Ellen's Acting Academy hosted its first official class the following Thursday evening. I ran it as an icebreaker session with circle and improv games, with a view to getting a feel for the group and gauge what best to work on first.

Jess and Hannah were the first to arrive, followed by a man in a neat suit and tie who introduced himself as Vic and played old music hall tunes on the piano while we waited for the others. Kim and Gillian came with someone who looked for all the world like a young girl aged about twelve or thirteen, but who turned out to be Kim's partner Try, which was short for Triana. She wore an upcycled school dress, carried herself with an authority far beyond her apparent years and gave me the same strange feeling I'd had when talking to Susan and Analise.

"I'm older than I appear," Triana explained when she saw me looking. "Long story short, I died aged twelve about seven years ago as time passes here. Usually children don't come to this plane, but I'm a special case for reasons we won't go into today."

I told Triana she was very welcome. I knew that she was one of the Morior Kids along with Kim, whatever else she did was her own business until she chose to share it with me. Then she took me aside for a quiet word.

"I want to offer you some special help," she said. "As a favour, but also because I need to make sure you've thought of this. I'm guessing you'll be wanting us to tell stories about our lives this evening, but the spirits here by definition have at least one harrowing event in their past which you don't want to trample on lightly. By which of course I mean their deaths. You do know that not everyone recalls immediately, don't you?"

I concurred, it was actually a worry I'd had in the back of my mind.

"What I propose," Triana continued "is if someone comes who is pre-recall, I'll let you know discreetly. Don't ask me how I know - let's just say that I see things, when it's time for you to understand the reason you will. Does all that work for you?"

I agreed. Whatever was happening, I just knew I had to go along with it. Triana reassured me that everyone currently in the room was safely post-recall, she also offered to play male or female parts if needed to balance out the genders. She said she had a bit of both; though she identified and preferred to present as female she still had a male body. I didn't ask questions about that either.

A short man with a bulldog buzzcut came in and introduced himself as Lee. Apparently he was another one of the Morior Kids but wanted to escape being typecast in child parts. Unlike Triana (who really was unique) he was actually twenty-two when he died, but never lost his baby face and was constantly trying to act hard and masculine to compensate. Underneath all the rage and bluster he was actually quite sweet and good natured. He ended up coming to me for individual lessons, as did Kim.

Kim told me privately that Lee had recently been cast with the girls to make up the numbers in a pack of brownies and had moaned about it ever since, but wore it like a pro on the day.

"What Lee hasn't figured out yet," she said, "is that this plane lets you be the version of yourself you know you are deep down. You know about Triana - sort of - but I don't know if she told you that we're both trans, the only difference is I got a girl's body because I genuinely wanted one and Try wasn't really bothered what her sex was so long as she could be herself. I was transitioning before I died, but it wasn't completed then. What I'm saying is, Lee doesn't need to overcompensate, he already is the man he wants to be. He was even when he wore the brownie uniform. Which he looked amazing in, by the way."

We got three more women and another guy, before Davis popped his head round the door. He was coming off his shift and was just checking round before leaving, but decided to stay when I invited him to join in. This left us with twelve people in all, with a 7-5 or 8-4 gender split depending on what Triana decided to play (she told me to call her Trey if she presented as male). Not bad going for a first session.

Jess and Hannah were keen classicists. They were heavily into gothic literature and Pre-Raphaelite art and made dresses recreating the tragic heroines depicted. During an exercise imagining which character the students most saw themselves as, Hannah chose Ophelia and Jess Lady Jane Grey. Vic was an artist with a studio by the canal and a taste for twentieth century surrealism. He didn't reveal too much more about himself, but worked well with the group, was non-threateningly eccentric and chatted knowledgeably with Jess and Hannah about art history.

During a game of Two Truths One Lie, Gillian had this to say:

"I have a black belt in judo; my teenage crush was Gary Barlow; I used to be known as Dolly Hockeysticks."

"Your teenage crush was never Gary Barlow," said Kim. "Even if you were into boybands you wouldn't have picked someone that dull and obvious. I believe the bit about judo because I can imagine you kicking ass, but Dolly Hockeysticks? We're going to need more information on that one."

"You've got the lie, so I'll tell you," said Gillian. "Dolly Hockeysticks was my wrestling name."

