried to eat me after a while.

I thought of my wife. Gloria. She hated her name. She thought it old fashioned. There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned, I'd attempted to reassure her on numerous occasions (well, six or seven times, at least), but that had never gone down too well. "I'm pretty old-fashioned myself, my dear," I'd added once, trying to illustrate my point, but that had just made her shake her head sadly, and lock herself in our bedroom for four hours, sobbing like a two-year old having a tantrum. She did that quite a lot; that's women for you. I remember being relieved that she never locked herself in the bathroom, as I don't think my bladder would have held out that long.

My bladder was one of the clues which convinced me of my demise, by the way. No bodily fluids suggested to me that I must be dead. That and the fact that I wasn't actually breathing, as far as I could tell. I could put my hand in front of my mouth, and could feel nothing except the wood against my knuckles, however hard I tried to puff upon my palm.

Time crawled past. Like I said earlier, that was the worst part. I would've killed for a good crossword puzzle. Even a Sudoku at a push (though not the big ones, as they can get a bit tricky). But I had nothing to entertain myself except for my own wit and imagination, and both have always been sadly lacking in my case. Gloria's told me so on many an occasion, back when I was still alive. And death does little to sharpen the mental faculties, as I would find out in time.

I waited and I waited, and then I waited some more. I couldn't even sleep, as us zombies don't really do that. All we have is a sort of stand-by mode, where you're still conscious but you don't really do anything. It's a bit like when you're dozing off, but you never actually get the luxury of sleep at the end of it.

Three months is a long time to be buried, even with a stand-by mode like mine. I had a lot of time to think. Most of the time, I thought about decaying. I yearned for it, in fact. If I'm decayed, I reasoned, I surely wouldn't be here anymore. I'd be gone. And then my ordeal would be over. So I willed my body – and my brain in particular – to rot away as quickly as it could. I became frustrated at its slow progress when left to its own devices, and tried to help it on its way a little. I started picking away at my right index finger with my thumb-nail. And I couldn't have been happier when I felt a scoop of flesh fall away. What was it Churchill had said? It may not be the end. It may not be the beginning of the end. But at least it was the end of the beginning. Or something like that, anyway. I've always liked history. Finding out about the adventures of dead people has always been fascinating to me. Less so now, though, now that I'm one of them.

I started worrying my leg, trying to prise away the flesh through the trousers they'd buried me in. I was making pretty good progress. I'd picked away a crater the size of a flattened egg-cup. Another day or two, and I'd be through to the bone. Let's see if I can strip both legs bare by the end of the month, I thought. Make a game of it. It was some considerable time before it occurred to me that I'd have no idea when the month ended, but I carried on gouging anyway.

It was then that I heard something up above. Or sensed vibration. Or something; it's hard to describe what. All I knew was that someone or something was coming for me. I hoped it was someone still amongst living, but worried that it might instead be someone from the Afterlife, telling me that I'd finished my warm-up ordeal and that I was now ready for the really nasty stuff to begin.

I waited patiently. There didn't seem to be much else I could do. I was pretty good at waiting, after all the practice I had had.

The sound (or vibration, if you like) got closer. I thought I heard voices, though it was hard to say for sure. And then the coffin lid was off, and the light from outside was so bright that it singed my corneas. I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the light. It felt strange. I wasn't using to raising anything in that tiny space, yet alone an entire limb.

"We've got another live-one," someone said from above.

I lowered my arm and squinted at him. I tried to speak. It didn't really work out. I tried again. My rescuer waited patiently, without interrupting. A sign of good manners. I like that. We were going to be good friends, I felt sure of it (which was rather perceptive of me, as it turned out that he would be my second best friend after the Queen).

Eventually, I remembered that I needed to use my tongue to make sound. I flapped it around a little. After a while, it made a sound resembling speech.

"What time is it?" I asked.

He laughed. That was a little rude of him, I thought, but I decided to forgive him as he had just freed me from my grave.

I held out my hand for him to shake. Time for formal introductions. "My name's George," I told him. I usually say my surname as well, but decided I could dispense with the formalities in the circumstances. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to meet you. It was getting a little stuffy in there."

They had to carry me back to their car. I wanted to walk, but my legs didn't. It probably hadn't helped that I had been trying to gouge blinking great chunks out of them for the last quarter of a year or so. Nothing that a session or two of physiotherapy wouldn't sort out, though, I reassured myself. It's amazing what they can do nowadays.

They left me in the back seat while they went off to do some more digging. There was already a blanket over it, as if I was going to decompose all over the upholstery (which, to be fair, was more than a little likely). "Send me the bill if I rub off on your seats," I told them. They exchanged glances and the younger one sniggered sharply, but I didn't quite get the joke. There was nothing at all funny about rubbing oneself off, as far as I could see, whether it was in the back seat of a car or anywhere else for that matter.

I was tired, and went into standby-mode. It was strange, really. I'd been lying down all that time, and it was only now I was back in the big wide world that I felt the need for a rest. I stared in front of me, while I recharged my batteries.

"He's asleep," said the one to whom I'd originally spoken. He never introduced himself to me. Let's call him Dave. He looked like a Dave, I thought. A lot of men do, I find.

"He's still got his eyes open," the other one replied dubiously. I'm calling him Thomas, if that's okay with you? Doubting Thomas. Do you see what I've done there? I'm quite clever like that, when I want to be.

"They do that. The lights are on, but there's no-one at home, believe me. You could nick his wallet, and he wouldn't even flinch."

"I could nick his wallet?"

Dave sighed. "I don't mean you could literally nick it. We've just dug him up, remember? Why would he have his wallet on him? People don't tend to get buried with their valuables, do they?"

"Pharaohs do," argued Thomas, who seemed determined to argue his corner, however misguided it was. "They build those big pyramids, and have all their gold and stuff carried inside before they shut the door. I've seen it in films, loads of times. And they get really protective when anyone tries to nick it off them."

"Does he look Egyptian to you?" asked Dave, as if speaking to a simpleton (which I was starting to suspect that he was).

"Maybe."

"Is he covered in bandages?"

Thomas shrugged. "He could do with a few, from the state of his skin. I don't like touching them. We should be given gloves."

Dave sighed again. He was good at sighing, and showed off his ability as often as he could. "We did have gloves, didn't we?"

"Did we?"

"We did. And do you remember what happened to them?"

"Oh yeah. I accidentally buried them when we were filling a grave back in."

Dave sighed yet again, a deep long sigh of which even a professional would have been proud. "You buried them. Right, let's get on with this. We've got another three graves to check before we can go home, unless we get lucky again with the next one."

"We're not taking his wallet first, then?"

"Let's just leave him to sleep it off, shall we?"

I came out of standby when they loaded someone else into the backseat next to me. A man my age, shouting and swearing, raging at them for leaving him buried for so long. I shuffled a little further towards the window, wanting to keep as far away from him as possible as I'm not very good at confrontation at all. Fortunately, I wasn't wearing a seat-belt (they didn't think it necessary to buckle me up safely, bearing in mind that I was already dead), so I was able to put a good couple of feet between us at first. But then he started invading my side of the car, shuffling over towards me and calling on me to join him in disparaging our saviours. How rude would that have been, I ask you? I despair of some people, I really do.

"Do you know how long I've been down there, waiting for you?" he shouted at them. He turned to me. I shrugged, to make it clear that I had no more idea of the answer to this than they did. I was rather hoping that the question was rhetorical, and that he would answer it himself. I didn't want to engage in conversation with someone whose volume was set permanently to "SHOUT". I was almost tempted to ask to be returned to the peace and quiet of my grave.

"Your tomb-stone said you died six months ago," said Dave, as he turned on the ignition. "So I'm guessing a little less than that, allowing them time to bury you and all that. Twenty five weeks, say?"

Thomas looked dubious, but said nothing. But that was Thomas for you.

"Six months! That's half a year!" I couldn't fault the man's mathematic abilities. "You've left me down there for half a year! It's a miracle I survived that long!"

Dave and Thomas exchanged looks. They did that quite a lot. I would have exchanged looks with them too, but no-one saw fit to look at me. Noone except the man beside me, but I was avoiding eye-contact with him at all costs. So I bowed my head right down, and surveyed them as best I could from the corner of my eyebrows.

"How long did they leave you down there?" he asked me (loudly). "You must be furious!"

I shrugged. I couldn't think what else to do. I was tempted to go into standby until he'd burnt himself out, but I didn't want to offend him. Shrugging didn't seem to help, though. His voice got louder and louder, his bad language became more colourful and he started jerking his arms around. He was like a windmill with Tourette's.

Dave ignored him. He drove out of the cemetery at a respectful speed, and turned right into the main road. This seemed to annoy my travelling companion still further.

"Left!" he screamed. "You're going the wrong way, you idiot!"

"Shut up, or you're walking."

And then my new travelling companion snapped. He started making this funny gurgling noise, as if he was trying to blow the bubbles out of a gold-fish. I chanced a glance towards him, worried that he might be having a heart-attack, but a little sceptical as to whether this was even possible for someone already dead. His face was badly decomposed, with chunks missing from it. Part of his forehead had caved in, presumably where he had been head-butting the coffin-lid in a futile attempt to force his way out. I could see his teeth through his skin, which made him look like he was grinning (ironic in the circumstances). He was going red. That seemed strange to me (wouldn't that indicate blood flow?) but hey, us narrators don't make the rules. All I can do is say it as I saw it.

All in all, he was pretty darned cross.

And then he launched himself forwards, grabbing Dave's head and forcing it back against the head-rest. Dave swerved, nearly taking out a lady on the pavement with a pram. He cursed, and tried to pull his head free (as you would). My friend in the back seat changed his grip, and tried to pull both Dave's ears off at the same time. Dave screamed (again, quite understandably in the circumstances). My friend frothed in reply. Thomas leapt out of the car, and stood on the pavement, awaiting developments. The lady with the pram started berating him. He ignored her.

I stayed put. My impulse was to run, but I wasn't sure my legs were working, and I had visions of ending up flat on my face in the middle of the road, which would have been exceptionally dangerous, even for a zombie like me. If I couldn't run, and hiding would have been more than a little tricky in the back seat of the car, then the only option left open to me was to talk some sense into him.

"Now come on," I reasoned with the frothing corpse on the seat next to me. "Let's all calm down, and talk about this over a cup of tea. I live just round the corner. Everything will seem better after a nice brew. Who knows, Gloria might even throw in a few Hobnob biscuits if you play your cards right."

To my astonishment, the lunatic turned on me. He grabbed me by the throat, and tried to bite my face off. I managed to fend him off for a few seconds; I'd been out of the ground for a while longer than him, so I guess I'd recovered my faculties a little better than he had. But to see those rotting teeth gnashing away just inches away from my nose frightened the life out of me, I can tell you. Or would have done if it hadn't already deserted me some months earlier.

And then Dave was there, hauling him out of the car, flinging him on to the grass verge at the far side of the road. Dave sat astride him to stop him getting back up, and started pummelling him to the head with his fists. I watched for a few seconds, transfixed by the way that little puffs of flesh came up every time his fist connected with the poor man's face, but when one blow actually collapsed his cheek-bone I had to look away. Violence is never the answer. Never. Unless Big Daddy is wrestling Giant Haystacks, but that's different because they get to sit down every few minutes for a bit of a rest.

The lady with the pram came over and tried to pull Dave off (if you'll excuse the expression). Thomas finally sprang to action, and tugged her away. For a second, I thought she was going to turn on him, and the whole sorry process would start all over again. I had visions of the young man sitting astride the equally young lady, punching her repeatedly in the face. He looked the type that might rather enjoy that. Fortunately, he didn't resort to such barbarity. He just threatened to confiscate her baby, and chuckled as she hurried off, shouting obscenities at him over her shoulder as she departed, the pram abandoned on the grass verge behind her. Such language for a woman to use in front of her baby!

Dave had finished pummelling Mr Angry to the chops. His opponent lay still. He got off, wiping his hands on Thomas' clothes. "Gloves would have been nice," he said. "If I catch anything off him, I'm suing you, okay?" Thomas shrugged. He didn't look convinced.

Everyone got back in the car, except the man lying on the grass verge (who appeared to be very much dead again) and the lady with the pram (who was virtually out of sight by now, such was the speed at which she was galloping). Dave drove off, muttering to himself about personal protective equipment (and health and safety in general, a particular bug-bear of mine).

"That's my road down there," I told him. I pointed, somewhat unnecessarily as his eyes were firmly on the road, and Thomas was too busy checking out the CDs in the glove-compartment to notice my protruding finger.

"What of it?" Dave hissed. He didn't sound happy.

I thought back to the man on the grass verge, with his collapsed face and his little puffs of airborne flesh. I shook my head (just as unnecessarily as before).

"Nothing," I said, in as reassuring a tone as I could manage, having just witnessed someone being beaten to a sodden pulp in front of my very eyes. "I was just saying, that's all."

Discretion, I always find, is the better part of valour. Especially with Dave.

We ended up in a particularly unpleasant location in Dover. Some sort of concentration camp, as far as I could make out, with "Detention Centre for the Disinterred" in forbidding letters above the front gates. There were four bored security men operating one of those barriers that raise up, who had to wave us through. Surely only a job for one man, which was probably why they got bored. They called Dave "John", which seemed a little curious until I remembered that he was only Dave because I'd named him so. I'm going to keep calling him Dave, though. Avoids any confusion. He didn't really look like a "John" anyway.

We pulled up outside this one-storey Victorian building, which looked a little like a Council toilet block. Dave told Thomas he'd go and book me in while I was getting cleaned up. He asked me to remind him of my name, which was a little hurtful as he had remembered the burial date of the chap he'd battered in the road outside the cemetery, but in his defence I do tend to be somewhat non-descript. I reminded him it was George. I had a little trouble remembering my surname, which was strange, but I got there in the end. "Browne," I told them. "With an "e", as in echo". And then I said "e" again, only echoing it this time, to make them chuckle. But they both looked at me as if I was demented, and Dave hurried off, leaving Thomas to it.

To my surprise, I was able to walk. It wasn't a very impressive gait, I must admit. It was more of a shuffle than a stride. But it did the job. The main problem was getting out of the car, as Thomas got a little agitated when I held on to the front-seat head-rest to steady myself as I was decamping. I apologised, of course. I wouldn't want anyone flaking their decomposing flesh on my upholstery if I had a works vehicle either.

There was a reception desk inside the toilet block, which tended to suggest that it wasn't a toilet after all, as I don't recall ever seeing a receptionist stationed by the urinals (except once in France, but they do have some very curious practices over there). There was an unhealthily thin lady behind a desk, viewing me with a mixture of caution and disgust, as if I was planning on relieving myself on her hole-punch.

"Name?" she asked.

"George," I told her, as polite as you like in an attempt to win her round. "Browne. With an "e". As in—"

I looked over at Thomas. He shook his head, warning me against a repetition of the echo joke. Maybe he was right; it hadn't gone down very well at all first time round. I gave her a weak smile instead. "As in "empathy", my dear," I told her, but my little jest was far too subtle for her.

She scribbled something down on the clipboard in front of her. I wasn't at all convinced that she'd got my name right, even with the clue I had given her, but decided that it didn't matter all that much. My wife would know my name, no doubt, whether or not the "e" had gone astray from the end of it. And then she would come and fetch me, as if I was a young child to be collected at the end of the school day. The sooner the better, as far as I was concerned. I wasn't too sure I was going to like it here.

"Cubicle 6F," she said, and then she looked away, dismissing me. I wondered if I'd been buried longer than I thought. Surely people's manners couldn't have deteriorated so much in just a few short months?

Thomas took me through rows of rather shabby cubicles. A few had the curtains closed, but most of them were open. It was a little like the changing cubicles at the local swimming pool, only with curtains rather than doors. They were pretty small; not much more than three feet squared.

He selected one, and pointed to a soap dispenser on the wall inside.

"Be thorough," he advised. "They'll send you back in if you're not."

I stood in the cubicle. I pushed the pressy-thing by the nozzle (sorry, I can't think what the proper name for pressy-thing is right now, but that's descriptive enough for our purposes) and soaped my hands thoroughly. I looked at him expectantly but he tutted, so I looked at him confusedly instead. I was being thorough, as he'd instructed. I had even sang "Happy Birthday" twice in my head, like they'd taught me at school, to make sure I'd kept at it long enough.

"Is there a problem, young man?" I asked. "I can sing Happy Birthday three times, if you like."

The expression on his face tended to suggest that he thought this a rather bizarre proposal. He ignored my remark, and served up one of his own in its place. "It helps if you take your clothes off first."

"Why would I want to sing Happy Birthday in the nude?" I was starting to wonder whether Thomas was just a little simple.

"You're supposed to be washing your body, you daft old man." (He didn't actually say "daft old man", but I thought you'd like the sanitised version to spare your blushes).

"My body?" I stared at him. He seemed to have lost his marbles. "Why would I want to wash my body with a soap dispenser? You need water, you see. Water. To make you wet, and lather up the soap. I'll have a shower later."

He shook his head. "Not any more you won't. They stopped that weeks ago. It would take your skin off. Just dab yourself gently with the liquidsoap. I'll go and get you some paper towels."

"Paper towels?"

"To dry yourself. Now, could you get on with it? I haven't got all day. I'm off duty in half an hour."

The thin receptionist put in an appearance, popping up like the shopkeeper in that cartoon with the man with the bowler hat. "Is he acting up?" she asked.

"He's trying to."

"I'm not acting up," I assured her. "I was just telling Thomas here that I'd prefer to have a shower than an all-over hand-wash. Or better still, a bath. A bath would be marvellous. I don't suppose you could run one for me, could you? I'd be ever so grateful."

"You've got two minutes to take your clothes off," she warned me. "If you're not naked by then, I'm going to come in there and strip you off myself. And believe me, you won't like it if I do. The last gentleman who caused me trouble ended up losing an arm when I was trying to tug it out of his shirt."

"Losing an arm having a wash?" I cried in alarm. "What sort of madhouse is this?"

But she ignored me, pulling the curtain across the doorway of the cubicle to end the conversation.

"My name's not Thomas," I heard Thomas bleating outside. Shows how much he knows!

I viewed the soap dispenser with suspicion. Oh, the indignity. Being made to strip off to order, and cover myself with liquid soap for no apparent reason (other than the fact that I had been buried alive for a considerable period of time). I would have cross words with whoever was in charge here, once I was safely out of the clutches of the anorexic Lizard-lady lurking outside.

"I don't hear you undressing," she said ominously from the far side of the curtain. It was enough to spur me into action. I started to remove the shirt I'd been buried in, anxious to appease her before she removed one of my arms in her crazed determination to get me clean.

It took me three attempts before I was clean enough for her. I thought at one point she was going to start scrubbing me herself, which put me into something of a flap, but she thought better of it and just stood over me while I scrubbed the last stubborn vestiges of dirt off my raw, protesting body. It was humiliating having her standing there, curtains wide open, while she watched me scrub up. I wasn't used to women seeing me naked. Even Gloria hadn't seen me in all my glory for some considerable time. She'd insisted some years ago that I wear my pants to bed, as she didn't want to have to see my bony bottom when I got up in the morning. I supposed it was now very much bonier than before.

Dave came to rescue me. He didn't seem any more keen on the Lizardlady than I did. I wondered if maybe she had forced him to wash with liquid soap, too. Maybe this wasn't actually part of her duties. Maybe she really was just a receptionist, but anyone who chanced into her domain ended up getting a good scrubbing to satisfy her foul and unnatural appetites. But no, I decided upon reflection. If this was her hobby rather than her job, they probably wouldn't have provided her with dozens of shower-cubicles to fuel her perverted lust. The best she could have hoped for would've been a sink basin and a damp sponge.

"I'm clean," I told him as we exited the toilet block, in a rather needy bid for approval. Then again, maybe I was just playing it safe. I'd seen what he'd done to the gentleman he'd fallen out with in the car, and it was probably better to stay on his good side if I could. Dave gave me a not unfriendly nod of approval. Thomas didn't look convinced.

"Let's go and see the Governor," Dave suggested.

I nodded my consent. "Let's. Maybe he can tell me whether I'll be home in time for tea."

Thomas smirked. Dave glared at him. Thomas stopped smirking. He was obviously thinking of the gentleman in the car, too. It was better not to upset Dave. I was glad of that. If Thomas had been in charge, Heaven knows what would have happened to me by now.

It took me a while to walk to the Governor's office. It was three blocks away, in what might once have been a rather grand building, but which had now fallen into dampness and decay (not unlike me, really). I assumed I'd be able to walk normally now I'd had a little practice, but if anything my ability to put one foot in front of the other seemed to have lessened. Maybe it was because I was tired after my heavy soaping session, but I was shuffling along like a chimpanzee with rickets.

There was a different receptionist guarding the Governor, this one a little plump. I wondered whether she had been stealing the thin one's food. I chuckled. Dave and Thomas took a step away from me, and watched me as if I was dangerous. I stopped chuckling. Dave relaxed a little. Thomas stayed tense.

"Is something the matter?" I enquired.

"I thought you were turning," Thomas said.

"Turning what?"

"Just turning."

I looked to Dave for an explanation. He gestured for me to keep on walking. I obliged. Maybe he could explain later, when I was in the car back home. I wasn't sure I liked the sound of "turning", although if it makes you laugh it couldn't be all that bad.

