The Peppermint Tin

I sat in our London flat, nursing a beer and only half listening as my wife, Eleanor, told me an old story she had heard from her Welsh grandmother, Eluned Price. The evening news murmured in the background, but Eleanor had muted it when she began. She perched on the edge of the sofa, her dark eyes wide with the earnest expression she always wore when she talked about folklore or superstition.

"Her name is Mara Vane," Eleanor said, leaning towards me as if she were sharing a state secret. "She wears a pale blue disposable medical mask and approaches people in the street, usually at night. She asks them one simple question: 'Am I pretty?' That's all she says at first."

I took another sip of beer and glanced at my watch. Half past seven. I still had briefing papers to review for the next morning's meeting, and the quarterly projections were not adding up the way Graham Whitaker, my department head, wanted them to.

"All right," I said, without really listening.

"If you say yes, she removes the mask and shows you what happened to her face. Deep cuts run from the corners of her mouth to her ears, making a horrible permanent smile. The edges are decayed, and you can smell them."

That made me look at her properly.

Eleanor's face was completely serious. She spoke as though she were describing something she had witnessed, not a story passed down through generations of frightened relatives.

"Then she asks again," she continued. "'Am I pretty now?' Whatever you say, you are in danger. If you say yes, she thinks you are lying and cuts your face to match hers. If you say no, she becomes angry and kills you."

I put my beer down on the coffee table harder than I meant to.

"Eleanor, come on. You cannot seriously believe this rubbish."

Her expression did not change. If anything, she looked more determined.

"Eluned told me this story when I was little, and she heard it from her own grandmother. The warning has been passed down through our family."

"Because people enjoy frightening stories," I said, my patience already thinning. "It is entertainment. Like those films where the killer always comes back for another sequel."

Eleanor shook her head. "It isn't entertainment, Daniel. It is a warning."

I laughed, although it came out more harshly than I intended.

"A warning about what? A ghost woman in a medical mask? Do you hear yourself?"

She flinched, but pressed on. "There are ways to protect yourself if you meet her. You can confuse her with an uncertain answer. Something like, 'You look all right,' or, 'You look fine.' It might buy you enough time to get away. It is not guaranteed."

"Or," I said, getting up and walking into the kitchen, "you could simply avoid engaging with unstable strangers in the street. Problem solved."

Eleanor followed me, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor.

"The most effective protection is to carry boiled sweets. Peppermints, specifically. If you throw them on the ground, she has to collect every one. She cannot help herself. While she is distracted, you run."

I opened the fridge and took out another beer, although I had not finished the first.

"Peppermints? So this supernatural killer can be distracted like a small child?"

"I know how it sounds," Eleanor said quietly. "But Eluned was very precise. She made me promise that I would always carry some."

I turned from the fridge. Eleanor was holding a battered silver peppermint tin, its lid dulled and scratched with age. It had belonged to Eluned, and Eleanor kept it in her handbag as carefully as if it were jewellery.

"Listen to yourself," I said. "You are an educated woman. You translate historical documents for a heritage trust, and you are talking about carrying boiled sweets to ward off a ghost. It is ridiculous."

Colour rose in her cheeks, but she did not retreat.

"Just because something cannot be explained scientifically does not mean it isn't real."

"That is precisely what it means. If something cannot be measured, tested or proved, then it is superstition. It is the same sort of thinking that led people to burn witches or sacrifice animals for rain."

Eleanor's jaw tightened. "Eluned was not some ignorant peasant. She was an intelligent woman who lived through things you cannot imagine."

"I am sure she was," I said, trying to soften my voice. "But intelligent people can still believe nonsense, especially when they are frightened or trying to give meaning to random violence."

I returned to the living room and picked up my first beer. Eleanor followed, but did not sit. She stopped beside the window and looked down at the residential street in Finsbury Park. The October light was fading and the street lamps were beginning to come on.

"You think I am being foolish," she said without turning.

