1.

It almost looks like a skull, Fiona realises, turning it to face one direction and then another, this way and that. She supposes Carl thought it was vaguely heart-shaped in the way that it is wider at the top and narrower on the bottom, but to her it seems a lot grimmer. She hadn't particularly liked it when he gave it to her all those months ago, offering it up on bended knee in the middle of a restaurant (in front of all those people), like a servant of the empire waiting to be knighted. Waiting for her to say “yes”.

She should probably have mentioned earlier on in their courtship that she doesn't care for diamonds, that she had seen a documentary once about Sierra Leone and ever since she's remained somewhat convinced that what everybody conceives to be a girl's best friend are in fact a threat to human rights all over the world. She's never thought of herself as the sanctimonious sort before, not really, but nowadays, every morning when she puts on the engagement ring, she feels what may well be a genuine pang of guilt.

The phone rings. It's some dopey cow from the caterer, calling to verify some detail that was sorted out ages ago. Probably a teenager on work experience. It riles Fiona to think that the plans for her big day are being handled by a moody adolescent, but then she checks herself. She was one of those once. Not long ago at all, actually, although it feels like a lifetime. And anyway, a girl who takes an interest in catering must be much less likely to go out taking drugs or getting pregnant or doing any of the other things which are contributing to the “moral decline” that the papers love to go on about. It's a backward sort of logic, Fiona knows this, but it makes her feel a bit better about the fate of her wedding cake.

Her phone beeps again; a text from Carl.

I know that it’s bad luck to be in touch tonight, but I just wanted to say I love you. C x

Perfect spelling, as always. One thing the two of them have in common; neither can stand the bastardised, vowel-less form of English that is ubiquitous in texts, emails and memos – one of the things they initially bonded over when they first started exchanging interdepartmental phone calls... an office romance, just like in ‘Gavin and Stacey’.

Fiona glances at the clock. It’s nearly midnight; she should really be getting to bed. She’s been pacing the length of her bedroom for the last hour, fidgeting with her engagement ring, avoiding going to sleep. Because if she goes to sleep, she will wake up on her wedding day. Her mum and sister will be running round in circles, making her breakfast, fretting over where the hair stylist has got to, doing all those wedding morning things that Fiona doesn’t feel she can face just yet.

Did they get engaged too soon? Six months isn’t a lot of time to get to know each other, when you think about it. She doesn’t know Carl inside out and back to front, and he rarely has a clue what she is thinking. Fiona always had the idea that when she got married it would be to her soul mate, for lack of a better word. A perfect fit, like Cinderella. Ugh – she grimaces at her childish melange of fairy tale notions. Real life is not like that.

Midnight now. Fiona knows that she has go to bed, or turn into a pumpkin – one or the other. She opts for bed, and shrugs out of her dressing gown. She walks to the door and is about to flick the light-switch when she hears something behind her. A click, then a creak. Fiona freezes, but doesn't turn around. She doesn't know why, but something stops her. She hears a soft clatter, as if the window shutter is batting against the wall, and then another noise – something is slithering against the wood of the window frame, scraping and catching as it goes. Fiona's own breath seizes in her throat as a low grown makes its way across the room.

“Hello?” She whispers, although why she should want to address an intruder is beyond her at this point. She turns around, slowly, holding her face away from the window for as long as possible, to put off the inevitable. When she finally looks up at the figure now standing in her room, she lets out a small yelp – the sound of a puppy that has gambolled into nettles.

It is a woman, more or less. She has big, pale blue eyes and lips that might once upon a time have been full and sensual, but now look swollen and white. Her figure is half slender, half skeletal, and she is wearing a shroud or something like it. Fiona nearly wets herself when she realises that she is seeing, for all intensive purposes, a ghost.

The woman rasps again, then clears her throat (a vile, hacking sound) and says:

“Hello.”