We reached a door. It said "Governor" on the nameplate. No name or anything, just "Governor". Government cut-backs, I suppose. It would be easier to recycle the nameplate later on.

"Come," said a voice inside. A man in authority. I was pleased. Here was a man who could send me home if he wished. It was my task to make sure that he wished.

We walked in. Well, they walked and I hobbled. There were two chairs, one of them with plastic over it. Knowing the drill from the car-seats, I took the plastic one. Dave settled into the other, while Thomas stood uncomfortably by the door. I gave him an apologetic smile for him having to stand, but he ignored me. I turned my attention back to the Governor.

He was looking a little bored.

I stood up, and offered him my hand. "George," I said. "George Browne. With an "e". As in echo-o-o-o-o." I know it hadn't gone down well last time, but I figured that on the Law of Averages someone had to at least smile sooner or later. He didn't. Oh well. Maybe next time. It was too good a joke to abandon at the first sign of trouble.

He waved me back into my seat. "Sorry, can't shake your hand. Against regulations. No inappropriate touching of guests."

"Inappropriate?" I was a little bewildered. I was offering him a manly hand-shake, that was all. If I'd been trying to kiss him, I could have understood his reticence.

"Just the one of them?" he asked Dave. Dave nodded. I opened my mouth to mention the other man in the car, but saw the look he gave me and decided against it. I could hear Thomas shuffling around nervously by the door. I gave Dave a wink, and touched my gouged right index finger to the side of my nose to show him that his secret was safe with me, but this seemed to make him more anxious still. I returned my attention to the Governor, not wanting to appear rude by ignoring his little welcome speech.

"I just need to book you in, and tell you a little about our programme here. I like to greet our guests personally whenever I can." "Without inappropriately touching them," I quipped.

"Quite."

He didn't look pleased at my intervention. Maybe he thought it was rude of me to interrupt. I resolved to speak only when I was spoken to. Then I remembered how keen I was to go home, and decided to chance a question about this before he launched into a long speech about whatever it is governors make long speeches about.

"When do I go home?" I asked. "My wife will be worried about me."

"All in good time, all in good time. Can I just run through the induction first?"

"Induction?"

"Booking you in."

"Oh, there's no need for that. I'll be off soon. I'm very grateful for everything, believe me. The lift, the soap, the fact that I'm no longer buried alive. Everyone's been so terribly helpful. Especially Dave here." "Dave?"

The Governor was clearly not the sharpest chisel in the toolbox. I pointed to the man sitting next to me. "Yes, Dave. You know Dave."

"You mean John?"

I shrugged. "If you like. But we're rather off topic here, if you don't mind me saying so. I was just saying that everyone has been so kind and friendly – even the Lizard lady in the toilet-block – but all I really want to do is go home and hug my family to pieces. Figuratively, you understand?"

I gave him what I hoped to be a winning smile. He stared back at me, as if I was mad.

"Lizard lady in the toilet block?"

I nodded. I gave him a little time for it to sink in. Maybe English wasn't his first language (although, to give him credit, his accent was immaculate; there was even a tiny hint of Mancunian in there, unless I was very much mistaken).

He exchanged looks with Dave. Dave shrugged. Maybe I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about the Lizard lady. It was all a bit of a red herring anyway. It was my return home I was anxious to talk about, not the skinny receptionist (or even the larger one who'd eaten her food).

"When do I go home?" I asked. "To see Gloria. She'll be worried about me. And she'll need time to nip out and buy my tea before the shops close. We sometimes only have breakfast cereal in the cupboard if I don't give her a grocery-list. You know what women are like if left to their own devices."

The Governor sighed. "I'm afraid we've run out of time. We only have a five minute slot, you see. Plenty of other people like you to process. You wouldn't want to eat into their slot, would you?"

I shook my head. "Heaven forbid. I just want to know when—"

"We'll talk later," he said. "My receptionist will make the arrangements."

"Lizard lady?"

"That will be all."

He picked up his pen, and commenced writing. Our interview was apparently at an end. Dave gave me a look, warning me against any further questions. All I wanted to know, though, was when I would be going home.

It didn't seem like an unreasonable thing to ask in the circumstances.

"Good day," said the Governor, to hurry me along.

"Good day," I replied. But, in truth, it was turning out to be a little less good than I had anticipated when they'd dug me out of the earth that morning. I needed to be back home with my family, surrounded by my own familiar things, relaxing in the comfort of my own surroundings.

Still, I thought to myself in an effort to find a silver lining. At least I'm clean.

If the toilet-block and the Governor's office had been a little traumatic, worse was still to come when they showed me to my room.

"Here you go," said Dave, opening the door for me. "This'll be your home while you're here."

I looked inside. "There seems to be some sort of mistake. This is a ladies' dormitory."

"Thanks for that," said a young man sitting on a bed on the far side of the room. His face had peeled off badly, but there was enough of it left for me to see that he was only in his late teens. There were two ladies in there with him, hence my slightly inaccurate remark about dormitories. One was sixty-or-seventy-something, the other one either side of twenty (I'm not all that good at guessing ages). I assumed that the older lady was the mother or the grand-mother of the younger one, and probably of the boy on the bed, too. How strange that Dave thought I would like to share a room with a family.

"I'm so sorry. My eyesight's not what it was before they buried me. I'll leave you in peace."

I went to close the door behind me. Dave pushed it open again.

"No mistake, I'm afraid. This is your dormitory."

I looked around again. Six beds, three of them occupied by the family I've just described to you. They looked at me with the mildest curiosity, as if I was a temporary diversion sent to ease the tedium of their day. I felt uncomfortable. I looked back at Dave.

"I couldn't possibly. I'd be intruding."

"No choice, Mate. In you go."

I shuffled inside, anxious to avoid a scene. This family must think me very rude already. Dave closed the door behind me, and I could hear his footsteps disappearing along the corridor outside. I had expected him to join me. For a few seconds, I stood by the door, like a dog waiting for his master to return. I felt the urge to follow him. I didn't know anyone here. I'd only met him earlier that day, but he was the nearest thing to a friend I had.

This overwhelming neediness wasn't like me: I'd always been pretty independent during my life-time (a bit too independent, Gloria would say, who was always craving interaction with anyone who would spare her the time of day). I suppose that's what death does for you, though. I guess that being left alone in a coffin for a quarter of a year makes you value human companionship a little more.

Feeling as if I had been deserted by heartless parents on the first day of boarding school, I took a deep breath and turned to face my new roommates. They were still staring at me, which didn't help matters. The faces of the ladies were decomposing too, just like the boy on the bed. They regarded me with mild curiosity, as I may have already mentioned.

"Hello," I greeted them. "My name's George. George Browne. With an "e". As in echo-o-o-o-o."

My two young room-mates looked at me as if I had lost all reason. But the older lady grinned, and even made a little snorting sound like a strangled laugh.

She thought I was funny.

I could've kissed her. It was the nearest thing to a hug I'd had since I'd got here.

I took possession of my bed, consoling myself with the thought that I wouldn't be here for very long, that I would be back home soon with my wife, my slippers and my weekly television guide. How wrong I was!

The bed was tubular metal, like a low climbing-frame with one sheet and one blanket wrapped tightly around it as if to prevent me from wriggling out to escape. One pillow too, although it looked rather flat and sorry for itself. I hoped that it had been washed since their last guest had left, especially having regard to the tendency of my kind to flake decayed skin all over the place.

The bedside cabinet was the only other item of furniture I could call my own. My first thought was that I'd never get all my possessions in that, but then it occurred to me that I didn't have anything other than the clothes I'd been buried in. Not even a watch, as they'd taken that from me (I might have mentioned earlier, too).

Having familiarised myself with my surroundings, I took another look at my room-mates. The elder lady smiled back at me, bless her. I smiled back. The young man had got back in bed, pulling the covers over his head to block out the world, which seemed rather a good idea. The young lady was playing one of those video games again, her thumbs surprisingly dextrous for one as dead as her.

"What time's dinner?" I asked.

The young lady snorted, as if I'd just told a joke. Maybe she had just got my "echo-o-o-o-o" gag. I tried again, hoping that persistence would pay off. "No, really, when's dinner?"

She looked up at me. "Seriously?"

I nodded. "Very much so."

"They don't feed us. We're dead. We don't need food. Ever."

"But I'm hungry," I complained. I sounded rather whiney, I'm afraid to say. But I enjoy my food. I was looking forward to my first square meal in three months.

"Your body doesn't know it's dead yet," she explained, not unkindly. "It still thinks it needs food. But it doesn't. It's not like you're going to starve to death, is it? You'll get used to it after a while."

"No food?" I asked. My bottom lip would have quivered if it hadn't been half rotted away.

"Nope."

"Not even a biscuit?"

"Nothing."

"No biscuits?"

"Like I said."

I lapsed into sorrowful silence. A life without meatloaf, without fish and chips, without roast dinners on a Sunday. A life without pudding! No cheese-cake, no spotted dick and custard, not so much as an own-brand trifle in a throw-away plastic pot. And even the occasional biscuit being off limits. This was truly, truly dreadful. And to make matters worse, I realised that all that thinking about food had made me copiously drool on my blanket.

"Of course, there are always ways to get food if you're desperate," she added casually, going back to her video-game as she spoke.

"There are?" I was all ears.

"Uh-huh."

"What do I need to do to get a biscuit?" I asked. I was conscious of the fact that I must be coming across as biscuit-obsessed, when I'm not actually especially fond of them, but I didn't want to build up my expectations too high by opening the bidding at pork-chops. Best to start low, and work your way up.

"I'll introduce you to one of the guards. Charlie. You can borrow my lip-stick. He'll like that."

"You don't mean to say?" I asked, horrified. "But I'm a chap. A dead chap at that!"

"That's how he likes them," she chuckled. "All yielding and squishy." I shuddered. She had put me off biscuits forever.

She looked up at me, and winked, a mischievous smile on her face.

"I'm not even going to tell you what you need to do round here for a chicken madras."

I spent a rough night in my new bed. I had too much space; I had got used to the womblike-security of a nice tight coffin, much as I had loathed it at the time. And I had grown accustomed to absolute darkness as well, whereas here there was unwelcome light creeping in beneath the door. Not all that much of it, I'll grant you, but enough to make it different and strange. I'm a creature of habit, and always will be (by definition, once you're a creature of habit you tend to be so forever).

My stand-by mode didn't seem to be functioning properly, either. Six feet underground, I had been able to turn off my brain, more or less. But here, it refused to disengage, no matter how stern a talking to I gave it. I worried about my new surroundings, I worried about my failing health and most of all I fretted about how long they would keep me apart from my family. Gloria would be missing me, as would the twins (little Skye and the other one).

The other one? I seemed to have forgotten the name of my own son. Was it something to do with a Scottish island? No, that would be Skye, my daughter. Somewhere else we'd visited on our travels north of the border, then? Edinburgh? Aberdeen? Tobermory? Or was Tobermory one of those furry little creatures who clear away the rubbish on Wimbledon Common?

All of a sudden, I missed Gloria very much. I'd missed her before, of course, but now it was just so overwhelming I could barely stop myself from blubbing like a little baby. I needed to speak to her. It was the middle of the night, but I had to speak to her all the same. Tell her I loved her, that I missed her, that I needed to be home with her, with Skye, with our little boy (whatever his darned name was). All the things I should have told her before I died but never quite summoned up the courage to say.

I got out of bed. I would escape. I would make my way home, and hide under one of the twins' beds if they came to take me away again. They'd never think to look for me there. My bed, yes, but the twins little half-sized beds? They wouldn't think I'd fit under there, but having spent so much time in a coffin I was confident that I could tuck my legs up and stay hidden as long as it took, however little room there might be. A stroke of genius.

How to go about it, though? The guards might be cross if I made a run for it, and I'd seen what Dave had done to my travelling companion for far less. It wasn't as if I could go very fast either; the best I could do would be to shuffle briskly. And climbing over barbed-wire fences was a complete no-no, as far as I was concerned. I'd never get my leg over, yet alone the rest of my broken body.

I would need an accomplice, then, but only a handful of people had so much as spoken to me since I'd got here. I discounted the Governor straightaway, as he might feel there was a conflict of interests (though on the plus side he would have access to all the keys). Dave might have helped, but Thomas would be less inclined to lend a hand, and those two very much came as a pair. The Lizard-lady seemed the least likely of all of them. She'd make me have one of her dry-baths first, losing valuable hours of darkness while she tried to get me clean. So that just left one person who'd talked to me since my arrival.

I went over to the girl in the bed, the one in her teens or her early twenties with the video-game addiction. I reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, but drew it back again. What would she think of me if I started touching her in the middle of the night, however innocently? She'd wake up, and she'd scream, just like Janet Leigh in that Psycho film (but without the water on). Then they'd probably put me in solitary confinement, or lock me in a ward full of pervert zombies, who'd do all sorts of unspeakable things to me and each other while the warders turned away with a shrug.

Like in that Lamb-shank Redemption film.

But I needed to escape, and she was the only one who could help me.

I reached out for her for a second time, but again pulled back. This was a bad idea. I didn't even know the girl. It would be so rude, a married man like me waking up a girl in a darkened room when I didn't even know her name. Maybe I should wake up one of the others, find out her name, and then wake her up afterwards? But that seemed a trifle long-winded, and would eat into the window of time for making my escape.

And then, with a start, I realised she was looking at me. Grinning. I smiled back, a trifle sheepishly.

"You gonna frisk me for custard-creams?" she enquired.

"Oh no, I would never do that," I assured her. What must she think of me?

"You're after my Jaffa-cakes, then?"

"No, no. I would never help myself to a young lady's Jaffa-cakes without asking her first."

She laughed. "I'm just playing with you. What do you want? Why are you staring at me in the middle of the night, you freak?"

I decided to come straight to the point. Time was of the essence, after all. "I want to escape. I need to see my wife."

"Escape?" I thought a saw a flicker of approval in her eyes. She looked at me; really looked at me, for the first time.

"Like Cool-Hand Luke," I explained, although I felt the film reference may have been lost on her.

"Is that Disney or Pixar?" she asked.

I shrugged, having no idea what she was going on about. I waited for her to outline her escape plan. She thought for a while.

"You can come with me," I said. "You all can, if you'd like." "That's very big of you."

She thought for a while longer. For a minute or two, I thought she'd accidentally gone back into stand-by, but then she was talking again. I tried to concentrate. This was important, my big chance of getting out of here, but all of a sudden I felt very tired and was having difficulty following what she was telling me. The thought of my bed suddenly seemed so much more appealing than before.

"You can't get out of here. Not yet. Security's way too tight. But watch this space, okay? I've got my finger on the pulse, you know what I'm saying?

Soon as decisions are made, you'll be the first to know."

"You can't help me, then?"

"Not to escape. Not yet. But I can help you talk to your wife if you want. That's the next best thing, yeah?"

"Talk to my wife?" She'd confused me again. How could I talk to my wife when she was miles and miles away? Maybe we got some power when we died, some power that I hadn't yet tapped into? What was the word for that thing where you converse with people with the power of your mind? Something beginning with "T".

"Telepathy?" I asked, after a moment's hesitation. "Can I talk to my wife by telepathy?"

She laughed again. "You could try that," she replied. "Or you could use the phone in the staff room."

It turned out that using the phone in the staff common room wasn't quite as easy as she made it sound. It involved breaking out of a locked ward, sneaking past the wardens and getting in and out the common room without anyone noticing we had been there. It was a bit like Colditz, really, save that we didn't need wire-cutters, and the guards all spoke English of sorts. I hoped we didn't have to put earth in our pockets, as this was the only suit I had.

Annie introduced herself as we were tip-toeing down the corridor. "I'm Annie," she told me. Straight to the point. I liked that about her.

"I'm George," I replied. "George Browne. With an "e". As in—"

"Echo-o-o-o?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"You told me yesterday."

I smiled. She smiled back. I felt as if I'd made a new friend. I hoped that Dave wouldn't be jealous.

We came to a door. I turned the handle. The door stayed shut. I rattled it, with the same outcome. They'd locked us in! My shoulders sagged (although I was careful not to allow them to sag too much, as I was a little worried that my decaying arms might fall off). No phone call to Gloria tonight, then.

I started to retrace my steps along the corridor. Annie whistled. I turned. She was holding a key up in the air for me to see.

"Is that the key for this door?"

"What do you think, Grandad?" she asked. "No, wait. Grandead! You get it?"

I shrugged. I had no idea what she was going on about (again). Half of what she said was gobbledy-gook, but the other half was spot-on, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

"Grandead," she repeated again, but I was still none the wiser. She was just making up words now. I asked her again if it was the key for the locked door, speaking slowly, as if conversing with a foreigner with a poor command of English. She put it in the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open, motioning for me to go through.

"It's funnier than echo-o-o-o," she said, a trifle sullenly. It wasn't, of course.

We went through the door. She locked it behind her. "We don't want the others getting out, do we? They'd take my key back."

She turned left into another corridor, and then left again, with me shuffling along behind her. She had a shuffle like mine, but not as pronounced. Hers was like a moderate limp, whereas I was walking along as if my ankles were shackled tightly together. Which was apt, bearing in mind my Cool Hand Luke escape aspirations.

She came to a halt, holding her hand up, palm outwards, bidding me to do likewise. I obeyed. She was most certainly the boss out of the two of us. She pointed to a room ten yards further along, with a glass window looking out on to the corridor in which we stood.

"There are two of them in there," she explained. She held up two fingers, as if I didn't understand English (ironic, when she was the one who had been spouting nonsense just five minutes earlier). "You're going to need to crawl past the window."

"Crawl? With my knees?"

"That's how it usually works."

"They were pretty dodgy before I died. Heaven knows what state they'll be in now."

"We could go back to the dormitory if you'd rather?"

"No. No, I need to speak with my wife. Tell her I'm okay. Ask her to come and get me."

"Off you go then."

I got gingerly down on my hands and knees. I crawled across the floor like a baby with an anxiety disorder. I looked back. Annie was still on her feet. She waved me onwards. I reached the window. I noticed for the first time that there was a door there, too. It was a few inches ajar. I was tempted to glance inside, but I was too afraid. I felt sick with fear. I shuffled onwards as fast as I could, ignoring the pain in my knees, expecting any moment one of the guards to burst out of the room and haul me back to bed by my collar. I prayed that if I was apprehended, it wouldn't be by the guard who wanted to put lipstick on me to make my mouth look pretty.

I made it to safety. I struggled to my feet. I gave Annie a big thumbs-up, which made her smile again. She walked towards me. She'd forgotten about the guards! I waved her down, but she ignored me. She strolled past the open door as if the room was empty.

"What were you thinking?" I asked her in an admonitory whisper, as she approached me. "The guards! The guards!"

"Oh, they won't mind me. They're used to me wandering round at night. They'd be worried if I didn't."

"Maybe they'd be happy for me to wander round too, then? Save my knees?"

"No. That's a really bad idea, Grandead. Come on, we're nearly there now."

Another minute or two and we were indeed there, just as she had predicted. A door, with "Staff only" written on a sign outside. It was rather smaller than the Governor's sign. He no doubt pulled rank when the signs were being allocated, insisting on the best one. You couldn't blame him.

There had to be some perks of the job. Besides, if he had the staff sign and the staff had the governor one, it would end in chaos.

"Is there anyone inside?" I asked nervously. It had been too easy so far. Maybe they were all waiting in there, like the guests at a surprise party only rather more sinister. Instead of giving me a birthday cake, they'd beat me and put me in solitary confinement for a week (or maybe bury me up to my neck in sand if they were Japanese or Egyptian or whoever it is that does that sort of thing).

"I'll check." Before I could stop her, she'd opened the door, and peered inside. "Bastards," she said.

"What is it?" I enquired, tempted to make a bolt for it back to the dormitory but doubtful whether I could crawl past the guard-room at speed.

"That's my picnic hamper in there. My mum said she sent it to me, but they reckoned it never arrived. They've been troughing on my stuff behind my back!"

We entered the room. I looked round for the telephone as she checked the contents of the picnic hamper. From her snort of disgust, I assumed that there wasn't much left in it. Ordinarily, I'd be examining it, too, partial to food as I am, but I had more important things to attend to on this occasion.

My heart sank when I saw the telephone. It was a pay-phone on the wall. Apart from removing my watch when they buried me, they'd emptied my pockets too. No loose change, no conversation with Gloria. All this way for nothing.

I turned to Annie.

"A jar of marmalade!" she exclaimed. "What am I supposed to do with that? It's shredded, as well. What's the point of that? It's like they're too lazy to take the fruit out!"

I pointed towards the pay phone. "We're scuppered."

"Scuppered?"

"Scuppered."

"Oh, you mean we're fuc-"

"Scuppered," I said again, hastily. There's no excuse for profanity. "I haven't got any money on me."

"Hang on. Hold that." She threw me the jar of marmalade. I dropped it. She rolled her eyes.

"It's not broken," I reassured her.

"Shame."

She made her way to the lockers at the far side of the room. She selected the third one down in the left hand column. She produced another key, and turned the lock. There were spare clothes inside. She rummaged through a pair of jeans and produced a handful of coins. She selected a fifty pence piece, and threw it to me. I dropped that too. She returned the rest of the loose change to the pocket, and the jeans to the locker. In the meantime, I had retrieved the coin from the floor and picked up the telephone retriever.

I paused.

"Go on then," she bid me. "Call your wife." I paused some more.

