Free Dead Man's Embers by Mari Strachan

Non finds herself standing much too close to her mother-in-law and an Elsie pungent with sweatinside a narrow hallway lit only by daylight filtering through the fanlight and a mottled mirror which reflects it. She is disconcerted to find that she has no reflection in the mirror, though she can see both Catherine Davies and Elsie, who are behind her – but then she glimpses herself with relief when she moves after the child who now seems to have vanished into the bowels of what had promised to be an ordinary terraced house. It is unsettling; the muggy, fusty smell of a house left unaired for a long time is stifling. Non’s heartbeat is erratic today as it is. She is aware of it. No one should be aware of her heart beating, she thinks, it makes one feel too mortal. The days when she is not aware of the beat of her heart are Non’s good days.
    A door to their left swings open, silently this time, and a disembodied voice cries out. ‘Enter,’ it says in English, though the accent is so strange here in this house in Port’s back streets that Non cannot immediately place it.
    Catherine Davies pushes her to enter the room first. Non stumbles into a dark void before her eyes become accustomed to the even dimmer light in this room. She can hear the squeak of Elsie Thomas’s asthmatic breath at her shoulder. She must make her some oil of thyme, surely Davey can’t object to that. And some herbs would freshen this room considerably; fresh air would be even better.
    â€˜Welcome,’ the sonorous voice says. ‘You are Mrs Davies?’
    Non is about to agree in amazement that she is indeed Mrs Davies when it occurs to her that she is not the Mrs Davies the medium, if this is the medium, is expecting. She stands aside to let Catherine Davies move forward.
    â€˜I am Mrs Davies,’ stresses her mother-in-law as if Non has no claim to the name at all. ‘It is I who wrote to you on behalf of my dear friend here who lost her only son in the cruel fields ofFlanders and would like to know that he did not suffer.’
    Non is ashamed of the words that enter her mind to describe her mother-in-law.
    â€˜I want him come home,’ Elsie says in her broken English. ‘Is all I want.’
    â€˜Please,’ the woman says, ‘be seated around this table with me.’
    Non can barely see the table. She takes hold of Elsie’s hand and leads her to sit so that she, Non, is between Elsie and the medium. Catherine Davies is left to take the remaining chair.
    â€˜I am Madame Leblanc,’ the medium says. ‘And I am so very familiar with the fields of Flanders and those dear departed who lie beneath them.’
    Madame Leblanc! What is a Frenchwoman doing in Port? Has she sailed in on one of the ships?
    Mrs Davies is having trouble with her chair, though Elsie is seated with her hands clasped together in front of her on the table and her eyes closed looking for all the world as if she is an old hand at this. Non smiles at the thought of the instructions Elsie was given by Catherine Davies during the train journey detailing exactly how she ought to behave once they reached the house.
    â€˜Move your chair nearer to Non’s, Elsie,’ Catherine Davies says, pushing Elsie in Non’s direction.
    Elsie does as she is told, as always, and Mrs Davies yanks her chair from beneath the table and manages to sit down. Her bulk must make life difficult for her, especially in this weather. Non can feel sweat running in rivulets down the nape of her neck and between her breasts, but there is little she can do about it. Her heart seems to be drumming beneath her ribcage.
    â€˜Please hold the hand of the person next to you. We must form a closed circle. And please – do not speak.’ Madame Leblanc’s accent is more pronounced now. She makes fluttering gestureswith her hands, and calls out ‘Esmé, ma chérie.’ The child appears; she draws a curtain of muslin over the