I am not ready when the shades begin to move, and speak. I am peering into the face of a woman who looks a little familiar from my student days, and wondering if it is she, or whether eventually if you spend enough time among ghosts you begin to find the faces of your own lost, even if they are not there, when she turns and smiles a greeting. It does not seem to trouble her that I am close—far closer than I would go to another woman in the living world—unless we were very well known to one another. A moment later, as the man behind steps through her chest upon his way, I realise why: there are no elbows among the dead.