"Go on. It's okay. I know you must be nervous, but she'll be glad to hear from you. A little shocked, maybe, but glad all the same."

"I can't."

"You can. You've done the hard bit. Call her."

"No, really I can't."

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. I smiled sheepishly in return.

"I seem to have forgotten my telephone number."

I spent a restless night in the dormitory. I was kicking myself for having such a poor memory (not literally kicking myself, of course, as my decaying legs might have caved in). To make matters worse, the boy kept weeping away whilst in his standby-mode. I didn't know you could do that. I might have to try it some time.

I thought of Gloria. There was no-one I'd rather think of. I wondered what she'd say when she found out I was alive. I hoped she'd be pleased. I was almost sure she would be.

Of course she'd be pleased, I hear you say. She's your wife! And you'd most probably be right. But she wasn't all that keen on surprises, and you don't get much more of a shock than someone knocking on your door and telling you that your dead husband has been dug up and was last seen juggling jars of marmalade in a staff room in Dover.

She never used to be set in her ways. She was quite a free spirit when we first met. I remember our one and only holiday abroad. I was keen on the New Forest, she wanted to go to Spain. I eventually gave in, and said I'd give it a try, as long as we could take our own teabags in the suit-case.

When we were there, some well-meaning couple mentioned that there was a nudist beach nearby. I refused, point-blank, of course, despite her entreaties for us to give it a go. Why anyone would want to parade their wares in front of total strangers was beyond me. More to the point, why Gloria would want to parade hers was rather a worry, to say the least. Later on in our married life, she would have sulked for days when I forbade her to "give it a go". Back then, though, she took it fairly well, joking that I was set in my ways, and that she'd make a free-spirit of me yet. She never did, of course. And we never went abroad again either. It was too hot, you couldn't find a decent roast dinner anywhere, and the fact that they had beaches specifically designed for people to display their privates to one another convinced me that the Spanish were not a people I wished to spend my leisure time with.

We had other holidays, of course. Gloria's suggestions for our excursions became less and less outlandish in time. There was one occasion in Scotland when she suggested skiing, which caused me to raise an eyebrow almost to my hairline (which was starting to recede, so I must have raised it pretty high). But in time it occurred to her that I was not the adventurous type, and we settled for day-trips to flower-shows and suchlike instead. There's never any danger of people showing you their privates at a flower-show, I once pointed out to her, but she just shook her head sadly and went back to the hydrangeas.

As I lay there that first night, I tried to run through the highlights of our life. It gave me something pleasant to do, putting them in chronological order. There was our first date, our wedding, the birth of our children. Nothing else sprang to mind, though, so it didn't take me as long as I'd thought. That's not to say we weren't happy, of course. We were comfortably content, if I could put it that way. I may not have been one of those types who are always bombarding their loved ones with flowers and love poems, but she knew how I felt about her deep down. It was enough for her to know that I cared for her in my own circumspect way, I'm almost sure of it. She cried a lot at first, but that's women for you. Some chemical they put in the washing-up liquid, likely as not.

Yes, I felt certain that she would be pleased that I had climbed unsteadily from my grave. She was as comfortable as I was with routine by the end of our time together, and the prospect of us sitting in our adjacent arm-chairs, watching soap operas together, was one which would surely bring a tear to her eye.

Eventually it was morning. We had one frosted glass window-pane in our room, high up on the wall with bars across it, and although it was small it was large enough to tell me that it was light outside. My first full day in Colditz.

Bored of standby mode, I decided to go and talk with my fellow inmates. Annie wasn't interested. She just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, a mildly irritated look on her face as I wished her a good morning. I guess she was a night-bird rather than an early-owl. Or should that be the other way round?

I flicked a mental coin between the older lady and the boy (well, man, but anyone under about thirty is a boy to me). I would have preferred to speak to the lady – she'd smiled at my "echo-o-o-o" – but decided that I had approached enough ladies in their beds that night, and I didn't want to get a reputation as a Casanova. My wife would be cross, for a start, and she could be rather crotchety when her dander was up. So I ambled over and sat on the boy's bed instead. He dived under his blanket, like a dormouse seeking the safety of his burrow (I assume that dormice have burrows, but I'm sure you understand what I mean even if it turns out that they live in trees or something).

"Good morning. I'm George. George Browne. With an "e". As in – can you guess?"

"Go away," he said. I decided to persevere.

"As in ech-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o." I thought it might be funnier if I echoed for a little longer than usual, but there was no laughter from beneath his blanket, so I may have been wrong about that. Sooner or later, I would chance upon the right degree of echo to raise a smile.

"Go away."

"I heard you crying in the night."

"It wasn't me."

I was tempted to try a different bed. This young man was clearly telling fibs. But it was equally obvious that he needed help, and no-one else in here seemed inclined to give it to him.

"Is it the guards?" I asked him. "Are they making you do things for biscuits?"

He erupted from the blanket. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I shrugged. "Nothing. I just wondered why you were so sad."

"What do you think?" he asked. It sounded as if he was being rhetorical, but with rhetorical questions the answer is usually obvious, and I wasn't sure I even remembered what the question was in his case.

"Can I have three guesses?"

He groaned, and retired back beneath his bed-clothes again. This wasn't going particularly well. I decided to persevere.

"Well, let's see. We've ruled out biscuits. We did, didn't we? It's not biscuits, is it? No? You're positive? What then. Annie? Has she been teasing you? She's a high-spirited girl, no doubt about it."

I heard a laugh from Annie's bed. Nothing from this one, though. Not Annie upsetting him, then. What else was there for a grown boy to fret about all night?

"Do you miss your Mum?"

After a second or two, he emerged from his dug-out.

"I miss my wife."

"Your wife?" I was incredulous. He wasn't old enough to be married. People who cry in bed are never old enough to be married, in my opinion. Unless they've been peeling onions, but it's quite rare to do that under the bed-clothes! (Just my little joke).

He nodded.

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"Nineteen. And you're married? And you've died and been dug back up since your wedding? You don't believe in taking things slowly, do you? How old were you when you got married?"

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen! You must be mistaken, young man. You need to be eighteen, surely?"

"I had my mums' permission. She was pregnant."

"Your mum was pregnant?"

"My girlfriend was pregnant. Julie. Her name's Julie."

I paused awhile, to take stock. This was all too much for me. Married at seventeen. His girlfriend already pregnant. A shot-gun wedding, no doubt. The young people today are always in such a hurry to do everything. In my opinion, you should at least wait for the ink to dry on your national insurance number letter before you start buying nappies.

I had two questions for him. I wanted to know how he died, and I wanted to know why he missed his wife. I decided that asking a man how he'd died was insensitive. I asked him anyway.

"I had an accident on my bike. I was on the M2, when – "

"You shouldn't cycle on motorways, you know. No wonder you were killed."

"On my motorbike. Well, my friend's motorbike, I was borrowing it. There was a truck."

I winced. I was surprised there was enough left of him to bury. I moved hurriedly on to my next question. I asked him why he missed his wife.

Didn't he see her on a regular basis?

"She won't visit me."

"I'm sure she will. Maybe there' some mix-up with passes. Maybe the guards won't let her in. She might have been banging on the prison gates, tears in her eyes, demanding to be let in while the sentries look upon her with cold, uncaring eyes. I saw that in a film once. Annie will sort it out for you. She's very good at that sort of thing. She helped me nearly make a telephone call last night. Oh, wait, I probably shouldn't have told you that. Forget I said anything."

I tapped my gouged index finger against the side of my decomposing nose, to tell him that he should keep this to himself.

"She told me herself that she's not coming back."

"Who isn't? Annie?"

"My wife. She visited me. Twice. The first time was awkward. The second time was awful. She told me I wasn't the same now I'm dead. That she didn't want anything to do with me. She still had her life, and she didn't want to waste it tied to a corpse."

"Rather harsh."

"And she won't let me see our child either. The due date was a couple of weeks ago. I don't even know if it's a boy or a girl. My mum tried to find out, but she won't tell her anything."

His story was troubling me. I'm ashamed to admit that it wasn't through empathy either. The thought that your nearest and dearest could turn their back on you, just because you are deceased, had never entered my mind. My Gloria wasn't like that, though. She wouldn't disown me, I was sure of it. She might have a go at me for separating her from my wage-packet, maybe have a grumble about how little widow's pension she was receiving, but we'd kiss and make up in the end. Well, maybe not kiss, because my lips were badly disintegrating, but you know what I mean. Shake hands at the very least.

He started to cry again, burrowing his hands into his eyes (which was a bad idea, as he was scoring the skin around his eye sockets). I wanted to hug him, but I'd been brought up with the idea that physical contact with strangers was bordering on the criminal, so decided against it. Indeed, physical contact with your spouse was to be discouraged once you had all the children you required, if my father was to be believed, and he knew his stuff when it came to that sort of thing. I wandered back over to my bed, with the boy's sobs ringing in my ears.

My first night-time sortie around the dormitory had not been a great success, it had to be said.

I sat back down on my mattress, and yearned for the comfort of biscuits and of home.

Not much happened that first day. The others were taken away by Thomas and some guard I'd never seen before, but it turned out that I hadn't been written up into the system yet so I was left behind to my own devices (getting more and more peckish in the process). I went into standby-by mode again. I was conscious of their voices when they came back again, but couldn't face talking to anyone so I stayed put in my own head and thought of Gloria, Skye and Tobermory (or whatever other Scottish island my son might have been named after).

I remembered the day the twins were born. Gloria asked me if I wanted to be in there with her, to support her through her labours. I wasn't keen, if the truth be told. By all accounts, it gets a bit mucky at the business end, and the thought of one human being erupting from another is unsettling to say the least, especially when it's bawling its eyes out all the while. So she asked her mother to be her "birthing partner" instead. I waited outside, pacing up and down as anxious parents-to-be are prone to do, waiting for news of the new arrivals. Midwives came and went. Doctors came and went with them, each one looking slightly more tense than the last. I wanted to go in, to check that everything was alright, but I wasn't sure whether this would be allowed now that Gloria's allocation of birthing partners had been filled by my mother-in-law. The doctors looked far too busy for me to take them aside and ask them whether I could visit my wife. So I continued to wait in the corridor, hoping against hope that Gloria and the twins were in no danger.

Eventually, I was ushered in. Her mother looked daggers at me, causing me to hang my head in shame (not for the first time, or the last as it turned out, even though half the time I didn't really know quite what it was I had done wrong). It transpired that we'd nearly lost the two of them (the babies, not Gloria and her mother). "Complications", the doctors said, and my mother-in-law repeated this after them, nodding her head as if confirming that their diagnosis was correct. But medical science and some good common-sense midwifery had saved the day. All this had been half an hour before, but her mother had decided to leave me outside for a while as she couldn't bear seeing my "heartless face". I was to blame, apparently, for not being there, so she made sure I wasn't there for longer still. I never could work that one out.

My wife was too tired to express an opinion upon whether my allegedly heinous conduct was responsible for the perils our poor twins had faced. She just looked at me, waiting for me to do something, to take action of some sort. A midwife proffered one of the children to me, inviting me to give her a cuddle (the child, you understand). I shook my head. She was so tiny, so vulnerable. I didn't want to drop her. I felt something well up, deep inside me, feelings of love and fear and regret that I hadn't been around for them when they were struggling to stay alive. Maybe it was my fault after all. Maybe God was punishing me for being the reserved and cautious man I was, rather than the sensitive, touchy-feely man that everyone else so wanted me to be. Karma, you could call it, although it seemed so cruel to take it out on those tiny little children if that was indeed the case.

Gloria cried when I declined to hold our new baby daughter. It must have been all the trauma of labour coming out. I stepped towards her to comfort her. I hesitated, just for an instant. My first impulse was to pat her shoulder, and congratulate her for a job well done. But no, I thought, for once in your life you should show her what she means to you. You should take her in your arms and hug her as if your life depended on it.

I was too slow. Whilst I was cogitating on the relative merits of a cuddle or a shoulder-pat, her mother beat me to it, giving her the hug which I so wanted to give her myself. The look that woman gave me would have been enough to sour cream twice over, I tell you.

I coughed nervously, and stood there like a spare part. I had nowhere else to go in here. Having declined to hold my children, and having been beaten to my wife's arms by my disapproving mother-in-law, there didn't seem to be a great deal more for me to do (or not do).

"I'd better go now," I said, but got no response from anyone except an embarrassed smile from the midwife. "I'll be back after I've had my breakfast. Most important meal of the day, you know." Still no reply. "Well done, Gloria. You did very well." And then I made my way to the door, gave an awkward wave which no-one but the midwife noticed, and made my escape into the relative sanctuary of the corridor outside.

Night came round again. After all that time closeted beneath the ground in pitch darkness, it came as something of a relief when the lights went out in the dormitory.

The older lady came to stare at me on two or three occasions while I lay in my bed. There was I, minding my own business on standby mode, when all of a sudden she was leaning over me, looking into my eyes. It gave me a bit of a shock, though I tried to act as if it was the most normal thing in the world, for fear of offending her. I wasn't used to people paying attention to me, especially not after lights-out. Well, Gloria maybe, but even she rarely bothered to so much as converse with me after the twins were born. We had separate beds not long after, in any case.

This lady on my dormitory had a pretty face, if you looked past the rotting cheeks and the filmy eyes. I'm not terribly good at ages, but somewhere in her sixties, I'd say, seventy at a push (have I told you that already?). Some women that age have very lived-in faces; all scowl lines and wrinkles. But apart from the ravages of death, Time had been kind to her. If it wasn't for the fact that I was happily married to a wonderful woman, I might have been quite taken with her, despite her advanced years.

Still, it wasn't really the done thing for her to be looming over me when I was on standby after lights-out. I started to regret troubling the two youngsters. At the time, I'd thought it reasonable that I should make conversation with them as neither of them were actually sleeping, but now it was my own bed under siege I realised that, asleep or not, it was a little alarming to have someone you hardly know staring at you in the middle of the night.

"Can I help you, Madam?" I enquired on the first occasion. But she just smiled at me, as if reassured, and retired to her own bed.

I started to wonder whether she was all there. How was I to know what she was like before she'd died? Pretty, no doubt, with a sound sense of humour (she'd been the only one to laugh at my "echo-o-o-o", after all). But what if she had psychopathic tendencies, hanging around behind shower curtains with well-honed kitchen utensils? What if she was waiting until I had my eyes closed, so she could slip a pillow over my face? She didn't look the type, I'll grant you, but neither did Crippen.

The second time she came to stare at me, I opened my eyes very wide, so she'd be under no illusions that I was awake, and that I was aware of whatever it was she was up to. She smiled again, only this time the warmth lit up her face. It was a good smile. Surely she was no serial killer, not with a set of teeth like that (very few of which had dropped out in her grave). But then I decided she was smiling at me for a little too long, and I started to get uncomfortable again. I frowned. She scuttled back to her own bed, where she belonged.

I was tempted to hide under my pillow, but it occurred to me that that might not be the safest course of action if she was prone to suffocating chaps during the night. Not only would I be tempting her to smother me, but I'd be doing half the job for her if I'd already positioned my face beneath my pillow. But then again, I was deceased, so maybe she couldn't bump me off even if she tried. Presumably there are only so many times you can die, and I'd exhausted my quota already.

She visited me one more time. She looked into my eyes again. I thought I saw empathy, but it was hard to be sure, what with the egg-white film across her irises. They looked like they could use a good polish with a damp cloth (not that I would do such a thing; it would be highly irregular, buffing up a total stranger in that fashion).

"Yes?" I said, a trifle anxiously. "How can I help you?"

But she just nodded again, and made her way back to her bed.

I was reminded a little of Lady MacBeth. You know the play; she persuades her husband to murder the King so he can take his place. But then guilt takes hold of her, and she goes sleep-walking every night, washing her hands as if to rinse off the blood. Maybe this was the zombie equivalent; peering at men in their beds, whilst torturing themselves with the memories of past transgressions. Would that help explain why she was wandering around the dormitory in the early hours of the morning, checking me out as I lay cowering beneath my blankets? No. Probably not.

Morning came. I hadn't had much standby time, but at least I knew the last of my cell-mates a little better than before, which was a good thing. And I hadn't been murdered in my bed, which was a better thing still.

Dave arrived. I was pleased to see him. He might have savagely beaten someone to death in front of my very eyes, but he had been provoked by the fellow wanting to use him as a taxi service so I suppose that was fair enough. I'd have been a little grumpy myself if someone had tried to seize hold of my ears whilst I was driving, too.

Besides, I far preferred him to Doubting Thomas. Scepticism is never a very attractive trait. I gave him a hug (Dave, not Thomas, as Thomas wasn't there and I wouldn't have wanted to embrace him anyway). He looked embarrassed but said nothing. I'm not in the habit of giving people hugs, I should stress, least of all men. Indeed, it had been some years before my demise that I'd hugged my wife, but that was mainly because she'd made it clear that she didn't want any of that sort of nonsense, thank you very much. But I just wanted him to know I'd appreciated all he'd done for me, even though it was rather embarrassing for both of us. I appeared to have softened considerably since my burial, craving affection in a way I never would have done before my untimely demise. I'd certainly softened physically, of course, as my flesh was distinctly crumbly by now. It was a little like chronic dandruff, only it affected my entire body.

Dave took me back to Lizard-lady for another liquid-soaping. I reminded him that it was only recently that I'd had a bath, and that when I was alive I'd been in the habit of bathing just twice a week to save all my pension going on water bills. Then I remembered that I hadn't actually retired, which was very curious. I tried to return to my dormitory in a state of confusion, but he wasn't having any of it. I had to bathe every day, he insisted. My skin was decomposing. If I didn't wash regularly, the smell would be overwhelming. Charming, I thought. Maybe Thomas was my favourite after all.

Dave vaulted back into my good books, though, when he told me that my wife was coming to visit me that afternoon. Gloria. My lovely, beautiful Gloria. I scrubbed myself with liquid soap for as long as they let me, almost emptying the dispenser. I didn't want her to smell rotting flesh when we were reunited; it would spoil the moment, and reduce the prospects of our first marital cuddle for a very long time. I felt like I needed a good cuddle. Dave was all very well, but I wanted a hug from someone who would actually be willing to embrace me back. It's better that way, believe me.

Gloria would be so surprised when I clung on to her like a squishy limpet. I chuckled to myself at the thought of it; me, of all people, showing affection to her, in public, no less. That would take the wind out of her sails! But Dave gave me a guarded look when he heard me laughing, so I decided to stop, and have a bit of a chuckle later on instead, when he wasn't around.

Back in the dormitory, I broke the good news to my cell-mates. I got mixed reactions. Annie was too engrossed with her video-game to notice. The boy – Mark, his name was, as it turned out – retired under his bedsheets to cry (I have no idea why). Only the lady seemed pleased for me.

"My name's George," I reminded her, prompting her to tell me hers. I decided against repeating the whole echo joke again. She'd heard it once already, and however amusing she may have found it first time round, you can have too much of a good thing.

She nodded, to show me she knew.

"And you are?" I prompted. It was conventional, after all, for the exchange of names to be a two-way process.

She went back to bed. She wasn't the easiest person to converse with.

"She's Mary," Annie advised me, without looking up from her little plastic box. "She doesn't say much most of the time."

"Mary?" I thought for a minute. "You're two queens, then."

Annie looked up from her game. "What are you trying to say?"

"Two queens. Anne and Mary. Stewart queens."

She lost interest before I'd finished my sentence, returning to her toy. Not everyone is as keen on British history as me. Maybe she was more interested in geography or mathematics. Some people are, you know, however unlikely that may seem.

It was then that Dave came back for me. I was going to see my wife. Now was my chance to break the habit of a life-time (which is easier to do when you're deceased); I'd hug her, and kiss her and ask her to take me home. It was only a matter of time before all my troubles would be over, I was sure of it.

I was wrong, of course. They'd only just begun.

We met in a little white-washed interview room, with nothing in it but a couple of stacking chairs and a battered desk with initials and some rather alarming (and anatomically impossible) profanities carved upon it. There was a window on the interior wall, so the guard in the corridor could keep an eye on us. There was no window looking out on to the outside world, though. It seemed that the only time I was destined to see daylight in here was when they took me for a soap-down in the toilets.

I was in for as much as a shock as she was. This wasn't Gloria. It looked like her, I'll grant you. The same suspicious little eyes, the same disapproving frown, the identical defensive posture, bless her. But this woman was at least twenty years older than she should have been. About sixty plus VAT, I'd say, if you made me hazard a guess. Even older than the lady in my dormitory!

I thought for a moment that this might be her mother, come to tell me that Gloria was poorly and would be in tomorrow instead. But then I remembered that her mother was as dead as I. Maybe they'd dug her up, too? But no, she'd been dead since a year or two after the twins had been born (Gloria had never forgiven me for that, either, though why is anyone's guess), and this woman seemed to be in perfect working order, so to speak. You can't be in a coffin for years without so much as a liver-spot.

"Gloria?" I asked, hoping for some sort of explanation for her appearance if it was indeed she.

She nodded, but said nothing. My death must have aged her more than I'd anticipated. Poor love. The things she must have suffered on my account. Never mind. I was back now. Maybe her hair would go back to its normal colour now I was there to cheer her up.

I hobbled forwards, arms outstretched, ready to give her the biggest hug imaginable. She scuttled backwards, a look of alarm on her face, and took refuge behind the desk. I tried to skirt it, but she kept a few steps ahead of me, back-pedalling furiously the whole time. We circled around the desk for two complete circuits before I gave up the chase and took a seat on a grey plastic stacking chair to recover my breath.