"I think old stories are frightening you for no reason. I understand why your grandmother might have told you things like this. Perhaps she wanted you to be wary of strangers. But you do not need to believe in supernatural killers to know you should avoid odd people in the street."

Eleanor turned, frustration bright in her eyes.

"What if you are wrong? What if Mara Vane is real and you meet her one day?"

I laughed and shook my head. "Then I suppose I shall die horribly because I did not have any peppermints in my pocket. Do you realise how absurd that sounds?"

"Just carry some," she said, holding out the silver tin. "It is such a small thing. What harm could it do?"

I waved it away. "I am not carrying sweets as a talisman. I am a rational adult, not a superstitious child."

Her face fell. She put the tin back into her handbag.

"Fine. But do not say I did not warn you."

"Warn me about what? A ghost story?"

I sat down and reached for the remote.

"There are real things to fear in this world," I said. "Crime, accidents, disease, economic collapse. Why waste energy being afraid of something that does not exist?"

She remained by the window for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible.

"Because sometimes the things that do not exist are the most dangerous of all."

I unmuted the television, ending the conversation. The newsreader was discussing delays on the North Circular, something concrete and real that actually mattered.

Eleanor eventually sat down again, but said nothing more about Mara Vane, Eluned's warning or the peppermints. I spent the rest of the evening working through Whitaker's briefing papers, occasionally glancing at Eleanor while she read in the armchair.

She seemed subdued, probably embarrassed that I had challenged her beliefs so directly. Part of me regretted being so harsh, but someone had to bring reality back into the room. The notion that a mutilated woman was wandering the streets of London, asking strangers to judge her appearance, was absurd. The fact that Eleanor believed it and actively prepared for an encounter was worse.

I was not going to encourage that sort of magical thinking by pretending to take it seriously.

When I closed my laptop at about half past ten, Eleanor had already gone to bed. I heard her moving around the bedroom, probably following her nightly routine of checking the windows and locks. It was another habit Eluned had instilled in her, wrapped in warnings about the supernatural when it was really nothing more than sensible home security.

I finished my beer and rinsed the bottle in the kitchen sink. Through the window, I could see people walking along the pavement below, ordinary people living ordinary lives without worrying about masked killers or carrying sweets for protection.

That was reality. Everything else was a story people told themselves so that the random chaos of existence seemed controllable.

A few days later, I walked home from the City with my mind still turning over the quarterly projections I had finally submitted that morning. The London streets carried their usual evening rush: office commuters hurrying towards the Tube, sixth-form pupils gathered outside the corner shop and passengers spilling from buses.

I found myself thinking about Eleanor's story. Not because I believed it, but because her solemnity had continued to bother me. I remembered the battered tin and the hurt in her face when I dismissed Eluned's warning.

Perhaps I had been too harsh. Eleanor meant well, even if her beliefs were irrational.

I turned into the narrower street leading to our block, passing a cashpoint, the late-opening corner shop and the neighbourhood kebab shop. Warm air scented with grilled meat and garlic escaped whenever its door opened. Mr Rahman looked up from behind the counter and acknowledged me through the window, as he did most evenings. I raised a hand in reply.

Then I saw her.

A woman stood directly in my path, approximately six metres ahead, perfectly still on the pavement. She wore a long charcoal raincoat, and a pale blue disposable medical mask covered the lower half of her face.

There was nothing especially remarkable about the mask. After the recent winter respiratory outbreaks, people still wore them without attracting notice. Yet something about the woman's stillness made me slow down.

She was not checking her mobile, waiting for someone or doing any of the ordinary things people did when they stopped in the street. She simply faced me.

I continued walking, expecting her to move aside. As the distance between us narrowed, however, I realised she was staring directly at me. Her eyes were so dark that they appeared almost black, and they remained fixed on mine.

When I was about three metres away, she spoke.

"Am I pretty?"