It turned out that to pay her way through university Gillian worked for a nightclub promoter who put on low budget women's wrestling shows. Gillian had studied judo since she was young and won county championships, which made her one of the only wrestlers he had with actual grappling skills.
"He knew this guy Trevor who'd wrestled around the UK and was meant to be training us, but he was a creepy prick and wasn't all that, so I ended up teaching the other girls how to take bumps properly. It wasn't that serious of a promotion, really just a raunchy nightclub attraction, but I really enjoyed performing in the ring. I found it empowering when they let us have proper matches, though not so much when they made us fight in mud or jelly. Everyone thought I was posher than I was because of the school I'd gone to and the way I spoke, so I came up with this stuck up heel prefect character and called her Dolly Hockeysticks. I'd come out in a kilt and blazer telling off all the guys in the audience, then when I got in the ring I had my wrestling gear on underneath. I ended up being Dolly for about four years in all, until I moved back to Ketherton and got a job at the leisure centre as a lifeguard and fitness instructor."

"So you didn't carry on wrestling?" asked Lee.

"Not for that promoter - let's just say he and I had certain disagreements that weren't fixable - and to pursue it further I needed to find an actual trainer and get booked by a proper promoter, which meant moving further afield. I came back to Ketherton for family and money reasons - I was going to move on again when I'd sorted things out and saved enough, but... well, events got in the way, if you catch my drift."

We did. Everyone in the group had recalled, but there was an unspoken understanding that we wouldn't discuss our actual deaths yet, just our lives either side and then only as much as we wanted to. I did wonder what had happened to Gillian, though. I got the sense she had a lot more to tell.

Before the session ended, Kim asked to speak.

"I want to say how much I'm looking forward to learning with you all," she said. "I think it's been an amazing first session and want to thank Rafe for bringing us together."

Everyone agreed and gave me a quick round of applause.

"Before we all go, though, I have something I want to give him. For those that don't know, Ellen's Acting Academy is named after Rafe's wife, who cannot be with us at this time. But I think she should at least be here in spirit."

She reached into her bag and took out a gift-wrapped package. As she handed it to me, I immediately knew what it was. There was a tear in my eye as I tore the paper to reveal Ellen's face on the framed poster.

We hung the poster together on the wall facing the door. One day Ellen would be here in person. Until then, all of this was for her.

---

On Saturday I donned Hyacinth's skirt, blouse and cardigan for what I expected to be the last time. It was a funny feeling stepping into the character knowing what was going to happen to her, different to anything I'd felt in all of my previous acting roles. Maybe it was the lack of scripting and certainty, the adrenaline of facing mortal danger with an outcome that was anticipated and likely, but not yet written. Maybe it was all this day to day talk of her in the third person. Hyacinth's schoolmistress persona had been thrown together as a one-joke caricature to accompany Aunt Betsy, but I was starting to think of her now as a real person, imagining her backstory, her motivations, her fear. Len was right, it did make her harder to kill.

Hyacinth wasn't a fundamentally bad person, she just liked order and discipline. She could be harsh and cold-hearted, but only out of a sense of righteous duty, of seeing the status quo respected and maintained. I imagined her schooldays as an obedient, model pupil, who later went into teaching so she could remain in the comforting structures of the school establishment. She had definitely been a prefect, she and Dolly Hockeysticks might have been good friends. She went to church regularly, not out of any profound sense of spiritual philosophy but because she thought it was what good people do. To her, morality was defined by literal adherence to rules and only chaos could result from imagining otherwise. Those that chose to break the rules deserved all they got.

Hyacinth never married, she never found a man that could meet her exacting standards. Her upbringing would never allow her to admit it if her preferences happened to sway the other way, but she was noticeably under the spell of Betsy, who was leader to Hyacinth's follower. It was Betsy who had brought her to the Mortal Masquerade and convinced her to take part in the dangerous games held there, who introduced her to the heady thrill of taking on unruly miscreants in battles to the death. She admired Betsy's strength and assertiveness and wanted to please her. If Betsy demanded it Hyacinth would throw herself upon an exploding grenade, but she did not imagine for a second that her friend would ever wish to see her harmed.

When Hyacinth met Betsy it was like a lamb following a shepherd, all the way to the butcher's block.