"I've missed you so much," I told her. It seemed like a good place to start. I hadn't expressed my feelings nearly enough when I was alive, but I was so pleased to see her I would have done just about anything she asked of me. Except making love on the desk, of course (a chap has his limits, and besides I suspected that the pressure of my trousers were the only thing keeping my pelvis from oozing away).

She smiled, but it lacked the warmth of the lady who had been peering down at me in my bed last night. What was her name again? She was a queen. Elizabeth? Matilda, maybe? Not Lady Jane Grey, no-one would give their child a name like that. I decided against telling Gloria about her, whatever she was called. It didn't seem like an appropriate topic of conversation, what with her trying to sneak a peek beneath my bedclothes, and everything.

"You're looking well," she lied.

"Do I smell?"

"I'm sorry, George?"

"You're looking a little uncomfortable. Dave just told me that I'd smell if I don't bathe enough. I just wanted to make sure—"

"Dave?"

"He's one of the guards here. Nice chap, as long as you don't grab him by the ears. Do I?"

"Do you? Do you what?"

"Smell."

"No. No more than usual."

"I'm sorry?"

"Just my little joke, George. You're fine. Really you are. They're obviously looking after you here."

We lapsed into silence. There was so much I wanted to say to her. But she was so different from how I remembered her, and she was acting flatter than a bulimic pancake. I was supposed to be the lifeless one. It must have been a tremendous shock for her, I reminded myself. It'll take a while to sink in. Sooner or later, she'll come to terms with all this, and then we'll be closer than ever.

Where are the children?" I enquired. I'd hoped they'd be here with her.

"Are they at school?"

She gave me a strange look. "Why would they be at school?"

"Sorry. I don't know what day of the week it is. Is it a weekend? Or maybe their summer holidays?"

"They haven't been to school for years. They're in their thirties now."

All this had obviously been more of a shock than I'd thought. She'd lost her reason. I'd only been buried for a few months. The children had barely started secondary school when I died. And now she thought they were all grown-up. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, not really knowing what to say. I wasn't very good with hysterical people, especially when I was married to them. Maybe I shouldn't give her a cuddle until she'd calmed down a bit. Best not to over-excite her, I reasoned.

"They told me this might happen," she said. "That you might not remember everything. Just the old stuff."

"The old stuff?"

She nodded, but declined to expand upon this. I waited. She waited, too. And then she was on her feet. "Well, I really must be going. George is waiting."

"I'm George," I reminded her, more worried than ever that she had cracked up under the strain of losing me. "You remember?"

"No, this is another George. He's just a friend. Nothing for you to worry about. He's been every kind to me since you—left. He's driven me here today, especially to see you. I don't like to keep him waiting. He's got bad knees."

"But there's so much I want to tell you. To ask you. To tell you. Both. I've missed you. I don't like it in here. I want to come home."

"You have to stay here for a while, George. It's for the best. They know how to look after you. I wouldn't know where to start if you were at home."

She held out her hand. She was going to leave me with a handshake! Oh, the irony! But I needed her to stay. I would do whatever it took to keep her with me, if only for a few more minutes. I hate lying, I really do, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Don't leave me here. They beat me!"

She looked at me. She seemed more embarrassed than outraged. I turned it up a notch.

"They make me touch them for biscuits."

"That's not true, now, is it George?"

I held her gaze for a few seconds, but gave in. I looked to the floor. What would she think of me now? My integrity was one of the few things she'd always respected about me. And now she'd caught me lying to her. I felt wretched.

"Goodbye, George."

She was edging around the table towards the door, trying to keep as far away from me as possible. She was my wife, and she was going, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

"When will the children visit?" I asked. "Skye, and little Tobermory." "Arran, you mean?"

"That's the fellow. I can't wait to see them both."

"Soon," she said. "As soon as you're better."

"I don't think I'm going to get better. I'm dead, you know."

She left the room without replying. I stood by the desk for a moment or two. I felt more alone than I'd done since I'd got here, more even than when I was in my coffin. When I was buried underground, I'd had my love for Gloria to keep me going. I still loved her now, of course, that went without saying. More than anything else in the world. But she'd been so cold, so distant. All things considered, I wasn't totally convinced that she still loved me back.

I tried to tell Dave about Gloria, but he wasn't keen on making conversation.

"I'm just here to take you to the dining room, all right? We all have our crosses to bear, Mate."

"Dining room? Then we do eat here!"

"Sort of."

"Do we get desert?"

"No."

"So what shall I do about my wife?"

He sighed (not for the first time, not for the last). I don't think I'd ever come across anyone who exhaled quite as frequently as him. "Talk to the counsellor."

"Councillor?"

"You'll see her this afternoon."

"I see."

And that was that. Why someone from the local council would want to come and visit me was anyone's guess. Maybe it was the health and safety department. Maybe word had reached my allegedly grown-up children that I was being refused permission to shower, and they'd reported it to the local authority. I was grateful to them, little Skye and little Tobermory. Big Skye and big Tobermory, if Gloria was right about them being adults now (and it seemed unlikely that they would have been talking to a councillor if they'd still been twelve).

I mulled this over for a while longer, but then decided to think about lunch instead. That may seem callous, I know, but please remember that I hadn't eaten for a quarter of a year, which is the longest I'd gone without sustenance since I'd been in the womb. Which was somewhere between about fifty and seventy years ago, depending upon whether Gloria had lost her marbles or not.

Dave took me to lunch, and left me there.

It was a long room, full of folding tables and stacking chairs, just like you used to get at school. There were maybe two hundred people in there. The Queen of England (I don't remember which one) had saved me a seat next to her, which was nice because I didn't want to sit with strangers. The boy was there too. But not Annie. She was off on another table, sitting with all the cool kids, no doubt. The atmosphere was quite relaxed; there was someone at an adjoining table chuckling away like a manic hyena. Obviously someone who was eagerly anticipating their luncheon.

I was hoping to smell roasted meats and suchlike. Pizza at the very least (not my favourite, but beggars can't be choosers). But there was no smell of cooking at all. No cutlery on the table either. Maybe it was self-service. You go up and collect your knife and fork from those grey plastic cutlery racks once your meal is safely on the tray. That would be it. I was the new boy here, and I just needed someone to teach me the drill.

They went up, one table at a time, filing into a side room, and coming out with trays. I tried to take a look at what people had on these trays when they re-emerged, but I couldn't see without standing up, and the boy gave me a slight shake of the head when I tried to get to my feet, warning me that this was not the done thing. So I waited, as patiently as a hungry man could, wondering what culinary delights awaited me.

Finally, it was our turn. We were amongst the last to go up. I made a mental note to advise the Queen of England to sit at a table nearer the kitchen next time she saved a place for me, or she would be in danger of losing me as a dining-companion.

The adjoining room was not as I'd hoped. No bustling dinner-ladies in blue uniforms and hygienic hair-nets. No food, more to the point. Just a stack of orange beakers and a tray of sachets of liquid soap. At least there were no lizard-ladies there. If anyone had made me take my trousers off in the dining room for a bit of a soap-down, I would have died of shame (but for the fact I was dead already).

I returned to my seat even more depressed than I had been before. I tried to take a sip of water from my orange beaker, but the boy gave me that warning look again, so I desisted. I took some comfort in the fact that he was trying to look after me. I'd have been more comforted, however, by a plateful of steak and kidney pie and chips.

The Governor came in, flanked by four burly guards. He stood on a dais at one end of the hall. He said Grace. I thought this surprising. Surely one of us should have said it, if it had to be said at all? We'd all been an awful lot closer to God than he'd ever been. If I'd made the right call when I

was hovering over the operating theatre, I might have been sitting up there now instead of standing down here with head bowed, and eyes as closed as my half-decayed eye-lids would allow.

We sat down. We drank our water. We wiped our faces with our wet-wipes. We sat there looking at one another for a while. I wanted to ask my new friends what they thought about my curious conversation with Gloria, but decided this was too public a place for such a conversation. I'd ask them later, when we were alone. And Annie, too. If anyone could make sense of it, it would be Annie. Or Dave, I supposed, if I could encourage him to talk. Or the Governor. Or maybe even Lizard-lady, but I didn't know her well enough to make a judgement call on that, and she might make me strip and scrub while we were conversing.

There was one question I could ask here, though. One question which might help determine whether I was mad, or whether it was Gloria who had gone insane. I'd ask how old I was. If they said fifty something, then everything was as it should be. If they said seventy something, then Gloria was right, and I would have lost twenty years of my life, which would be rather harsh (on top of being dead and all).

"Excuse me everyone. How old would you say I am?"

The boy studied me carefully for a minute or two, as if he had money riding on the outcome. "Ninety?" he suggested.

I turned to the Queen of England (Matilda, surely her name was Matilda?), and asked for her input (his being worse than useless).

She shook her head.

"Go on," I encouraged her. "Don't be shy. I won't be offended."

"It's hard to guess someone's age," the boy told me knowledgeably. "Especially when their skin's hanging off their face."

"It's not that hard," I remonstrated, a trifle irritated that he was trying to discourage her from venturing a guess. "Just roughly. That's all I need. Go on, Madam; what do you think?"

She shrugged. Someone at the next table started laughing again; I hoped it wasn't at me. Perhaps I wasn't being as subtle as I'd thought.

"She doesn't really talk during the day," the boy told me.

"Fifty? Do I look fifty?"

She shook her head. My heart sank.

"Seventy?" I asked her with a heavy heart.

She shook her head again. Maybe she was simple, after all.

"What then? How old?"

"Ninety?" the boy proposed again, instantly crossing himself off my Christmas card list. She shook her head vigorously, for which I was thankful.

That didn't actually leave a lot of numbers, as far as I could make out. I was tempted to try sixty and forty, but neither would have helped. Forty, and she'd just be flattering me. Sixty, and it would be halfway between my fifty and Gloria's seventy and I'd be none the wiser. I gave my face another wipe, more to pass the time than anything. The tissue looked filthy with flesh, which was disconcerting.

It was something of a relief when someone clapped their hands, and my fellow prisoners started filing out of the room, one orderly table a time, a gentle river of corroded skin and bone.

It was time for our exercise, it transpired. Well, I say exercise, but that may be putting it too highly. If you think we were prancing round a gymnasium in our vests and shorts, leaping over vaulting horses, then you've never had a friend or relative who's ended up like me. Even walking requires concentration, especially when your hips are hurting from wriggling along floors outside guards' rooms the night before. No, our exercise consisted of going out into a disused car-park in groups of twenty, and sitting around on benches until it was time to go back to our cells.

My time on the bench was shorter than most, as I was taken off to see the councillor halfway through. I'd sat on a bench on my own, deciding to snatch a little "me" time. The Queen came over, and sat beside me, without so much as a by-your-leave. She tried to take my hand. Maybe she was feeling guilty about not guessing my age right. But I wasn't having any of it. I drew my hand into my lap (trusting that she wouldn't follow it there), and shuffled a foot further along the bench. She shuffled after me, but I gave her my sternest look, and she retreated with what I took to be a look of embarrassment on her semi-decayed face. I felt a little guilty at that, but I was still a married man after all. There were conventions to be followed here.

I watched as Annie circulated around our playground, engaging in a string of in-depth conversations with half a dozen individuals. I envied her having so much to talk about. There was only one thing I wanted to discuss, and that was Gloria. But this was neither the time nor the place. I wanted to seek the views of all three of my cell-mates together, seeking their input as a group rather than one at a time. And Annie had to be there, if I was to have any chance of having my questions resolved. She looked like she knew things. She may well have been younger even than the boy, but her eyes held knowledge beyond her years. Which scared me just a little.

Thomas came to collect me. I was disappointed, as I'd been hoping to have another attempt at conversation with Dave.

"Can Dave not take me?"

"I've got no idea what you're going on about," he replied, extremely unhelpfully. Dave wouldn't have spoken to me like that. "Come on. Time to see the shrink."

"The shrink?"

"Yeah." He smirked a little as he led me back inside. "And not a moment too soon, if you ask me."

The "Shrink", as it turned out was a counsellor with an "s" rather than a councillor with a "c". I was disappointed. Not because I don't approve of counsellors, I hasten to add. I'm sure they perform a very important service to people a little less stoical than me. It was just that I'd convinced myself that if I was seventy, then my grown-up twins had been lobbying those high up in local government on my behalf, and it was deflating to learn that they had done nothing of the sort.

She was a nervous looking woman, all dishevelled hair and unstable glasses. I'd have said she was my age, but I wasn't entirely sure what my age was any more. She fussed me into a chair, and then consulted her file. It wasn't much of a file. As far as I could make out, there were only two sheets of paper in it. But she had her note-book, so hopefully it would be a little more impressive by the time we were done.

"How are you?" she asked, emphasising the middle word of her question. I suppose it was the only word worth emphasising.

"Dead," I told her, completely accurately, but it seemed to deflate her all the same.

"Other than that?"

"Other than that, I've never felt better. Could you tell me how old I am?"

She consulted her notes. "You're seventy three. Could you tell me how old you think you are?"

It seemed a fair question. Quid pro quo, and all that. "Fifty two." She scribbled this down on her pad, and underlined it three times (which alarmed me a little as I wasn't used to meriting such determined annotations). I resolved to give less away in future.

"I'm confused."

She wrote this down too. I cursed myself.

"Con-fused," she said out loud as she was writing. She looked up, waiting for me to expand upon this. I wasn't sure that I wanted to.

"Go on," she prompted, which didn't leave me anywhere else to go without appearing rude.

"I was fifty two when they buried me," I told her. "I'm told I was buried for a few months. But when I'm dug up, I'm suddenly seventy three. And my wife's – what would they make her? – seventy (though she looks even older than that, bless her). And my children are grown up enough to phone the Council for me. Only they didn't, because you're a shrink, according to Thomas."

"Thomas?"

"It doesn't matter. Everyone seems to be using false names in here. Even Dave called himself something else to the guards at the gate. Jim, I think it was."

She attempted to commit all of this to writing. There was a lot of crossing out, and a little more underlining than I would have liked. She looked at me again, waiting for me to continue. I looked at her back. It was her turn to talk, as far as I was concerned.

She blinked first.

"Do you feel angry?" she enquired.

"Angry?"

"You know, angry." She roared vigourously at me, which was not what

I was expecting at all. "Like that."

I shook my head, just a little frightened now. "Not like that at all."

"Like what, then?"

"Sorry?"

"How do you feel angry? Like this?" She screwed up her face and her fists, and made little constipated squeaks. "Is it a bit like that?"

I shook my head, mystified. I had no idea where she was going with this. She scribbled another entry in her notes, and turned the page. My notes were now officially four pages long, twice as long as when we started, even though I was not aware of having said anything which would be of the remotest interest to anyone.

"Why have I aged twenty years?" It seemed blunt, putting it like that, but it was the only way I was going to get anything out of her. All that time dealing with people with mental issues must have taken its toll on her. She was probably the most disturbed person I'd ever met (other than that man in the back of Dave's car, who had been very disturbed indeed. And angry as well, by coincidence, angry enough to fill two or three pages of this lady's notebooks if he'd survived long enough to talk to her).

"You haven't. You've always been seventy three. Well, you've not always been that age of course. Sometimes you were forty, or twenty or twelve. But what I'm trying to say is that you were seventy three when you died. You just don't remember it."

A thought struck her, and she started scanning through her notes while I tried to digest what she'd just shared with me. How could I have forgotten twenty years of my life? It was ridiculous.

"You're actually seventy four," she exclaimed.

"I've aged another year already?" Either she was making fun of me, or she'd lost it completely.

"It was your birthday yesterday." She gave me a huge deranged beam. "Happy birthday, George."

"Thank you," I said, I didn't really know what else I could say to that. I felt tired. I wished I could sleep. Standby is all very well, but it wasn't refreshing the way sleep would have been. I needed to clear my head, before I could hope to even start making sense of everything which had happened to me since my escape from my grave.

She closed my file. "Time's up, I'm afraid. I hope this has been helpful."

"Can I go home now?"

"When you're better."

"I'm dead."

"Psychologically better, I mean."

"When will that be?"

"Plenty of time."

"How long usually? On average? Just so I get some idea. Friday, maybe?"

"I don't know when." She looked a little embarrassed, which worried me a little.

"Why not?"

"No-one's ever got better yet. But there's always a first time. And I've got a really good feeling about you. We'll show them, won't we? You'll be better before you know it, and I'll drive you back home myself." And just for a second, I think she actually believed that.

That night was a hard one. I lay in bed, trying to make sense of everything which had happened to me, and failing dismally. Before seeing the counsellor, I had expected my night to be spent tossing and turning over whether it was I or my wife who had lost their reason, but now I knew I had more important things to worry about. It was clear from our conversation that I would never be going home. They would keep me in here forever, and all I would have to look forward to would be the occasional awkward visit from Gloria, with nothing to discuss but the extent to which my body had fallen apart since our last encounter (with the occasional reference to new-George's bad knees thrown in for good measure).

Queen Matilda came to stare at me again. The first time, she looked into my eyes, and then retired to bed, looking almost as troubled as I felt. The second time, though, she caught me crying. She brushed the tears from my face, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry, too. But then she got into bed with me. I turned on to my side with my back to her, embarrassed by this close physical contact with a woman I hardly knew. But then she spooned me, and made little crooning noises, and I let her for a while. I should have ordered her back to her own bed, I know that. It was reprehensible of me to allow her to remain there with me, having regard to my matrimonial status. But she made me feel a shade better, if only for half an hour or so.

The following morning, I asked to see the Governor again. They refused my request. He was far too busy, I was told. "But I need to talk to someone who can tell me exactly what's going on here," I remonstrated mildly. "I'll only be five minutes. I'd speak to the counsellor, but I'm not sure she's all there." But the guards were adamant. The Governor was away on important business. And he wouldn't be back until he'd finished the nineteenth hole.

I asked Dave who was the next best person to talk to. Lizard-lady looked like she knew a thing or two, but I was a little anxious about approaching her myself. Would he do it for me? "No," he said. He wouldn't. I don't think he liked her very much. She'd obviously given him a scrubbing or two in his time here.

Did he have any other suggestions? He did. He recommended I talk to Annie. This came as something of a surprise. I realised, of course, that she knew rather more than most of the other inmates here, but Dave seemed to be under the impression that she knew more than most of the guards, too. It was a surprise that they'd stolen her shredded marmalade if she was that high up in the pecking order!

I managed to get her on her own for few minutes during our exercise break that day. Feeling a little guilty after our earlier intimacy of the spooning variety, I shooed the Queen off our little bench, and invited Annie to join me instead. She had been in another of her deep conversations with someone, and it was terribly rude of me to interrupt her, but it was my only hope of speaking with her without other people around.

I had previously intended that a group meeting was in order, but I'd changed my mind. Knowing that I wouldn't ever be going home to Gloria made things different somehow. I needed to talk to someone who could tell me exactly what was going on here, and if the Queen and the boy were here then Annie might not open up to me. We could always have our group meeting afterwards, when I had a better idea what I was up against.

I patted the seat next to me, and gave her my best smile (which was never all that good, even before my face started rotting away). She sat down beside me, giving me a curious look.

"Are you joining the revolution, or are you just after biscuits again?"

"Information, my dear. I need information."

"Such as?"

"What's happening out there? Are we the only ones like this?"

"God, no. There are tens of thousands. Maybe more, no one's counted."

"Everyone's raised from the dead?"

She hesitated before replying. I think she was deciding whether to bother telling me more. She had important business to attend to with the cool kids, after all. But I gave her another one of my winning smiles and it seemed to do the trick.

"Not everyone. Some are, some aren't. They don't know why. They were going to dig up all the graves, but they realised how much money it was costing to house us all, so they limited it to everyone buried during the last six months. You're cemetery was one of the last. You were lucky."

"I don't feel lucky."

"It's better than being six feet under. You don't want to turn when you're six feet under."

"Turn?"

"You'll see. There are a couple here who are pretty close. See that woman over there? No, not that one, the one behind her, the one who's been chuckling away to herself since yesterday lunchtime. Sure sign. She'll be history by the end of the day."

"I like history."

"Not this history, you won't."

"So what happens when people turn?"

"They try to rip everyone to pieces. With their teeth."

I got up. "Shouldn't we move away, then?"

She shook her head. "We're safe here. She'll go for the nearest first. They'll take her down before she gets anywhere near us."

I studied the woman with trepidation. She looked like she could amble pretty quickly if she had a mind to do so. What if she took a fancy to me? The Queen had shown that I had a certain magnetism when it came to dead ladies, so who was to say that she might not gravitate towards me, too, like an amorous homing pigeon with rabies?

"Relax. She won't get more than two of them. The guards allow us two each. It keeps the numbers down."

I was surprised at the bitterness in her tone. She didn't seem like the type who would be distressed at anything. Maybe I'd have to change my opinion of her after this.

I carried on talking, whilst keeping a wary eye on the chuckling lady sixty or seventy yards away. I wasn't about to take any chances. I hadn't spent all this time scrubbing away at my skin to let some mad woman rend it with her teeth.

"They tell me I've lost twenty years. Why is that, do you think?"

"We've all lost time. Some of us more than others. Some of us faster than others. You can pretty much tell how long someone has left by the time they've lost. Twenty years isn't great, if I'm honest. I wouldn't start making your Christmas card list yet, if I were you."