The words struck me like a slap. My step faltered and, for a moment, I could only stare.

Her voice was soft, almost melodic, but something in it made my skin prickle. Eleanor's story rushed back to me: the mask, the question, the ridiculous warning about Mara Vane.

It had to be a coincidence. London was full of strange encounters. The woman might have been unwell, intoxicated or playing some sort of prank. Perhaps she had heard the same story Eleanor knew.

I felt irritated rather than frightened. This was exactly the kind of meaningless event Eleanor would treat as proof. The coincidence was almost funny.

"Am I pretty?" the woman asked again, in precisely the same tone and at precisely the same volume.

I stopped about two metres from her. Up close, I could see that her eyes were unusually large. She did not blink. The pale blue mask was clean and uncreased, covering her from the bridge of her nose to beneath her chin.

"You look fine," I said, keeping my voice casual. "Excuse me."

I stepped to my right. She moved with me, sliding sideways to block my path. The motion was unnaturally smooth, almost a glide, and I heard no footfall on the pavement.

"Am I pretty?"

This time I noticed that the mask did not stir with the movement of her lips. The voice seemed to emerge from somewhere behind the blue fabric without any visible effort.

My irritation sharpened.

"I do not know what you want, but I need to get home. You are blocking the pavement."

She tilted her head like a curious bird. She did not answer. Her dark, unblinking eyes waited.

My heart began to beat faster, which annoyed me further. I imagined going upstairs rattled and confessing the whole thing to Eleanor. She would see it as confirmation of Eluned's warning, and I was not going to give her that satisfaction.

"You look fine," I repeated, more firmly. "Now please move."

We faced one another in silence, her eyes locked on mine and the mask concealing whatever expression lay beneath it.

Then she stepped aside.

Without speaking or acknowledging me, she glided to the left and left the way clear. She remained there, watching.

I walked past quickly, keeping my gaze ahead and my pace controlled. I could feel her attention following me. I sensed her turning as I continued towards the block, but I refused to look back.

Even so, something about the encounter felt wrong. The way she had moved, the unchanging voice and the absolute stillness of her body were all slightly, indefinably off.

At the entrance to our block, I pressed my electronic fob to the reader and went through the communal glass doors. Only then did I allow myself to look back.

The street was empty. The woman had vanished.

Inside the lift, I tried to reason through what had happened. London was full of eccentric people, performers, artists and people struggling with mental illness. Meeting someone who behaved strangely was hardly unprecedented. Her question matching Eleanor's story was only an extraordinary coincidence.

Yet as the lift climbed, I kept seeing those eyes. They had never blinked or shifted. They had shown no emotion. When she moved, she had seemed to float.

I shook my head, irritated that I was entertaining such thoughts. This was precisely the irrational trap Eleanor had fallen into. There had to be a logical explanation.

The lift opened on the eighth floor. I walked along the corridor to Flat 807, taking my keys from my pocket. Before I unlocked the door, I made a decision: I would not tell Eleanor.

She would regard the encounter as proof that Eluned had been right, and I would never hear the end of it.

I entered, shut the door and turned the deadbolt out of habit. The familiar sounds of home greeted me: the fridge humming, the television murmuring and Eleanor moving in the kitchen.

I hung up my coat and called my usual greeting, but the memory of those unblinking eyes and that emotionless question remained with me.

I pushed away every thought connecting the masked woman with Mara Vane. A disturbed stranger asking the same question Eleanor had mentioned did not make the supernatural real. Coincidences happened constantly in a city of nearly nine million people.

"How was your day?" Eleanor called from the kitchen.

"Fine," I replied, loosening my tie. "The usual."

I did not mention the woman. What purpose would it serve? Eleanor would give me the look that meant she had been right all along, then produce Eluned's silver tin and insist I carry it.

I was not going to let her believe her grandmother's stories had any basis in reality. The woman had probably heard the same legend and chosen to act it out. London was full of lonely, disconnected people who borrowed identities and stories from the internet.

