Excerpt
I am not sure now how long it took me to realise that the woman and the girl were different from our other neighbours. They appeared and disappeared mysteriously, they seemed to have no home, they would not answer simple questions: Do you like dogs? What are your names? "Dont ask," they said. "Were your companions."
The real difference though was not their reticence most grownups were not forthcoming but their invisibility. In my mind there was already such confusion between two categories commonly held to be opposites: the living and the dead. As for a third category, the ghosts in my storybooks were filmy, insubstantial beings who did not graze their knees or chase hens. The companions did not seem to fit into that group either; they existed in their own peculiar dimension.