I opened my mouth, but closed it again. I was going to ask her to be a little more specific upon how long she thought I had left, but decided that there were some things it was better not to know.

She got to her feet. "So what's it to be, Grandead. Biscuits or revolution?"

I looked at her. Revolution sounded rather frightening. Especially her type of revolution. It wouldn't be a peaceful John-Lennon-in-bed-with Yoko-Ono one, I was sure of that. It would involve fisticuffs, at the very least. I didn't want any part of that. I was all for making my escape. I wanted to see Gloria on home territory, surrounded by our possessions, our photographs, our memories, as maybe that would remind her what we had meant to each other before they buried me. But revolution was too high a price to pay, not least because I had grown rather fond of Dave in my own way, and I wouldn't want him to be a casualty of war.

"Biscuits," I replied.

She turned around with a shake of her head, and walked away, leaving me to my own devices. For some reason, I felt a little ashamed of myself. So ashamed, in fact, that I was a tad snappy with the Queen when she stole back to the seat beside me and tried to give me a consolatory cuddle.

Annie was wrong about the chuckling woman. She didn't turn that day. She turned in the dining-room the following day. And I was sitting at the next table, with my back to her, when it happened.

She'd stopped laughing by then. She was just groaning a little. That made me put my guard down.

The boy had opened up to me not long before it happened. He'd told me his name on a previous occasion. Ian, I think it was. Let's call him Ian, either way ("the boy" sounds so impolite). He was telling me how his wife had turned his back on him, and I was telling him that I was worried that Gloria might be getting a little too cosy with this other George (the one who'd driven her over to see me, despite his poorly knees). Ian felt that if he could only see her in the outside world (his wife, not Gloria, you understand), everything would be fine, and I had told him that this was a coincidence as I'd reached much the same conclusion about my own spouse. The Queen looked on, nodding her head, so I guess she felt the same way, too. Maybe there was a King out there somewhere who had abdicated his throne and was chasing after some Wallace Simpson while the Queen of England languished here in Colditz with me, abandoned and forgotten. You never know.

And then there was growling from directly behind me, and—perhaps more worryingly – a considerable amount of screaming and chomping. I turned to see that the woman behind me had turned. She had retreated beneath the table, and was attempting to pull one of her table-mates down after her into her improvised lair. He was crying for help and struggling to free himself (as you would), but she was far too strong for him. She seemed to have the crazed strength of ten men (or about sixteen or seventeen women, I suppose). She sank her teeth into his thigh and chewed on the flesh as if it was braised steak. There was blood gushing everywhere. I was surprised at that; I'd assumed the dead don't bleed. I remember thinking that, even amid the mayhem in the dining room.

I looked around for the guards. There were several of them placed at intervals around the room. Some of them had those tasers strapped to their legs, like scaled-down cattle-prods. They freed them from their holsters, but kept their distance. I remembered what Annie had said. Well, not word for word, but it was something along the lines of them letting turners attack two people before they stepped in, to keep our numbers down. I'd thought she was joking at the time.

I looked back to the crazed woman. She'd lifted the man's shirt up, and was eating into his stomach. He was crying with fear and pain. He beat at her head with both fists, trying desperately to free himself of her, but she hung on like a limpet-mine until he struggled no more. The moment he stopped moving, everyone else in the hall stopped staring and they chose instead to scatter in all directions, knowing what was to come.

Everyone, that is, except the Queen and I. We didn't know the drill. We weren't aware of the fact that when one victim stops moving, then it's time for the turner to move on to the next one. And we were now the only ones in range of the blood-spattered teeth-gnashing piranha before us.

She clambered out from beneath the table, her face contorted, like some demented fiend. She snarled at me. I backed away, but fell over my bench, and landed with my back striking the edge of the table. The Queen stepped half between us, and put out a hand to placate her. The turner practically bit it off. I watched in shock from behind her right flank as she seized the Queen's forearm with both hands, and started gnawing at her wrist, trying to sever it.

The Queen screeched in pain. I got to my feet, and went to her assistance. The turner rounded on me, all bared and bloody teeth, warning me away from her food. I backed off. I wanted to help her, I really did, but I was so frightened I just couldn't. I'd seen what she'd done to the man under the table. I didn't want what little flesh I had left to be shredded by this crazed animal. What chance would I have of being reunited with my beloved Gloria if I looked like an explosion at a chicken-drumstick restaurant (all torn meat and lacerated bone)?

"Oi! You leave my Nan alone!"

Annie waded in, stolen stun-gun in hand. Rather than electrocuting the turner with it, she drove it through her skull with such force than it emerged by her far ear on the other side of her head.

The creature twitched once, twice, and then was still.

"Nan?" I asked. "She's your grand-mother?"

I tried to work out what member of the Royal Family she would be if she was granddaughter to the Queen. A princess of some sort, no doubt. No wonder she was treated with such respect by the other inmates here.

A guard came over, and retrieved his taser. He glared at Annie. Whether it was for stealing his weapon or breaking the let-them-eat-two rule, I wasn't sure. Either way, she ignored him. She put a protective arm around her grandmother, and led her away. It was the only time Annie ever let her defences down in my presence, and it brought a lump to my throat. I wished I'd been braver. I wished it had been me leading the Queen out of the hall.

I looked around me. There was blood all over the place. Some of it had even splattered on to our table. I took my face-wipe, and gave the table-top an ineffectual dab. As I did so, I noticed globules of blood sinking down to the bottom of my unfinished beaker of water. So it's not only thicker than water, I thought. It's heavier, too.

I still wanted to see Gloria again. More than ever, in fact. But I didn't want to go back to her anymore. Sooner or later, I would turn, just as that poor unfortunate woman had just done. I didn't want my family around me when that happened. I didn't even want them to see me like that, yet alone be put in physical danger.

All I wanted now was to say goodbye.

The Queen and Annie returned to the dormitory that same evening. The Queen was missing her right hand. I could see torn flesh and splintered bone at the stump (any medical treatment they had given her had been rudimentary to say the least; there was not so much as a sticking plaster on show!). It was lucky that Annie had stepped in when she did, before the turner had taken her whole arm off.

I rushed over to them as soon as they entered (well, rushed may be exaggerating a bit, but I ambled as quickly as my stiff little legs would carry me). "You're back," I said, genuinely delighted by our earlier than expected reunion. I'd missed them. It was very quiet in there with just Ian to keep me company. All he wanted to do was talk about his wife, and much as I sympathised with his position I wanted to postpone the topic until all four of us were together again.

The Queen hugged me. She looked as pleased to see me as I was to see her. Annie, on the other hand, gave me a look which would have frozen rat-poison.

"Keep away from her."

"I wasn't expecting to see you for a week or two. After all the damage that woman did to her."

Annie glared at me. "Stay away, old man. I won't tell you again."

I stepped back, perplexed. "What's the matter, Annie? What have I done?"

"It's not what you've done. It's what you've not done. You could have helped her. But you bottled it. If I wasn't there, she'd be dead by now."

"She's dead already," I pointed out, not unreasonably, but the expression on her face suggested that I wasn't helping my cause.

I looked to Ian for support. None there. He avoided eye contact, and retired beneath his blanket, like an ostrich burying his head in the savannah. No-one was going to side with me against Annie in that mood, that much was clear. I think I'd have rather taken my chances with the turner than take her on!
"I'm nearly fifty," I protested. "I'm getting on a bit. I'm in no shape to wrestle zombies."

"You're seventy four. I've seen your file. And that's no excuse. Anyone with a shred of backbone would have helped her. She would have helped you. She was trying to shield you when she got attacked!"

Which was true. I felt that she would have done just about anything for me. I'd let her down. But I could hardly just roll over and let her granddaughter dress me down like this. Not in front of everyone. It just isn't the done thing. I decided to put her on the back foot; show her I was not a man to be trifled with.

"You knew that woman was going to turn. You told me so yesterday. You can hardly blame me if she bit your grandmother when it happened. She's your responsibility, not mine."

I'd overstepped the mark. For a second, I thought she was going to hit me. I don't like violence. I don't even like confrontation. It scares me. I thought I could sense my heart beating faster, but I imagine that was a figment of my imagination as I don't for one second believe that my heart is beating at all anymore.

She squared up to me. She raised her hand. I cowered. This was awful. I was going to be struck. Struck by a lady, worse still. What could I do? Fight or flight, either would make me look ridiculous. Besides, she could outfight me and out-fly me, so neither course of action had much to commend it.

The Queen caught her by the wrist with her remaining hand. She shook her head. Annie huffed, but backed off. The Queen then placed her hand on my chest, on the spot where my heart had once beaten, and smiled at me. I nodded, as if I understood what this meant (though in truth I didn't have the remotest idea what she was trying to tell me). The important thing was that she'd saved me from a severe beating from a woman who by all accounts was half a century younger than me.

"Thank you," she said. This completely took me by surprise. I hadn't realised she could talk.

"For what?" I asked. Her gratitude made my earlier cowardice even more painful.

"For being the last of them to run."

She always saw the best in people, even when others saw only the worst. She had a good heart. It was such a tragedy, I felt, that it wasn't beating any more.

The following day, I had to go back to see the counsellor after my early morning liquid-soaping. To my disappointment, it was a different lady from before. The first one was particularly poor at her job, I'll grant you, but I'd rather grown accustomed to her. I've never liked change, but now I'm dead I'm even more adverse to it than ever. This new woman was smart and professional and just a little intimidating.

"I hear a friend of yours had her hand amputated yesterday," she said. "That must have been a shock for you."

I nodded. It was not really a subject I wanted to discuss with her, or with anyone else for that matter.

"Did it make you feel angry?"

I shook my head. She made a note of this.

"Not even a tiny little grrr?" she enquired. At least she had some things in common with her colleague.

"Not so much as a humpf," I advised her.

"Any unaccountable giggling fits yourself?"

"Not so much as a chortle."

She changed tack. "I hear you've been asking for biscuits?"

I nodded warily, unsure of where she was going with this. She put down her biro, and opened the drawer of her desk. Out came a packet of chocolate-chip cookies. I love chocolate-chip cookies. I tried not to drool on the carpet, with only limited success. I covered the damp spot with my shoe, in case I got into trouble for soiling the soft furnishings.

She took a nibble of one of them (the biscuits, not my shoes; she wasn't some sort of fetishist, as far as I was aware). "Lovely," she approved. "You'd like them. Oozing chocolate." I nodded again, this time in full agreement.

"What would you do for a plate of biscuits like these?" she enquired. I went back to wary mode again. Annie had warned me against propositions such as this.

"You could hold my hand. No more than that. I'm not a gigolo, you know."

"That's not really what I'm after. Information, Mr Browne. Information about Annie. That's what I want."

"About Annie?" How puzzling. Surely she had a file on her which would be much thicker by now than the one she had on me?

"Our sessions haven't been going very well. She tells me everything I want to hear. I tell the Governor that she's fine; that she's no risk to society. She should go home. The Governor is not impressed with this recommendation."

"He isn't?"

"He isn't. He wants a different recommendation. He believes that the young lady is seditious. Do you know what that means, Mr Browne? George. I can call you George, can't I?"

Another nod. I was well aware that my biscuity fate rested entirely in her hands.

"There would be no hope of parole if she was seditious. The Governor doesn't want her to have parole, you follow? We need someone on the inside. Someone who can tell us whether the Governor's suspicions are well-founded. Do we understand each other, George?"

She pushed the plate of cookies over the desk towards me. I took a thoughtful nibble at the one at the top of the pile.

"Oh, we understand each other, alright."

"Of course, cookies aren't the only incentive I can offer."

Please don't offer to take me home to my wife, I thought. I'd never betray Annie for a biscuit, however chocolaty it may or may not be. But half an hour with Gloria, sitting side by side in our favourite armchairs, little Skye and Tobermory playing quietly at our feet, would be such a cruelly attractive proposal that I didn't think I could bear to turn it down.

Her desk-drawer opened again, and a packet of supermarket own-brand tea emerged, taking its rightful place beside the plate of cookies I'd violated earlier.

"You could dunk," she whispered, as if mouthing the most decadent and depraved activity known to man. "You could dunk!"

I nodded for the final time. I even allowed myself to smile a little. She had given it her best shot, and she had failed. For I knew beyond any doubt that however many luxury consumer goods she thrust across her desk-top to tempt me, I would stay strong for Annie and her nan.

My triumph was written across my fast-deteriorating face as I made my way to the exercise yard. I sat on my customary bench. The Queen came to join me. I took her remaining hand, and squeezed it, just enough to let her know that I cared (without digging my fingers through her palm).

I know what you're thinking; that romance was in the air. But it wasn't; it really wasn't. She was my friend. Annie had told me that her grandmother would have sacrificed herself to save me, and I resolved that next time round I would do the same for her. I'd had my moment of weakness. I'd deserted her when she'd needed me most. And I loved another woman, a woman who had struck up a worrying friendship with a rival George, but that didn't matter, none of it did. If ever she turned to me again, I would give my life to keep her safe. Or the nearest to life I had left.

It took Annie quite some time to realise that my feelings towards her grandmother had changed. At first she was suspicious, convinced that I was just using her ancestor to get back into her good books again. But I won her over in the end. Telling her about my session with the counsellor certainly greased the wheels in that respect.

And so, once we had patched things up, I decided that the moment had come to have a heart to heart with my cell-mates. Just the four of us. Not even Dave was invited, much as it pained me to exclude him. I knew how hurt he would be if I discussed escaping from Colditz without consulting him first. He'd think I didn't trust him. I did, with all my heart I did. We were close friends, that much was clear. But I knew that Annie would have her reservations about him, so it was just the four of us who spoke after lights-out that night.

I shook Annie out of standby first. I'd become less shy about approaching the young lady's bed after dark. The number of times her grandmother had tried to slip into mine meant that we were practically family after all. It was clear that if Annie wasn't in the mood for talking, that there would be no point rousing the others, so she was my first port of call.

"What?" she asked, somewhat snappily. I'm not sure she'd entirely forgiven me for abandoning the Queen yet, but at least she was talking to me again.

"We need to talk. All four of us."

"No we don't."

"Yes, we do." I was emphatic. Just for once, I wasn't going to let her set the itinerary.

"Biscuits or revolution?" she asked.

"Oh, most definitely revolution," I replied.

She got out of bed.

Ian was next. He had been crying again earlier that night. He still missed his wife. I'd decided to help him. I'd been selfish once, with the Queen, but I'd learnt my lesson. This time, I'd include him. I'd make Annie proud of me, if it killed me (again).

Finally, I shook the Queen awake. She had actually taken refuge in my bed while I was comforting Ian. She was rubbing her hand over the rumpled sheets, as if I was still in there with her. I'll never really understand women.

Annie's bed was next to Ian's and the four of us sat two by two, facing one another. I sat next to Ian, while Annie and her granny sat opposite. Girls facing boys, just like in country dancing lessons when I was a child.

"I'm going to escape," I told them, coming straight to the point. "But

I need your help."

I sat back and waited for the full import of what I was saying to sink in.

They shrugged. "Yeah, why not?" Ian ventured.

Maybe they hadn't quite heard me.

"I'm going to escape," I repeated. But repeating it didn't seem to help, as they were just as unimpressed as before.

"Can I come, too?" Ian asked. "It'd be a laugh. I need cheering up after everything that's happened."

"Yes. You can. The two of us will make a bid for freedom together. It won't be easy. We may have to fight our way out. But the rewards will be well worth fighting for. I will say my goodbyes to Gloria. And you will win back your wife. Are you with me?"

"If you like."

"If I like?"

"Yeah."

I looked to Annie for support. She seemed amused. I returned my attention to Ian.

"You do want to see your wife again, don't you?"

"Too right."

"Well then. Let's do it, chaps! All we need now is a plan of escape."

"Which is where I come in." That was Annie you just heard. She had a plan. I'd rather hoped she would have, as I wouldn't have had a clue how to escape if left to my own devices, to be honest.

"Any ideas?"

"Two. One, you could fight your way out, like you said. There are maybe fifty staff here at any one time. Some of them are office staff, though. Office staff don't fight. Ever. That just leaves the warders. About thirty of them. And the locked doors. And the siren. And the prospect of literally being beaten to a pulp if anyone gets hurt while you're doing all the macho shit you'd have to do getting even halfway to the main gates."

I took a look at Ian. He didn't seem too keen on Plan A. Or Plan One, as she'd termed it. "Is there a Plan B?" I asked. "A Plan Two, I mean? Ian doesn't like the first one."

"There is. I give you the keys."

"The keys?"

"The keys."

"That sounds like a better plan than Plan A. Plan One, that is."

"You think?"

"Ian?" I enquired. It was important to sound him out if we were going on the run together. He smiled his approval. He had never been especially enthusiastic about Plan One, I could tell.

"There is one condition, though," Annie said. I waited for her to elaborate. I suspected that I wouldn't particularly like her condition. Conditions have a tendency of being unlikeable, I've always found. Especially when imposed by women, who don't always appreciate the trouble they're putting you to.

"You take my nan with you."

"The Queen?"

"Her name's Jane," Ian prompted.

"Matilda," I corrected him.

"Mary," put in Annie. I decided not to correct her, as it would be embarrassing for the poor girl to be pulled up on forgetting her own grandmother's name.

I thought things over for a while. "It would be a bit tricky. I'm going to say goodbye to my wife. She might not like it if I brought your nan with me. Especially if she finds out that she keeps creeping under the blankets with me every time my back is turned."

Ian was on the verge of agreeing, when he saw Annie frowning at him, and opted to shake his head vigorously instead. "I think we should take her."

"But my wife," I protested. I knew, however that the battle was lost when Annie proposed that we take a vote on it.

"All those in favour of George taking Nan," Annie said. She raised her hand. Ian followed suit, giving me an embarrassed smile as he did so. Queen Matilda kept hers down. I supposed she wasn't entirely sure what was going on, bless her.

"All those against."

I raised my hand. The Queen did, too (her left hand, the right one being sadly lacking). I looked at her, puzzled. And then I knew. She was doing it for me. I'd said I didn't want her to come with me, that she'd ruin my chances of reconciling with my wife. So she had decided to end her days here, in a concentration camp, rather than doing anything which might be an annoyance or an inconvenience to me.

For the second time, her gesture made me realise just how much better she was than I at being a human being.

"I would like to change my vote," I announced, lowering my hand.

"I'm not leaving without her."

Annie smiled. I like to think that it was not just because her mother was escaping, but that a tiny part of that contortion of her mouth was a reward for my change of heart. I think that I had taken one small step towards redeeming myself in her eyes. It felt good.

"You'll be coming too, of course?"

She shook her head. "I'm needed here. There are things I have to do."

I nodded as if I understood what she meant. I did that quite a lot with Annie. As often as not, I didn't have the remotest clue what she was going on about, though.

"We're decided then," I said. "When shall we go?"

"Tonight," Annie ruled. "It has to be tonight. I'm busy tomorrow."

"Tonight it is then." For some reason, I put out my fist, inviting the others to do the one-potato/two-potato thing as a sign of solidarity, but then I remembered that the Queen had one less fist than the rest of us so I withdrew it again with an embarrassed cough which made Ian laugh.

And tonight it was.

We waited until three o'clock (Annie was the only one of us with access to a wrist-watch, so she told us when it was time to put our escape plan into action). And then we pretty much walked out.

At first, we went in the same direction as we had before, when we were off on our adventure in the staff-room. This time, however, Annie told me to get back up again when I dropped onto my stomach so as to wriggle past the window of the guards' room. "There are no wardens in there," she said. How she knew that there were guards last time but not this is something of a mystery to me, but I was happy to stand back up again. I may only be in my mid-forties, but my joints were telling me that I was getting too old to be a commando.

Just before we reached the staff-room, Annie directed us through a door to our left, and then another door (for which she needed a key). We came out into some sort of goods yard, with just a pair of high wooden double-gates separating us from the outside world and freedom. Annie went and opened them, while the three of us milled around, excited to have all this outdoor space to ourselves. Ian made little groaning noises, for which he immediately apologised.

Annie shooed us out through the gates. "Come on, off you go. I've got to be back past the staff room in fifteen minutes or I'm toast. Scram."

We filed past her. I was expecting her to hug her grandmother goodbye, but there was no emotion towards any of us as we left. She gave the Queen a nod as she passed her by, but that was all. I found that strange, after how fiercely protective she had been in the dining room. It seems I wasn't the only one there who wasn't all that proficient at showing my feelings.

I was the last to go. "Cheerio," I said, holding out a hand for her to shake (and hoping she'd shake it gently, as I was still a little worried about parts of my rotted body falling off if used too vigorously).

"Move on," she replied. It may have sounded gruff, but that was just her way. Deep down, I knew that she'd miss me, however much she pretended indifference. I was sixty per cent sure of it, at least. Well, forty per cent, maybe. More than a quarter, at the very least.

I moved on. She shut the gate behind us. I looked at my two companions expectantly. They looked back at me, more expectantly still. This was going to be a long night.

"Does anyone know precisely where we are?" I enquired.

Ian shook his head. The Queen smiled at me encouragingly, but said nothing. I decided to take that as a "no".

I rapped on the gates. "Annie," I called. "Annie!"

After a moment's hesitation, the left one opened a fraction. Annie's face appeared in the gap. She had a pretty face, I thought, even prettier in the moonlight. Even the decayed flesh couldn't mask the fact that she would once have been a most attractive young lady.