The medical mask meant nothing either. It was commonplace after a run of respiratory illness.

I went into the living room, where Eleanor had curled up on the sofa with a book. She looked up at me with warm brown eyes, and for a moment I nearly told her.

Then I pictured her setting down the book and leaning towards me, ready to explain why I should have respected Eluned's wisdom.

"You look tired," she said.

"Long day at the office."

I sat beside her and reached for the remote.

"What are you reading?"

She showed me the cover. It was a novel about inherited customs in rural Wales. Eleanor was always reading books like that, stories about old beliefs, families and forgotten traditions. She seemed determined to maintain a connection with a world that no longer existed, if it ever had.

I flicked through the channels in search of something normal: Premier League results, the weather, traffic reports. Real information about the real world, not tales of masked women who asked questions and mutilated people's faces.

Still, I kept seeing the woman's dark eyes above the pale blue mask. I remembered the smooth, gliding motion with which she had blocked me and the soft voice repeating the same question.

I was overthinking it. Strange did not mean supernatural. People behaved oddly for all sorts of reasons: mental illness, drugs, isolation. None of those required belief in an old family warning.

Eleanor shifted beside me and tucked her legs beneath her.

"Did you finish the quarterly projections?"

"Submitted them this morning." I kept my eyes on the television. "Whitaker seemed satisfied with the figures."

"That's good."

She returned to her book, although I noticed her glancing at me from time to time. Eleanor had always been perceptive. She could tell when something troubled me, however carefully I tried to hide it.

I forced myself to concentrate on the news. There was a report on Tube engineering delays, then an item about trade negotiations. Normal, rational matters that could be measured, verified and explained without recourse to folklore.

The woman's question continued to echo in my mind.

Am I pretty?

It was such a simple thing to ask. What disturbed me was the repetition, the absence of feeling and the way her lips had not appeared to move beneath the mask.

I had imagined that. Stress was the obvious explanation. The quarterly reports had required longer hours than usual, and fatigue encouraged the mind to see patterns where none existed.

Eleanor closed her book and stretched.

"I think I'll make some tea. Would you like one?"

"Yes, please."

She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle. My wife was making tea in our flat. That was what mattered, not masked strangers on dark streets.

I tried to recall the woman precisely. She had been of average height, perhaps, although the raincoat obscured her build. The pale blue mask had hidden most of her face, leaving only those large, dark, perfectly still eyes.

She had not blinked once.

Blinking was an involuntary reflex. Yet she had stared at me as if studying my features, committing them to memory.

The kettle clicked off, and I heard Eleanor preparing the tea. She had probably chosen chamomile. Eluned had taught her that it calmed the nerves, another piece of inherited wisdom. I usually indulged beliefs like that because they seemed harmless.

But was faith in the soothing power of chamomile so different from faith in protective peppermints? Both came from tradition rather than proof.

I dismissed the comparison. A plant might contain naturally occurring chemicals with measurable effects. A mutilated supernatural killer violated every known law of nature.

Eleanor returned with two mugs and sat down. The tea smelled of chamomile and honey.

"Thank you."

I took a sip and felt some of the tension ease from my shoulders. We watched the news in companionable silence.

This was what I needed: routine, normality, a quiet evening with my wife. Not brooding over an encounter with a disturbed stranger.

But my attention wandered again. The woman had seemed to appear on the pavement as if she had been waiting specifically for me. She had blocked my path without making a sound, then moved aside with the same smoothness when I gave her an ambiguous answer.

And her eyes had followed me over the top of that pale blue mask.

I finished my tea and put the mug on the coffee table. Eleanor was absorbed in her novel again, turning the pages with a soft rustle. The television had moved on to the Premier League results, though I could not follow them.

Perhaps I should tell her. Not because I believed Eluned's story, but because Eleanor was my wife and I should not keep unsettling things from her.

