The Woman In The Mirror: A haunting gothic story of obsession, tinged with suspense. Rebecca James

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      ‘Just what in hell do you think you were doing?’

      ‘I’m sorry, Captain. It was foolish to leave Winterbourne. Accept my apology.’

      ‘Did you not deem it necessary to ask me first?’

      ‘I’m very sorry,’ I say, for I cannot think of anything else. Edmund is a child, and I could always have overridden his claim.

      The captain pours himself a drink – brandy, strong, in a cut-glass tumbler – and knocks it back. ‘Do you want one?’ He pours another.

      ‘No, thank you.’ He drinks more. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and I notice the coarse black hairs on the outside of his wrist.

      ‘Sit down,’ he tells me. I do.

      ‘Do you have any idea,’ he says, ‘what those children mean to me?’

      ‘Yes, Captain.’

      ‘Do you have children?’

      ‘I do not.’

      ‘Then you lie.’ He sits at his desk. It is scattered with paper, an ashtray bearing the stubs of several cigars, and a framed photograph whose picture I cannot see from this angle. ‘You cannot possibly grasp what it might be to lose a child,’ he says. ‘I could have lost Edmund today. Do you hear me? Do you understand?’

      I swallow dryly. I have no idea what it is to lose…

      Oh, but I do, Jonathan, I want to say. Oh, but I do. And I think that if I were Laura de Grey, with this husband and these children, I would have wanted to live for ever and a day. I would have risked losing nothing. I would have held them all to my heart so tightly that none of them could get away.

      ‘I accept full responsibility for what happened,’ I manage. Any protest that Edmund orchestrated his own fate would sound petty on my part. If the price is the captain’s anger then so be it. ‘It was reckless to leave Winterbourne.’

      I wonder where the captain was this morning, when I came knocking. Possibly he was sleeping, or possibly he’d been drinking. But for a tired man, for a drunk, his eyes are piercingly clear. The burned side of his face is in shadow (does he always sit so as to ensure this?) and his dark hair is unkempt. He trails a long finger around the rim of his brandy glass, watching me.