"What?" she hissed.

"Which way's Ramsgate from here?"

She rolled her eyes, pointed to the left, and closed the door again.

"Annie," I shouted, anxious to catch her before she disappeared back inside.

"Will you shut up?" she yelled back. I thought it amusing that she was shouting for me to be quiet, but decided against telling her this. My attempts at humour in here didn't have a particularly good track record.

"Sorry," I whispered, very quietly indeed. I wasn't sure if she could hear that, but didn't suppose it mattered. It was the thought that counted.

"What?" she hissed from the goods yard.

"Sorry!" I cried out.

"No. What is it you want?"

A light went on somewhere inside the POW camp.

"Just to say thank you. For all of us."

No reply. She'd gone. I hoped she'd heard that before she left. I didn't want her to think we were ungrateful for the risks she'd taken.

It was time to go, before they set the blood-hounds loose on our trail. You should always wade in water when bloodhounds are on your trail, but the nearest water I knew about was the English Channel, and I decided that three zombies wading along the beach might draw attention to themselves.

I hunched over, keeping low to the ground. That was what they do in war films, when they don't want other people to see them. Make yourself small. I motioned for the others to do the same. Ian made a half-hearted attempt to copy me, and the Queen ignored me altogether. I straightened up again. There seemed little point in me making myself small if everyone else was going to be different sizes.

"Come on, chaps," I said, beckoning them to follow me as I set off towards the right.

"Didn't Annie say "left"?" Ian asked dubiously.

I shook my head and chuckled, like an indulgent parent with a misguided child. "No, bless you. She definitely said we should turn right.

Didn't she, Matilda?"

The Queen gave me a mildly curious look.

"There you go," I told Ian. "Right, it is."

And we set off at an amble towards what I was later to discover was Dover town centre. Why Annie would want to direct us there was anyone's guess!

It took us a long time to walk into town. I don't think it would have been a particularly taxing walk had we all been alive, but we were hobbling along like chimpanzee sleep-walkers, which isn't the most efficient of gaits. Besides, we didn't actually know we were heading for Dover town centre. We thought we were aimed in the direction of Ramsgate.

It was the castle that first gave the game away. "That' s a castle," Ian announced, pointing it out to us in case we were in any doubt what he was going on about. We followed his rotting finger to the top of the hill. There were high stone walls curtaining a central keep, towers stationed around the circumference, all in battle-ship grey.

"It can't be," I ruled. "There are no castles in Ramsgate."

"Maybe it's a theme park? With rides and stuff?" Ian suggested.

I nodded. It didn't seem terribly likely, but what other explanation could there be? Then I shook my head instead, remembering that there aren't any theme parks in Ramsgate either. Then I nodded it again, deciding that we must be in Margate, which was only one town away. There was a theme-park in Margate, I recalled. It had a scenic railway. And now a castle as well, it seemed. We weren't far from home.

Ian found my head's change of direction amusing. He chuckled away as I nodded, and shook my head and nodded again, as if I was his very own personal clown. The Queen gave him an odd look. I gave her an odd look in turn, puzzled at this over-reaction to a little merriment in our band. It only remained for Ian to give her an odd look of his own, and we'd have a Mexican wave of raised eyebrows, which is something I've never witnessed before.

It was daylight by the time we noticed the first shops around us. I kept an eye out for a chemist, as my feet were hurting and I thought cornplasters might work wonders. There seemed to be a lot of kebab houses and suchlike. My mouth watered until I was drooling on the pavement, but none of these establishments were open at that time of the morning. I made a little groaning noise, so desperate was I to taste meat again. The others followed suit. I wasn't certain if they felt the same way as I did, or whether they were just copying me to show solidarity with their leader. Either way, there were three long trails of liquid behind us by the time we reached the bus stop. Those bloodhounds were going to have the easiest task of their lives to track us down, what with us leaving three lines of spittle on the pavement in our wake.

"Are you sure that wasn't a castle?" Ian asked. He chuckled again. "It looked like a castle."

"There are definitely no castles in Ramsgate, young man." I don't know why I called him "young man". I was only in my forties (maybe even late thirties; I couldn't quite remember my precise age for some reason). It just slipped out. Maybe it was because he was acting like a teenager, especially with that inane chuckling of his.

A bus arrived. The doors opened. We got on. The driver was too busy messing around with his ticket machine to notice us at first. It was not very good customer service, I must say. I've always been one for politeness. Just ask my wife. It was strange, but for a second, I couldn't remember her name. It began with a "B" or a "G" or a "D". One of the letters which sounded like that. I'll remember it in a minute. I'll let you know when I do, to save you having to find out for yourselves.

The driver looked up. He screamed, and cowered from us as if we had the bubonic plague or something. I rapped on the glass screen, a trifle crossly I have to admit. There was no call for his behaviour. No call for it at all.

"Stop that," I told him sternly. "You're distressing my friends here."

Ian smirked. He was starting to annoy me almost as much as the bus driver.

"Three returns to Ramsgate, please."

There was only one other person on the bus. A man in his forties, brown leather jacket. He came over to see why the driver was screaming. And blow me down, he started screeching too, when he saw us. He bolted upstairs to the top deck. What was wrong with these people? Had they never seen a zombie before?

"We don't go to Ramsgate," said the driver, composing himself just a little.

Ian intervened. "You're going to Ramsgate!" he shouted. The vehemence in his voice took me by surprise. I put a restraining hand on his shoulder. I could feel my hand sink through to the bone beneath his shirt. He was even more decomposed than I was.

"Come on. There's no need for unpleasantness."

The man upstairs was now banging on the windows for help. There was no-one else around, so it seemed a waste of energy. You get used to preserving energy when you're deceased, whereas the living squander it without realising quite how precious it is. I thought of popping upstairs to explain this to him, but decided that this might make things worse so I opted to leave him to his own devices. He'd get bored of banging sooner or later anyway.

"Okay, okay, Ramsgate," the driver nodded. He pulled away from the kerb without so much as a glance in his rear-view mirror. Another black mark for him, I'm afraid to say.

We took our seats. The Queen made sure she took the seat next to mine, with Ian settling down immediately behind us.

"Do you think he wants paying?" Ian enquired.

"He would've said something. It must be an early-bird special. You get on for free, and you can choose where the driver goes. No wonder the Council are broke, offering deals like that."

We had sat at the front, by the wheelchair bay, and we settled back into our seats as we watched the shops go by. Before we knew it, we were on the open road. Ian thought he saw a castle again, but I ignored him. Sometimes, the best way to deal with a problem which you can't otherwise solve is to pretend it doesn't exist. Everything always tends to work out okay in the end if you ignore it long enough. Neville Chamberlain was of much the same opinion as me, I think you'll find (although that might not be the best of examples).

Gloria, by the way. My wife's name is Gloria. I've just remembered. I told you I would.

At one point, the bus came to an abrupt stop. The driver's door opened, as did the main doors out of the bus. The driver tried to make a break for it. Ian went for him. The driver scuttled back into his driving cubicle. We set off again. We sat back down. It was all rather curious, especially as we were in the middle of nowhere (well, on the A256 anyway).

Ian stayed on guard at the front seat after that, in case of any further dereliction of duty on the part of the driver (whom I was determined to report to the bus company for his surly and unhelpful behaviour). The Queen and I swapped seats with him, so we were now immediately behind him. She took my hand, and squeezed it. I felt my flesh give a little, but said nothing. I gave her an encouraging smile. I was pleased that she'd come along, despite my earlier reservations. She was good company, even if she didn't say a great deal.

The man upstairs stayed upstairs. It was probably for the best. He was of a nervous disposition and would have somewhat strained the atmosphere.

Ian suddenly realised that we wouldn't be getting our beaker of water and our tissue at lunchtime. I wasn't too worried about the water; we could get plenty of that at Ian's house when we went to visit. But the lack of wet-wipes was of concern. We were going home to meet our loved ones. We needed to look our best. Washing out our facial sores and cavities might seem like a small thing to you, but to us it could be the difference between success and failure, between acceptance and rejection by those who meant most to us. I think Ian was hoping for a bit of a cuddle with his wife if she took him back, and the lack of a wet-wipe bore hard on him.

Eventually, I started to recognise a few landmarks. I was pretty sure that we were back in Ramsgate. The issue was settled beyond doubt when Ian directed the driver left at the harbour, and I saw the McDonalds restaurant to our right. I knew that this was a Ramsgate restaurant (although I think they might have opened a second branch somewhere in Canterbury as well). We were home.

Ian started chortling like a school-boy who finds himself locked in the school tuck-shop overnight. He leapt up, and banged on the window of the driver's cubicle. "Let me out."

The doors were open in a flash. Ian was off, and running up the road as if chasing down Jesse Owens. I tugged the Queen to her feet, and was just about to set off after him when I remembered my manners. I let go of the Queen's remaining hand, just as the doors closed (they never give you enough time to get off the bus nowadays). I was inside, she was out. She started banging on the doors, desperate to get back in with me. I held out a hand, motioning for her to be patient for just a second.

"Thank you, driver," I said. "Are you sure we don't owe you anything?"

He shook his head, as he pressed himself against the far window of his cubicle.

It was for the best, as I didn't have any money on me anyway.

The doors opened again. I stepped off the bus. The Queen threw herself into my arms as if we'd been separated for months. She made a similar little whimpering noise to that I had made when passing the kebab shop in Margate earlier that day.

I stroked her hair. I was becoming rather fond of her. Her hair stuck to my oozing hand, and I accidentally pulled a few strands of it from her head. She didn't seem to notice.

"We have to go," I told her, as the bus pulled away at speed. "We have to be there for Ian."

She nodded, but stayed attached to me. I prised her gently away. It wasn't all that difficult, as she only had one hand to hang on to me (although she was surprisingly strong for a one-armed lady).

Ian was some distance away by now, ambling past Argos as fast as his stiff little legs could carry him. I could hear him chuckling away, even from here. We set off after him, determined to be there for him if he needed us.

This was going to be a big day for all of us. If everything went according to plan, he would be reunited with his wife and child in time for a hearty lunch (which hopefully he would share with the Queen and I). And once he had reconciled with his wife, then I would be able to say my goodbyes to mine. Whatever her name was.

We set off after Ian, but it wasn't long before I realised that women of a certain age aren't very good at running. Having said this, I was running even worse than my travelling companion, and I was actually viewing her disappointing efforts at a sprint from three or four yards behind her. Still, I kept chivvying her along. "Faster!" I shouted. "We have to catch Ian!" She lolloped along ahead of me, as game as you like, but Ian was long gone by the time we reached the top of the High Street.

We came to a puzzled stop outside Argos while we paused for breath. We considered our options. We had to find him, come what may. He would need our help if he was to win back his lady-love. Time was short; the minutes were ticking away. For all I knew, he had found his wife already, and was going about things entirely the wrong way without older and wiser heads to advise him.

"Quick!" I urged on the Queen. "Find Ian!"

"What am I, a bloodhound?" she replied. I wasn't used to her talking. It was only the second thing she'd ever said to me. I hoped she'd say more now she had got the hang of it.

In view of the extreme urgency, we decided to sit down on a bench for an emergency think. She held my hand. It was like we were back at the concentration camp exercise yard again, only this time we were free. I smiled reassurance at her, and she smiled her faith in me right back. It was nice. Something inside of me would have been glad to stay there, just the two of us, sharing the moment, but there was Ian to think about. He needed us. We had plenty of time for cosy contentment later on, I thought (incorrectly as it turned out).

"What to do?"

She shrugged. Her earlier sentence was obviously a flash-in-the-pan.

"We have to do something."

She leant towards me. I thought she was about to whisper her plan in my ear, but she honed in on my face instead. Her lips touched mine. Well, I say her lips; neither of us had very much left of our mouths, so it was more of a case of our teeth clunking together. But the thought was there.

She looked me in the eye. I looked her back. It would have been rude not to.

"You're worried about Ian, aren't you?" I enquired.

She rolled her eyes, and shuffled away from me, turning as she did, so her back was to me. She crossed her arms defensively. Something had upset her, although it was difficult to know what. Ian, probably. I've never met anyone who cares about other people the way she does.

And then we had a stroke of luck. We heard a woman screaming from nearby. I looked at her; she refused to look at me back. We were clearly both thinking the same thing.

"Ian!" I exclaimed triumphantly. I leapt to my feet. She seemed rather less excited, but got up all the same. I suppose she was tired after our gallop up the High Street. She was some years older than me, after all.

We honed in on the scream. Just two hundred yards away from where we had been sitting, we found an open door leading into a thin terraced house with three buzzers outside. We stepped over the free local newspapers and pizza takeaway menus on the carpet and rushed up the stairs one at a time (two would have been excessive). On the first floor, there was another open door. We took it (we'd never have made the next flight up without a rest anyway). And sure enough, Ian was there.

His wife was inside, hugging a toddler to her chest, and screaming herself hoarse. When she saw the Queen and I, she screamed louder still. Maybe it was because none of us had had a rub-down with a wet-wipe for the best part of twenty four hours.

"I'm sorry," Ian was saying. "I'm really, really sorry. I'll leave."

This was wrong. This was so, so wrong. He was her husband. The little boy's father. He had nothing to apologise for; it was hardly his fault that he was dead. Someone needed to knock their heads together (not literally, of course; that would have been extremely counter-productive, in my view, and would have earned us at least a caution from the police).

"Stop it!" I commanded her. "Stop it this instant."

Ian tried to take my arm and guide me away, but I was having none of it. He was going to reconcile with his wife, if it killed him (again).

"Stop screaming!" I shouted.

The Queen came to stare at me. "I'm not turning," I reassured her. "I'm just a bit cross."

Ian's wife had stopped screaming. She was now whimpering instead. It wasn't an attractive noise, but at least it was quieter. I took the two of them by their arms, and pulled them together. "Now work this out." Ian shook his head.

"Go on," I prompted. "Tell her how you feel about her. Tell her from the heart. She'll understand, I'm sure of it. And I'll stay here, to make sure she doesn't start that infernal racket again."

Ian giggled. I tutted. Surely he wasn't going to start all that nonsense yet again? Gloria giggled, too. No, not Gloria, the Queen I mean. What a strange mistake for me to have made. Gloria was my wife, I think. She was about thirty, as far as I could recall.

"There's no point me talking to her," Ian chuckled.

"There's always a point!"

"There isn't. There really isn't."

I took a deep breath. He was exasperating me. "Why?" I asked him.

"Why won't you tell this young lady what she means to you?" "Because I'm in the wrong flat. I live in the next one up."

The Queen howled with laughter. I, on the other hand, have never been so mortified in all my life (or subsequent death). We made our apologies and left.

We tried again upstairs. A tired looking woman opened the door. She looked startled to see us, but stifled it quickly. She opened the door, and waved us in with a resigned sweep of her arm.

There was another little boy inside. This one was older than the last. Four maybe? He was sitting on the sofa, drinking squash. Very bad for the teeth, you know, but it still took a lot of self-control to stop me stealing it from him.

"Bed," she said. To him, you understand, not to me. She wasn't that sort of woman, and I was definitely not that sort of man (even if I had been kissed on a bench by an unmarried lady moments before).

"I've only just got up," he replied, sounding mystified.

"Just for a few minutes. I'll take you to the swings and slides when we're done."

This did the trick. He left. We all sat down. I was worried about flaking over her upholstery, but there were no plastic covers to hand as far as I could see. Besides, there were more important matters to concern us all.

"My name is George. I told her. As in echo-o-o-o."

She gave me a strange look. It hadn't sounded quite right. Something was missing. I gave it further thought as Ian made his representations.

"You wouldn't come to see me," he said, with more than a hint of resentment in his voice.

"I couldn't."

"You could."

"No, Ian. I couldn't. I really couldn't."

"You could!"

"I couldn't!" she virtually screeched at him.

This was going to be a long (and not particularly articulate) conversation if they carried on in this fashion!

"Tell him why," I interjected, deciding to referee. "Why couldn't you?" She gave me a look, but did as I had bidden her.

"You're not the same as you were before."

"Why not?"

"You're dead for a start."

Ian laughed. It was not a sane laugh. I started to become a little uneasy. For the first time, I linked his chuckling fits with the laughter of the woman in the exercise yard. She had turned the day after her chuckling fit, I think. Had he been laughing yesterday, or was today the first day? I wasn't sure. The Queen had known. All those looks she had been giving me. I cursed myself for not picking up on it before.

"I miss you," he was telling her. "I miss our child."

"You've never even met him."

"I have. Just now, I have."

"And you've formed an emotional attachment already, have you? After just a minute or two? Boy, you zombies are real quick workers." "I'm not a zombie!" He was getting agitated again.

"Yes, you are."

"I think we should be going now," I put in. They ignored me.

"Have you any idea how hard it is for us?" she asked him. "Being married to a corpse? If you were alive, it would be easy. I could divorce you. But I've been to see a lawyer, and she tells me you can't divorce someone who's already dead. No legal precedent for it, she said."

"Why would you divorce me?" He sounded angrier still. That wasn't good. "I haven't done anything wrong!"

"You're different. You're like a teenager now. A silly, stupid teenager." "I am a teenager!"

"You're twenty three. We've been married six years. But when I visited you, you couldn't remember our last couple of years together. Nothing except your accident."

"I'm still me."

"You're not. You're really not. I was married to a man when you had the crash. Now look at you."

"I'm still me!"

His shouting shocked her. She looked nervous for the first time.

She stood up. "I think it's time for you to go."

"This is about money, isn't it? You're just punishing me because I'm not working."

She sat back down again. She seemed very tired indeed. She held her head in one hand, massaging her own temples between fingers and thumb. She looked up at him.

"Do you know what? The money really doesn't help. How am I supposed to raise Jack on my own? They've even stopped my widow's benefit since they dug you up. It hardly seems fair, does it? You're alive enough for me not to be a widow any more, but dead enough for me not to be able to divorce you."

It was then I noticed he was drooling. I felt sick with fear. I knew what drooling meant, from my earlier experience outside the kebab shop. It meant that he was hungry. Hungry was not good for any of us. It was time to intervene. I had to get him out of here quickly, and then work out what to do with him once his family was safe.

"We're going, Ian."

"Who the fuck is Ian?" he rounded on me.

"You are."

"He's not," put in his wife, unhelpfully. "He's Mark." Was she determined to argue about everything? Maybe he was better off without her.

"Are you all mad?" I enquired. "He was Ian at the concentration camp, and as far as I can recall he hasn't signed a change of name deed since we arrived here on the bus."

The Queen took my arm, and shook her head. She was right. However bad this woman's memory might be, there was no excuse for remonstrating with her. We had more important things to do. Like saving her life.

And then, sudden as anything, Ian was on top of her, biting her to the breast like a madman. I'd backed off last time, but not this time. I grabbed his shirt and tried to tug him off. He rounded on me, snarling, but I held firm. He decided to ignore me, and went back to eating his wife. Her screaming was piteous to hear. I just wasn't strong enough to keep him away from her. My muscles were wasted from under-use. It was like I was an old man.

The Queen pulled me off (if you'll excuse the expression).

"No!" I shouted, desperate to return to my task. "We have to save her."

"Too late for her," she said. "We have to save the child instead."

My heart sank a little. She was right. Ian's wife was beyond salvation. There was blood all over the place. He appeared to be munching his way through to her breast-bone. It was only a matter of time before he rounded on one of us, or upon the child he'd never met, or all three. And there was no Annie to save the day this time round.

I retreated. I thought for a second. I nodded. And then we were scuttling off to the door on the left, through which the child had gone when we'd first arrived. We found him on the floor, playing with those stacking bricks you get.

"Come on, young man," I urged him. "We have to go."

"Mummy says I'm not to go with strangers," he replied. She would have been proud of him if she wasn't in the process of being consumed by her dead husband.

"And Mummy's right. But she'd like you to come with us anyway. Just this once."

He shook his head, and stayed put.

"We have to go," I reasoned. "Daddy's eating Mummy." He started crying, but stayed on the floor.

I looked to the Queen for support. She marched over, seized the little fellow by the hand and yanked him to his feet. She marched him to the door. He started yelling, just as his mother went silent. We threw open the door, and made a hobble for freedom, with the little boy in tow. His father was gorging on his mother's entrails. He looked up as we scooted past him. "Rah!" he bellowed at us (which was clearly nonsense).

We ran for it, pulling the protesting child after us. I slammed the front door in Ian's face, hoping that if he had lost his reason he might not be able to work out how to get it open again. He did. Worth a try, though, I'm sure you'll agree.

He was younger than us, faster than us. We had no chance of outrunning him. We needed somewhere to take shelter. Would Argos be open yet?

A man came running down the stairs from the flat above. He launched himself forwards, barrelling into the blood-soaked Ian as he erupted through the door, and shunting him down the stairs on top of us. We went down like ten-pins (a strike, you could say, only with considerably more thrashing around than you'd ever see in a reputable bowling alley). The little boy cried even more, as his father and the stranger from the top flat wrestled for supremacy on top of us.

The stranger punched Ian, whose temple caved in beneath the weight of the blow. Ian howled, but continued to struggle. I wriggled free from beneath them, and pulled the Queen out after me. I felt her arm give in the socket. Fortunately it was her bad (handless) arm, so the fact that I had dislocated it didn't leave her any more disabled than she was before.

The child followed us out. He started crying when he saw his long-lost father biting into the face of the nice man from upstairs. You would, wouldn't you?

I grabbed his hand, and hurried towards the front-door, nearly slipping on the stray newspapers as I left. I slammed the door after us, to slow him down a little. It was only a matter of time before he would finish off the neighbour, and come after the three of us. I had to make sure that we were long gone by then.

I heard a siren in the distance. Maybe two. Maybe the neighbour had called the police before coming to investigate the screaming for himself. I worried that they might arrest us first and ask questions of us later, what with us being zombies and all. It was time for us to make ourselves scarce until the smoke settled.

I set off in the direction which seemed the most familiar, holding the little boy tightly by the hand. The Queen scurried along behind, covering our retreat.

"Mummy!" cried the child, as his home disappeared from view.

"Mummy's gone, young man," I told him. "Not to worry. You have us now."

For some reason, that made him cry all the more.

There was a recreation ground at the bottom of the road, by the traffic lights. Not a large one. Just big enough for swings and slides, and a makeshift children's football pitch or two. But the important thing was that I recognised it. I had played here as a boy, although the playground was very much more rudimentary than now (we had a rather rickety seesaw rather than the convoluted climbing frame which stood there now). I knew my way home from here.

There were a few more people around now. They looked over when they heard the little boy crying, and then when they saw the Queen and I they stared and stared. One crossed the road towards us, but then thought better of it and crossed back again to the safety of the far pavement. They were frightened of us. They thought that we were like Ian. We weren't, of course. Not yet.

The child stopped walking as we were crossing the recreation ground. I tugged on his hand to encourage him onwards, but he made a stubborn little noise and dug his heels in. I pulled again, but he made the grunt louder this time, and pulled his hand away. He folded his arms across his little chest, and glared at me. In my day, he would have got a smack across the legs to get him walking again, but I knew that smacking was frowned upon nowadays (especially when it involved zombies and small children), and I didn't want to draw even more attention to us than we had already. Besides, I had to make allowances for the fact that he was an orphan. His mother was dead, and his father had died some considerable time before.

The Queen knelt down beside him. He drew back, nervous of her, although for some reason I knew that it wasn't her decaying face which scared him but the fact that she was a stranger. Children are better than adults at accepting the unusual. As long as it doesn't come creeping out from beneath their bed when the lights are out, they can take pretty much anything in their stride.

She pointed to the swings, and raised an almost non-existent eyebrow. He nodded, a little uncertainly. She took his hand and led him over to the play-area. I followed along behind. I cast a nervous eye around the half dozen or so people who had congregated around the boundary of the recreation ground. They were waiting for their chance to take the boy away from us. I would have been tempted to let them, if they hadn't seemed such a hostile bunch. He would be better off with us until we could find him a suitable surrogate parent. Dave, perhaps.

"I was going home. To say goodbye. I'm not sure I can leave you with those people over there, though. They look cross." "Go," she said.

"I can't. You need me here to protect you."

She laughed. She'd laughed a few times already this morning. After what had just happened to Ian, it made me anxious for the first time. I felt her forehead. It was warm. I didn't think we could get warm in our condition. I resolved to ask Annie about that, but then remembered that I would never see her again.

"You're hot."

She winked. I had no idea why. It seemed like rather an odd thing to do, to me.

"Go," she said again.

"But you need me," I protested. I wasn't sure whether it was she who needed me, or the other way round. I would miss her if I left.

She nodded. She looked sad. "Go," she said a third time. Three "goes" in a row. By her taciturn standards, that was positively garrulous. She was right, of course. What would have been the point of our escapade if we'd come all this way for nothing? But still I hesitated.

The boy broke away, making a bee-line for the swings and slides. She followed after him. I stood my ground for a few seconds, uncertain whether to amble after them or whether to continue with my quest on my own. She looked over her shoulder at me, and gave me a reassuring smile.

"I'll be back in twenty minutes," I called to her. Then, remembering the speed at which I walk now, added "better make that forty."

I headed off in the direction in which I knew my home to be. This was the moment I'd been waiting for since I first awoke in my coffin. Walking back through my front-door, seeing my wife, my house, all my familiar and comforting things around me (including the tea-pot and biscuit jar!)

But now, leaving the Queen behind me, encircled by the hostile living, it just felt wrong. I so hoped that she would still be here when I got back.

Things became more and more familiar, the closer I got to home. There was the old gas-works, the newsagent, the college up ahead. It started to drizzle with rain after five minutes or so, but only very lightly and I hardly noticed it anyway. I was torn between my relief at being back in my own neighbourhood, and anxiety at having left the Queen alone.

And then I was in my street. A few lamp-posts along and I was standing outside my house. And there, on her hands and knees in the front garden, tugging away at the most stubborn of the weeds in the flower border, was a woman whom I could only assume to be my wife. She had her back to me, and she was wearing old lady clothes and a floppy hat, but who else would be weeding my garden for me?

All I had to do was walk through the garden gate, say "hello", and then "goodbye". Explain to her in-between that I loved her, but that I could never see her again. It was too dangerous for her. She had her whole life ahead of her, whereas mine was very much spent. She was only in her twenties, after all. We would never have the children we were trying for (we'd planned on naming them after the Scottish islands, for some reason I cannot now recollect). But she would be safe, and that was all that mattered.

I thought of the Queen. I looked at my wife again. It struck me that I could no longer remember her name. But the Queen's name was Mary, I knew that now. And I had left her to the mercy of the angry villagers back at the recreation ground.

I caught sight of an elderly man looking out through my window at me. I had no idea who he was, but I gave him a wave anyway. He ducked beneath the level of the window-sill, as if taking refuge from an explosion. My wife hadn't noticed either of us. She continued tugging away at the weed persistently, giving it a poke with her trowel to encourage it to come quietly.

All of a sudden, it came to me that there was nothing left for me here. She had moved on. I had moved on too, in my own circumspect way. It was better that I leave her to get on with her life in peace, and for me to get on with my death. I knew deep down that it was for the best.

I took one last look at my wife's back. "Goodbye," I whispered. It was all I had time for. I would never see her again, but somehow it was enough.

She looked up at the Heavens, as if some deity had just passed on my whispered message for me. She held out a hand to see whether it was drizzling with rain. She half-turned. I saw her face for the first time. She was elderly. In her sixties, I suppose, maybe seventy at a push. I had been cogitating over the wrong woman! She looked a lot like my wife would look when she was that age. Under other circumstances, I would have approached her, asking her why she was weeding my garden for me, but not now, not today. I had more important things to worry about.

Like Mary. The Queen.

Ignoring the elderly man who was peering anxiously over the window sill at me, I turned around and hobbled back towards the recreation ground as fast as my wasted legs would carry me, praying that I was not too late.

I heard another siren in the distance, the second of the day.

"Hang on, I'm coming," I said, more to myself than to her. "Please don't go without me."

There was no sign of her by the swings and slides. I was temporarily distracted by the two police cars which had pulled up on the grass at the far side of the recreation ground. There were four police officers there, one of them looking over towards me, the other three marshalling the group of onlookers who had gathered there.

And then I saw the Queen, stumbling towards them, the child's hand in hers. She was on the point of turning herself in!

"Queen!" I shouted. And then, "Mary!" just to show her I'd remembered her name. I hoped that might make a difference, but she didn't even turn round.

I set off after her. I suspected that she was a faster hobbler than me. But she was slowed down by the little boy, who seemed reluctant to abandon the swings and was trying to cajole her back there. The fickleness of youth!

The police-man saw me coming. He raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth, but didn't risk trying to apprehend me. He thought I was dangerous. His wariness was the only weapon I had. I roared across the grass to him, like a demented monster, hoping that this might be enough to send him scuttling back into his police car, but to give him his credit he stayed firm.

Mary was maybe eighty yards away from him when I spotted her, and I was maybe twice that distance. I scurried across the grass as quickly as I could, but I knew that I would not be able to head her off in time unless she stopped (or, better still, walked towards me). "Mary!" I cried again. "It's me!"

Still no reaction. If anything, she walked quicker than before, pulling the child along in her wake. The police-man took a few tentative steps towards her, shrinking the distance between them still further. That was hardly fair, I thought. She'd had a head-start already!

I was now maybe fifty yards away, but she would reach the police cordon in another ten seconds or so. I couldn't understand why she was doing this. We had parted best of friends. More than that, perhaps. And now she was fleeing from me, turning herself into the police and abandoning me in the process. It made no sense. Why would she try and kiss me one minute, and desert me the next?

I heard her chuckle. That was hurtful. Didn't she care at all that she was leaving me all alone out here? I'd just turned my back on my wife for her. And now she was turning her back on me.

She stopped just a few yards from the police-man. She shooed the child towards him. The little boy didn't seem to want to go. He had made a new friend, a friend who took him on swings and slides, and he wasn't in any hurry to go anywhere without her. She gave him a little shove. He came back to her. She gave him a harder shove. He cried, and ran to the police-man for comfort, changing his allegiance yet again (I told you he was fickle).

Another police-car arrived. The existing officers gave precedence to these new ones. They had guns. I wasn't sure whether guns worked on us – we were already dead, after all – but I had seen one of our number "die" when attacked by the turner in the dining room, so what did I know?

"Run, Mary!" I shouted, as loud as I could. "Run! They're going to shoot you!"

Despite the presence of the armed police, I continued to hobble towards her, determined to save her from them and from herself. At last, she turned towards me. I was close enough now to see that she was crying.

"Goodbye," she said.

I stopped, just a few feet away. A couple more steps and I could have reached out and touched her. But I didn't. She wanted me to go. After everything we'd been through, she wanted me to go. This was awful.

"What's the matter? What have I done?"

She shook her head. I didn't know what that meant.

"Why are you doing this to me? I need you here with me. I—"

All of a sudden, she looked at me intently, as if she was waiting for me to say the magic words which would make all this alright. But I had no magic in me. All I knew was that I wanted to hold her hand again, but she didn't seem to want to have anything to do with me. So I stayed put and said nothing. She bowed her head in disappointment, even though I was sure I'd said nothing wrong.

And then, the police scattered. Ian was there, ploughing through the middle of them, all bloodied teeth and clawed fingers. One of the newlyarrived officers took one step forward, steadied himself, and shot him twice to the head. He went down immediately. One twitch, two twitches, and he was still.

I wanted to run. I didn't want to end my time on this earth twitching on the grass in a recreation ground, surrounded by hostile people and a woman who didn't care for me as much as I'd hoped. But I couldn't. However keen she was to put distance between the two of us, I still had feelings for her. I couldn't leave her to face the armed police officers on her own.

She raised her arms in the air, in a gesture of submission. I did likewise. It seemed like the safest thing to do in the circumstances. She chuckled again, as if my actions had amused her. I suddenly felt very tired, as if I was seventy. We were handcuffed, a little more roughly than was strictly necessary, as if we were dangerous criminals. Well, I was handcuffed, at any rate. Her handcuffs kept slipping off, as it took the officer three attempts before he realised the particular challenges one faces when trying to handcuff a one-handed woman.

The Queen looked at me all the while. But she gave no explanation for what she'd done to us.

Two police vans arrived. They led us towards them, but we were separated at the last minute. They were going to put us in separate vehicles.

"Goodbye," she said again, and waited for a reply. I bowed my head, but said nothing. I felt betrayed. I would have done anything for her. And this is how she had repaid me.

We were taken back to Colditz in our separate vans. I was expecting to return to my dormitory, as it was the nearest thing I had to home now. Instead, I was deposited in a single cell and told to await my fate.

It was lonely in there. It was almost like being underground again. I'd craved solitude on my first night here, but now it seemed dreadful. Human contact is so important to all of us, even those of us who are dead.

Dave came to see me. I was hoping that it was a social call, but he was just there to take me to see the Lizard-lady for my wash. Still, it was a chance for me to interact, whatever his reasons for visiting me.

"Very pleasant weather for this time of year," I ventured. Start off uncontroversially, I thought to myself, and work your way up.

He nodded, but said nothing.

"A spot of rain yesterday, when I was on my travels, but nothing to write home about." No response.

I decided to change tactic. "I have three naked ladies hiding under my bed. They keep coming out and doing things to me when I least expect it.

I'm glad to be out here for the rest."

Dave laughed. I sighed in relief. My shock-tactics had worked.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," he told me. "You're in solitary confinement. Only allowed out for a wash and a walk around, and as little stimulation as possible in-between."

"You tell that to the ladies under my bed."

He smiled. "You shouldn't have done it, mate, you really shouldn't."

"Is the Governor upset?"

"This goes way beyond the Governor. It's all over the papers this morning. The Home Secretary's been asked to resign."

"The Home Secretary! Just because I went out for a stroll with my friends?"

"It wasn't just a stroll though, was it, George? One of your lot ripped a woman to pieces. And then you and Mary abduct a child. If the police hadn't been there, God knows what would have happened."

"We would have taken him for an ice-cream, I expect."

"You would have done what?"

"Taken him for an ice-cream. Taken his mind off his poor mum. We'd done the swings and slides already, so an ice-cream would have been a nice way to round off our little adventure."

"You weren't going to hurt him, then?"

"I'd be very offended if I thought that you thought that we would. We're not monsters, you know. Well, we are when we turn, but not before then. We're just ordinary people, in a rather unfortunate situation that was none of our making. I didn't ask to die. And I certainly didn't ask to come back again."

Dave thought this over for a while. We were fast approaching the Lizard-lady's domain.

"When you died, what happened? Did you go to the light?"

"I went to the lights."

"There was more than one of them?"

"Yes. In the ceiling. Above the operating table. I just hovered around up there for a minute or two, trying to work out what I was supposed to do next, and the next thing I knew I was underground, in my little box, for months on end, with not so much as a Sudoku to keep me entertained."

"It's not obvious then? Where you have to go? I'd like to know. I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to me. No offence, mate, but you know what I mean. When I'm dead, I want to stay dead. Where do you think you went wrong?"

The door to the shower-block opened, and Lizard-lady poked her head out.

"Are you just going to stand there chatting, or will you be bringing him in? Only I've got work to be getting on with here."

"We'll talk later," I told Dave. "We've plenty of time."

It was slightly disconcerting to see how dubious he looked when I said this. I would have expected it of Doubting Thomas, of course, but not of him.

"Of course we have," he replied.

The Lizard-lady shot him a look. He remembered that he wasn't supposed to be talking to me. He left in a hurry, with his chin tucked into his chest, leaving me to her tender mercies.

Lizard-lady grabbed my arm with one hand. She was wearing little seethrough gloves to avoid having to touch me. I could feel her fingers sinking into my flesh, which was a most unpleasant sensation. I considered telling her about the three naked women under my bed, but thought better of it. She didn't look like a woman with a particularly well-developed sense of humour.

She marched me inside. Although I didn't know it at the time, it was to be my last ever visit to the shower-block. Indeed, it was to be one of my last ever visits anywhere.

I must say that she was rather rough with me in the toilet-block. For some reason, she insisted on washing me herself. She scoured my poor skin with the liquid soap, leaving my stomach and one buttock in painful tatters. I protested vociferously, but all to no avail. I can only think that she was punishing me for my excursion outside the concentration-camp walls.

Thomas came to collect me and take me back to my cell. He was as taciturn as his reptilian colleague.

"How's the Queen?" I asked him. "Is she in good health?" He looked at me as if I was mad, but said nothing.

"Nice weather," I ventured, attempting safer ground, but still without any response from him.

"Did Dave tell you there are naked ladies under my bed?"

Nothing. I gave up. If naked ladies under a fellow's bed doesn't get the conversation flowing, then nothing will.

Back in my cell, I turned my thoughts to the Queen again. I was missing her; I was missing her a lot. She didn't say very much, of course. Waiting for her to speak was not unlike waiting for a bus. You can stand there for hours with her, with not so much as a syllable passing her lips, and all of a sudden three come along all at once. But it was never about conversation with her. I just felt that she was always in my corner, rooting for me. That was why it was so difficult for me to come to terms with her decision to abandon me and turn herself in.

My next outing was to see the counsellor. Ordinarily, I would have preferred not to see her, but I reasoned that if anyone was going to talk to me, it had to be her. It would be difficult being counselled without some sort of speech being involved.

It was the second counsellor again, the biscuit-woman rather than the ditherer. Thomas took me there. I wondered whether Lizard-lady had reported Dave for talking to me, and he was being punished for it in some secluded room in the bowels of the camp. I hoped not. I liked Dave. He was a lot more human than most of them.

Thomas waited outside. I was invited to take a seat. I obliged. It would have been rude not to.

"Well, Mr Browne," she said. "With an "e". As in echo."

I didn't know what she was talking about. Browne begins with "B". I thought they'd need at least O-level English to do this job, but her spelling was all over the place. I decided against correcting her, though, as I didn't want to discourage her from talking to me. So I nodded politely, and waited for her to get to the point.

"You've had quite an adventure, haven't you? You and your two friends."

She waited for me to respond. I wasn't sure what to say, so I nodded again and awaited developments. She looked mildly irritated by this. She resorted to asking me more questions.

"What were you thinking of? You know you're not supposed to leave the grounds here."

"I wanted to see my wife. To say goodbye."

"Really?" She sounded doubtful, like Thomas on a bad day.

"Really."

"And you take Mary and Mark with you for that?"

"I took Mary. I have no idea who Mark is."

"The man who ate his wife on your travels. The man whose little boy you abducted, who had to be rescued by the police."

Her tone was harsh. Last time I'd seen her, she'd offered me biscuits. This time round, she sounded as if she wanted to bash my head in with the tin. Our little adventure in Ramsgate clearly hadn't gone down all that well with the senior staff here.

"Oh, you mean Ian?" I enquired, stalling for time.

"If you like. Why did you take "Ian" with you?"

"He wanted to see his wife, too. To patch things up with her."

"Patch things up?"

"Yes."

"He ate through her chest. That's hardly patching things up, is it?"

I shook my head. She had a point. I felt the need to justify myself, though. "I didn't know he'd be like that. He seemed fine when we left here. He was chuckling a little, perhaps, but other than that he was in tip-top medical shape, as far as I could tell (apart from being dead and all). Everyone's entitled to chuckle from time to time, wouldn't you agree? It doesn't always mean that you're on the point of devouring your next of kin."

"And Mary?"

"He didn't devour Mary. I wouldn't have let him. Is she alright, by the way? I haven't seen her since I returned here."

"I mean, why take Mary with you? She doesn't have a husband to patch things up with. Or to eat, whatever the plan was."

"She just came along for the ride."

"And Annie? She knew about this, didn't she? You couldn't have escaped on your own; you haven't got half a brain between the three of you."

So that was the reason for our little tete-a-tete. I could see where this was going, and I wasn't sure I liked it at all. It was time to bail out.

"Well, I must say all this counselling has done me the world of good. I feel so much better now. I think I'll pop off to my cell for a nap. Thank you for your help. I'll recommend you to my friends, you can depend on it." "Did Annie know?"

I shook my head. "She would have been most cross with us, if we'd told her. She's very much one for obeying the rules, as you know. I can't even begin to imagine the ticking off she'll give me when I next see her." She snorted. "I didn't have you down as a liar."

That was harsh. She was supposed to be a health professional. Counsellors aren't supposed to go around calling their patients liars, even if was true in my particular case. I gave her a stern look, but it didn't seem to faze her at all. Indeed, she gave me one back which was far sterner than mine. I tried to memorise it, so I could replicate it next time I wanted to give someone a good ticking off.

"Your punishment hasn't been decided yet," she declared. "That punishment could be quite extreme. There's no judge and jury here, you understand that, I hope? You lost your right to that when you died. The Governor has to decide what would be a fitting punishment for someone who escapes from a secure institution, abets one of his fellow escapees to murder his spouse, and then kidnaps a small child. If you don't want to go back in your coffin, you need to tell me that none of this was your idea."

I stared at her, genuinely shocked. She was bluffing; she had to be bluffing. But even to threaten such a thing was almost too awful for words.

"Back in my coffin? You wouldn't. That would be inhumane."

"You're not human anymore."

"No, but you are. You can't just put me back down there. Not when I'm still rational. No-one would do that to another human being, however deceased they happen to be!"

She laughed at the word "rational", which was rather spiteful, I felt. "Was this your idea?" she repeated. "Your little bid for freedom. Think very carefully before you reply. I'll know if you're lying."

I shook my head. I didn't want to go back to my coffin. "No. It wasn't."

She got up, and walked round the desk towards me. She squatted by my side. "That's better," she said. "It's about time you looked after yourself. There's no use protecting her. Do you think she'd protect you if the positions were reversed?"

"No," I replied. "I don't."

"So tell me," she demanded. "Was it Annie who gave you the idea to escape?"

I shook my head. "No, not her."

She gave me a quizzical look, her eyes half closed. "One of the others, then?"

I nodded.

"Who, then? I need a name for the Governor, if I'm to save you. Let them take the punishment instead. Let them be buried in your place. Give me a name, and I give you my word this is the last you'll hear of the matter."

I smiled, which disconcerted her. "It was," I whispered. "It was—"

She leaned forward, anxious to hear who was responsible for my escape, who would take my punishment in my place.

"It was Ian!" I shouted, nearly deafening her. "Try burying him alive, if there's anything left of him."

She looked as if she could kill me. But she couldn't, of course, as I was already very much deceased.

Back in my cell, I had nothing to do except ruminate on my life, which is never a very healthy thing to do when you haven't got one anymore.

I was, I decided, a bottom-scraper. I don't mean to say that this was some strange career of mine, of course, and neither was it prison slang. It was just that I had scraped along the bottom of life, and now I was scraping along the bottom of death as well.

I had achieved very little in my time. Here I was, thirty-something (maybe less, I wasn't quite sure of my age any longer), one failed marriage behind me, no children (I would have dearly loved children, I must say). There was a young lady I'd had my eye on after my first marriage broke up, a lady by the name of Gloria, but as far as I could tell she didn't even know I existed. I had achieved nothing in my time on this earth, nothing but my resurrection, and it turned out that even that was pretty commonplace.

There was a lady here, of course. The Queen. I felt feelings towards her which I couldn't explain. She was in her sixties at the very least; over twice my age, so surely it couldn't be love. All I knew was that I missed her very much.

We'd sat on the bench, holding hands, and that had been the only pleasure I'd had since my untimely death. If only she'd come with me when I came back from seeing that gardening lady in Ramsgate; we could have been happy together, just the two of us, I know it.

I laughed a little. I wasn't sure why; this was no laughing matter.

"Stop mucking around," I told myself. I laughed again. I sounded like that Kenneth Williams. I liked him. He made me chuckle in those films. I wish he was on the telly more often, but he only ever seemed to do chat shows and voice-overs nowadays.

I looked around my room. A cell for one, nothing inside but a bed and an empty bedside cabinet. It was all I had left. I would have been happier in the dormitory, with the others. Maybe I shouldn't have gone AWOL. The funny thing was that I couldn't even remember precisely why I'd done it. I had it in my head that I was going to see my wife, but I wasn't even married anymore, so I was clearly delusional. That must be what being buried alive does to you, I chuckled. Maybe being mad would be fun.

I took all my clothes off. I'm not sure why; I just felt the need to do it. I examined my body in detail. There was a chunk of my arm gouged out; I remember doing that in the coffin. My skin was rotting away. It was torn in places where the Lizard-lady had been over-zealous with her scrubbing. For some strange reason, the skin on my elbows was completely intact, save that it had started to wrinkle, as if I was an old man. I felt like an old man. I wished I could sleep. Having nothing but stand-by mode to fall back on was driving me mad.

I laughed out loud again. All that time they spent having me seen by counsellors, and I'd self-diagnosed. I was doo-lally. Mad as a March-hare. Completely cuckoo. But that was okay. I didn't really want to hang on to reality any more, especially now the Queen and I had gone our separate ways.

I put my clothes back on. It passed the time. I thought for a while that I might cry a little, too, but in the end I decided that there was very little point so I giggled a bit instead.

Dave took me to the exercise yard an hour or so later. I was sitting there in my pants when he came in (having decided upon a happy medium between wearing clothes and stripping off). He didn't look impressed, so I dressed immediately. If it was Thomas, I might have made more of a fuss, but Dave was different. We were friends after all.

He asked whether he should go to the light. "If you like," I told him. I had no idea what he was going on about, but it seemed to make him happy, so that made me happy as well. I chuckled. He stopped smiling, and gave me a wary look. I followed suit, examining him through half-closed eyes with my head half-turned away from him. This made him laugh. I laughed, too. He gave me the wary look again. I was a little worried that he was becoming manic-depressive with all these changes of mood.

I was expecting the exercise yard to be full, but there were only five other people in it, none of whom were royalty. I wanted to see her. I wanted to ask her why she had left me.

Annie was there, though. Annie was the next best thing. We sat on the bench together. I had so much to ask her as usual, but while I was deciding where to start, she pitched in.

"You've been a busy boy," she said.

"Not really. I took my clothes off. I put them on. That's about all, really."

"On the outside. I heard. I always hear."

"With Ian?"

"Mark, you mean?"

"Ian," I insisted, sticking by my guns. Could no-one get the poor boy's name right? Heaven knows what they'd put on his tomb-stone.

"If you like," she shrugged. "The guy you took with you. The one who ate his wife."

"That was most unfortunate."

"Do you think?"

I looked at her quizzically. She seemed a little stressed. Annie never got stressed. I always felt that she was in total control, and it worried me to think that she might not be. We all depended on her in here (although I was never quite sure what we actually depended on her for).

"The counsellor was asking about you again."

"That wasn't a counsellor you saw."

"She said she was a counsellor."

"She wasn't. Trust me on that."

"Who was she then?"

"The assistant governor. Also, a complete bitch."

I tried to digest this information, but failed dismally. Why would the assistant governor want to try her hand at counselling? Maybe her job was too stressful, and she liked to have a go at something more relaxing from time to time, like Winston Churchill and his brick-laying. But surely fly-fishing would have been more the order of the day? Threatening to bury dead people alive (if such a thing is possible) didn't sound like the most orthodox way to relax, as far as I could see.

"You know the Governor's my uncle, right?" she enquired.

Now she was confusing me even more. "Your uncle?"

"Uh-huh. That's why I get certain privileges in here."

"I thought that that was because you slept with the guards for biscuits." "I don't even like biscuits."

"Everyone likes biscuits," I retorted. I guffawed a little, although I wasn't sure why. Biscuits are no laughing matter, after all.

"The assistant governor doesn't like it. She doesn't like my uncle. She doesn't like me. She wants us both gone. Which is where you come in."

I nodded wisely, but I couldn't really see what I had to do with it. This topic was boring me a little, although I was far too polite to say so. I decided to change the subject discreetly, so she wouldn't notice.

"Has she asked you to say that I put you up to it?" she enquired.

"How's your mother?" I replied, as discreet a change of subject as you'll ever hear.

"What?"

"Your mother. The Queen. I wanted to make sure she's all right. I haven't seen her since we got back."

"My grandmother, you mean? She shouldn't have come back." She sounded as if that was my fault. "I wanted her to die on the outside. There's no dignity in dying in here."

I nodded wisely again. I was getting good at it, as I'd had a fair amount of practice by now. "How is she, though?" I repeated. "Your mother. Is she all right?"

"She's laughing a lot," she told me, as if that was a bad thing.

"Good, good," I replied, and chuckled a little myself to present a united front with the Queen.

She made as if to get up.

"I wish she hadn't come back, too," I told her. "I thought we were friends, she and I. But she gave herself up, without so much as a goodbye before she left."

I hung my head. It was hard to talk about this; the wound was still too fresh. But it was harder still to say nothing at all.

"You know why, right?"

I shook my head sadly. I didn't know why at all.

"She loves you, you big dildo!"

I shook my head rather more vigorously this time. I decided against asking what a dildo might be when it was at home. "She's never said so. She's never said anything much."

"Men!" she exclaimed, which didn't tell me anything much either. Women have a tendency to do that, I've noticed. They do something inexplicable, we remark upon it (or sometimes keep our heads down for fear of repercussions if we remark upon it) and they then say "men!" in an exasperated way and shake their heads a bit, as if it was all our fault. If ever men work out what it is that causes this bizarre reaction in them, then the world will be a far more harmonious place.

The guard blew a whistle. Play-time was over.

Annie was looking at me thoughtfully.

"Do you love her?" she enquired. There was a certain tone in her voice, as if something important depended upon my reply. I wished I knew why my response was important, as that might have determined what that response would actually be.

I thought for a moment. Annie watched me impatiently.

"It's not supposed to be a difficult question, Grandead! Either you do or you don't."

I didn't like being called Grandead; it sounded disrespectful, and I wasn't all that much older than her in any event. But it sounded preferable to being a big dildo, so I let the insult pass. It was time to talk about my feelings in any case, which would require all my concentration and courage.

"All I know," I told her, "is that there's nothing that would please me more than if it was her sitting on this bench with me, holding my hand. That's all I want now. Just the two of us here, holding hands together.

Everything would be all right if I had that."

She gave me a small smile. "I'll come and see you tonight."

"I'm not that sort of zombie."

She laughed. I laughed. I had more trouble stopping than she did, which made her frown a little.

The guard came over, a trifle warily. He was anxious to move us out of the yard, but seemed nervous for some reason. He had his stun-gun at the ready.

"Tonight," she said again, with meaning. She sounded so serious that it made me chortle.

True to her word, she came to visit me after lights-out. They were locking me in now I was in solitary confinement, but as always she had a key. In fact, she had a whole bunch of them with her.

"I'm taking you to see my nan," she told me. Fortunately, I was fully dressed at the time, as I doubted that she would approve of my bare torso. I stopped to put my shoes on. I would have liked to have worn slippers as we were indoors, but no-one thought to provide them.

We talked as we walked, which was starting to require a certain degree of concentration on my part. I was clearly deteriorating. I thought of the turner in the – sorry, I can't remember the word for it. The place that everyone goes to eat. You know what I mean. The way that woman turned on her fellow diners, eating the first of them as if he was part of the menu. She would have consumed the Queen, too, if someone hadn't stepped in to save her. I seemed to recall that I was the one who'd intervened, at first, but then I remembered that it had been Annie who had come to her rescue rather than me.

"Thank you for taking me to see her. I've missed her terribly."

"No worries."

"How is she? Well, I hope?"

"No. She's not the same as before. She's chatty, for a start."

"Chatty?"

"Uh-huh."

"The Queen is chatty?"

"That's what I said."

"But she can't talk!"

"You've heard her talk. You remember that, right?"

"Not often. I thought she had trouble with her vocal chords."

"She talks a bit when you're not around. She doesn't like doing it in front of you, though. She's embarrassed by her voice. She thinks it's all harsh and croaky."

"That's true enough."

"Try not to say that when we get there, okay? Women tend to prefer to hear how attractive they are. If you tell her she's harsh and croaky, she may well bite you."

"Oh, I don't think the Queen would do that."

"Some time tonight, she's going to start trying to bite everyone. She's turning, George. I'm really sorry. This is the last time you're going to see her."

I stopped, and stared at her. "You called me George!"

"You're supposed to be more concerned by the other part. The part about this being your last ever night together. Maybe this was a mistake. I've got so much to do tonight. I wanted to do this for the both of you, but if I'm wasting my time then maybe—"

I started crying. I don't know why. She looked embarrassed. She wasn't the touchy-feely type. She punched my arm, presumably as a token of support. It hurt a lot, but I took it bravely.

I wiped my eyes. "What am I going to do without her?"

"You won't have to hang around long after she's gone. None of us will."

"Why?"

"Tonight's the night, George. We're going to make a stand."

"You're revolting?"

"Thanks for that."

"No, I mean, you're going to rise up?"

"And throw off the shackles of our oppressors. Yeah, something like that."

We were walking again. I thought over what she had just told me. It hurt a little (though not as much as my arm).

"But there's so many of them. Surely you can't succeed. Not when they have those stunny things? You know, the cow-prods or whatever they are."

"Not a hope in Hell, Grandead, not a hope in Hell. But it's all over for us either way. They're culling us in the morning, thanks to you and Mark. Every single one of us. And I'm fucked if I'm going down without a fight." We stopped outside an unmarked door. No name-plates on this one. Annie unlocked it. She regarded me closely for a second or two, searching for signs of I know not what. I was still trying to decide how to respond to the revolution thing, though. I don't like confrontation; I never have. But they were planning on culling us, for goodness sake! We were human beings (more or less). That didn't seem right at all.

"She's in there," Annie told me, stepping away from the door.

"Who is?" I enquired, losing my train of thought.

She looked irritated. "Your girlfriend. Who do you think?"

"The Queen? The Queen's in there?"

She nodded. She seemed a little tired to me. I nodded back, as I wasn't sure what to say. I chuckled a little instead. It was becoming a habit.

"Be good to her," she instructed. I stopped laughing. She seemed so serious.

She opened the door for me. The Queen was lying on her single bed at the far side of the room. She turned her head, caught sight of me, and she was across the room and in my arms before I could so much as say "good evening." She hugged me so tightly that I would have had trouble breathing if that was something I still needed to do. I hugged her back. It was the right thing to do, and it felt good.

Annie slipped the key into my hand, and closed the door behind me, leaving the two of us alone together.

"I've missed you so much," she croaked. I decided against commenting on the fact that she was indeed incredibly hoarse, as Annie had told me that she might bite me if I did. I kept on hugging, and she did, too. It was a good way to say goodbye.

Eventually, she pulled away from me. She started giggling away to herself. I hoped she wasn't getting her hopes up after our little cuddle, as I was far from certain that I would be physically capable of obliging her, what with me being a zombie and all. The mind was willing, but the decayed flesh was weak.

I deliberated what to say to her. "I've missed you, too," was an option, but it seemed a little over familiar. Should I tell her about my feelings for her, or should I ask her about the revolution first? Being a chap, I decided to deal with practical issues first. There would be plenty of time for the soppy stuff later on.

"Have you heard about the revolution?" I enquired.

"Yes. You know it's because of us?"

I raised the remnants of my eyebrow. I wasn't at all sure what she meant by that.

"They weren't happy about us—escaping; about that poor woman dying. Annie says there was some sort of—emergency debate in— Parliament. That they decided to—execute the lot of us. Not just here. Everywhere—across the country. It's awful. We shouldn't have—gone."

She was having difficulty speaking, breaking up her sentences into little bite-size chunks (no pun intended).

"You left me," was all I could say in reply. It was all that really mattered.

She looked hurt. I wished I could take it back. That's what happens when you tell people how you're feeling. It always ends in tears.

"I had to give the little boy back. And I – I couldn't stay with you." "No?"

"No. I'm turning. I mustn't be with you when I—turn. I'd hurt you. But I didn't want to turn alone. So I gave myself up. You didn't have to – come back, too."

"Yes, I did."

"Why?"

I wanted to say that I had to come back here for her. But I didn't. I loved her; I really did, I knew that now. But for some reason, I couldn't actually bring myself to tell her that. It was a step too far.

"It's the end," I informed her instead.

"What is?"

"That's what Shakespeare said. Or someone like that in the War. It's not the end. It's not the end of the end. It might be the beginning, but probably not." I stopped. I'd taken a wrong turning somewhere in the middle. I hoped she might help me out, but she just laughed. I laughed back. I tried the quote again, with even more disastrous results, but it didn't matter. I was making her happy. That had to count for something.

There was a commotion outside. I opened the door, and looked out. No sign of Annie, but there were inmates everywhere, all out of their cells after lights out. The Governor wouldn't be pleased. One of them was trying to start a fire, which was just plain dangerous.

I went back to the Queen. She was still laughing.

"We haven't got long," she told me. She was still laughing, but now she was crying, too. I reached out, and wiped a tear from her cheek. She snuggled her face against my hand. I wanted to hug her again, but contented myself with a chaste kiss to her decaying forehead instead.

"We've got plenty of time. As long as your cell doesn't catch alight."

"No, we—haven't. I'm turning. I can feel it. You should go."

I opened the door again. I didn't want to go, but felt I had to respect the lady's wishes. There were three women outside, leading along the second counsellor (the one who didn't like Annie) with a rope around her neck. She was crying, too, with good reason. Her mascara was running all down her face. I felt no urge at all to wipe away her tears, and there was no way she would be getting a kiss on the forehead from me either. She had offered me biscuits, but in return she had wanted me to betray my friends, and that was something I could never forgive her for.

Something inside me changed.

I went back inside, and seized the Queen in my arms. I hugged her for all I was worth. "I'm sorry," I said, although I had no idea what it was I was actually apologising for. I started crying. She laughed, but then made a sort of sobbing noise, as if she'd changed her mind in mid-chuckle. I embraced her all the more.

"I love you," she cried. "I always have."

I nodded, and very nearly told her that I loved her back. But words were cheap. I knew now what I was going to do. I would show her that I loved her. I had let her down once before – when we were in that eating room place – and I wouldn't do it again.

There was a knock on the door. I wriggled out of my cuddle, and opened it. Annie was back. The Queen barked with laughter. It would have been pretty disturbing if it had been anyone else but her. Annie looked at her, but said nothing. She motioned her head, for me to step outside.

"Time to go," she told me.

"I'll be right back," I reassured the Queen, who was clinging on to my left hand with her remaining one. She reluctantly released it. I stepped outside.

It was pandemonium out there. Inmates were running around all over the place. The Lizard-lady was lying on the floor further down the corridor, and two women were attempting to insert a fistful of sachets of liquid soap up her scrawny writhing bottom. There was a fire a few yards away in the opposite direction, devouring a small pile of files, like the one of mine I'd seen in the counsellor's office. This was rather more violent than I'd anticipated. I'd thought that they might just give the guards a good ticking off and then clamber over the wall to freedom.

A thought occurred.

"Dave. You won't hurt Dave?"

"John, you mean?"

"Him, too."

"Why not? He's no better than the rest of them, believe me."

"All the same."

"It's his night off. The Governor's, too."

"Your uncle."

She nodded, but looked a little embarrassed. "I would've still done this, though. Even if he was here. I'm not doing him any favours, okay?"

I shrugged. The Governor's fate mattered more to her than to me.

"What happens after all this?" I asked. "Will your revolution do the trick? Can you save all these people?"

She shook her head. She didn't seem able to speak, all of a sudden. It was ironic. Her mother was talking at last, just as the daughter was lapsing into silence. Maybe they had to take it in turns, or something, with just the one tongue between them.

Annie gestured towards the door. "If you've finished in there, you should lock up. You heard her laugh. She could turn any minute. I've said my goodbyes already."

"Of course, of course. I just want to see her one last time. You understand?"

She nodded again. "Be quick."

I went back inside. The Queen was growling quietly to herself. It was nearly time.

I turned to Annie, the door half open. "Goodbye."

She gave me a curious look. And then realisation dawned. "No!" she shouted. She stepped forwards. I slammed the door, and locked it just as she was turning the handle. It was a close run thing, but I can move pretty quickly when it doesn't entail synchronising my legs.

She hammered on the door. "George! You can't do this. Come out now!" She'd called me George again. I liked that. It was so much more intimate than Grandead.

I approached the Queen. Mary, her name was Mary, I was almost sure of it. She growled at me, the noise a dog makes when telling you to keep your distance from a prized bone. She was crying, and shaking her head. She put out a handless arm to fend me off. Her stump was shaking almost as much as her head.

"I'm not going anywhere. I've got nowhere to go anyway; it's pandemonium out there. I won't let you go through this alone."

I laughed as I spoke. I wasn't sure whether it was because I was starting to turn myself, or because I knew that for once in my life I was putting what felt right over what felt safe. It didn't much matter either way.

"Please go," she grunted. She tried to shove me away, back towards the door, but I was having none of it. I took her in my arms. She resisted for a second or two, but then went limp. The banging on the door continued all the while, as Annie tried to force her way in.

"I love you," she said, as if it was the saddest thing in the world.

"And I have the utmost affection for you," I replied, which was pretty good by my standards. I knew she understood what I meant.

I felt her body buck in my arms, as if she was having some sort of fit, and in an instant the Queen was gone. She was something else now; something more animal than human. Which meant that my time on this Earth was fast coming to a conclusion as well.

But that didn't matter. I had been there for Mary at the end—during her final moments of being the Queen I'd come to love (in my own undemonstrative but heartfelt way)—and that was enough for me. We would die together, she and I, which was so much more comforting than us dying alone on our respective sides of an anonymous prison door.

Despite the fate which awaited me any moment now, I could leave this world a happier and a better man than I had the first time round.

Other horror books by Jonathan Pidduck:

  1. The Wedding Feast:

Philip awakes, naked and chained to the floor by wrist and ankle, in the ramshackle dwelling of a family of murderous inbreds. His only hope of rescue lies with Matilda, their hideously deformed and needy daughter, who lurks in the shadows in her bloodied wedding dress. But what will she require of him in return?

Matilda has lived in the darkness all her life. Finally, an Outsider has appeared, a man who—with a little good-natured prodding— can save her from her brutal father and show her what life is like outside the House. Unless, of course, her family snack upon him first.

This dark romance is about unrequited love, uncontrollable yearning and the terrible consequences of accepting a marriage proposal from a creature whose family have chained you to the ground in their cellar.

  2. Tethered: Book 2 of the "Wedding Feast" humorous horror series.

Abigail awakes, naked and vulnerable, in pitch darkness. Her wrists and ankles have been manacled to the floor. One by one, her brutal, troll-like captors come to visit her. Time is short; she is to be the feast at their wedding that night.

And just when she thinks things can get no worse, her husband turns up.

Elsewhere, three friends spring a young woman from her cage at an animal experimentation centre. To survive, they must stay one step ahead of the government agent who is determined to recapture her. But was it wise for them to leave her alone in an old caravan in the woods whilst they go off for with two frisky old-aged pensioners for tea and custard-creams?

  3. The Last of the Neanderthals: The third and final book in "The Wedding Feast" humorous horror series.

Matilda has spent the last ten years in the woods, foraging for anyone foolish enough to venture into the brooding trees. But her Family has finally summoned her home. Tired of hiding from the Outsiders in the darkness, they are fighting back, and have chosen as their battleground the pubs and sex-shops of the sea-side town of Margate.

With Georgia in pursuit, and frisky pensioners Maurice and Elsie following along behind as fast as their artificial hips will allow, Matilda takes to the battle-scarred streets of Thanet in a desperate attempt to save her people from extermination.

But, as usual, nothing goes quite according to plan . . . .

  4. The Craving

Kate and Angie are the closest of friends. They share everything together, including the men they abduct. But their friendship is tested beyond endurance when Kate develops feelings for an intended victim, a man whom Angie is determined should die.