Yet she would want every detail. She would ask why the woman had occupied that exact spot, why she had posed that particular question and why she had allowed me to pass after I said she looked fine. Eleanor would find meaning in what could only be chance.

No. It was better to say nothing. The encounter was finished. By now, the woman was probably somewhere else, harassing another passer-by or returning to whatever lonely existence had led her to imitate a legend.

The digital clock beneath the television showed nearly half past ten. I had another early morning ahead of me, filled with meetings, spreadsheets and practical problems that yielded to logic and work.

Eleanor yawned and shut her book.

"I think I'm ready for bed."

"I'll be there in a few minutes. I want to see the weather."

She kissed my cheek and went into the bedroom. Soon I heard her moving about, preparing for bed and checking the window locks as she always did. That vigilance was another legacy from Eluned, although in London it was common sense rather than superstition.

I switched off the television and the lights, then joined her. Eleanor lay beneath the duvet with her black hair spread across the pillow. She looked peaceful.

I brushed my teeth and changed into my pyjamas, determined to forget the dark, unblinking eyes.

Tomorrow would be better. I would return to the City and deal with spreadsheets, presentations and all the ordinary pressures of my job. The encounter would fade into the background, no more than another peculiar moment in London life.

But when I lay beside Eleanor, I could not escape the sensation that those eyes were still watching me, still waiting for an answer to a question I did not want to understand.

I left Flat 807 late the following morning. The lift had broken down again, so I had been forced to take the stairs from the eighth floor. It had taken maintenance longer than expected to restore it, and the delay had already ruined my schedule.

My leather work bag felt heavier than usual, loaded with Whitaker's briefing papers and my mobile. The October air was crisp. I pulled my coat closer and stepped through the communal doors, mentally rehearsing the presentation I was due to give in less than two hours. The quarterly figures were sound, but Graham Whitaker could always find some detail to challenge.

Then I saw her.

The same woman stood approximately three metres from the building entrance.

This time she was not wearing the pale blue medical mask.

I stopped.

Her face was a nightmare. Cuts gaped from the corners of her mouth to her ears, forming a grotesque smile across both cheeks. The wounds seemed old and fresh at once. Their edges were blackened and decayed, but blood welled intermittently from the torn flesh. Her teeth were exposed through the openings.

The smell reached me next: sweet corruption, like fruit rotting in heat, beneath a sharp metallic tang.

I gagged and stepped back. My work bag slipped from my numb fingers and struck the pavement with a dull thud. Whitaker's papers and my mobile remained inside it, abandoned at her feet.

She stared at me with the same dark, unblinking eyes. Without the mask, they looked even larger in the mutilated face. Dried blood crusted the corners of the cuts, and a new red thread ran down towards her chin.

"Am I pretty?" she asked.

Her voice was unchanged: soft, melodic and utterly at odds with her appearance. Her lips moved only slightly, but the words passed through the slashed cheeks with a faint doubled resonance that made my skin crawl.

I could neither move nor breathe. Every rational explanation I had constructed after the previous evening collapsed. This was not make-up. It was not a performance or a prank. The wounds were real, as was the decay.

This was something that should not have existed.

Eleanor's voice returned to me with terrible clarity. Mara Vane would remove her mask and reveal cuts running from her mouth to her ears. Then she would ask again.

The family story I had dismissed as entertainment had been an instruction. The warning I had laughed at was real.

"Am I pretty?" Mara repeated, tilting her head to the left.

Fresh blood gathered along one rotting edge and fell to the pavement.

I tried to remember Eleanor's advice about ambiguous answers, but my throat had closed. My legs felt set in concrete.

The sounds of the morning receded: traffic, voices, sixth-form pupils passing at the end of the street and the distant rumble of the Piccadilly line. Nothing remained but Mara's voice and the smell of decay.

She stepped towards me.

At last my body responded. I stumbled backwards, nearly tangling my feet, until my shoulders struck the communal glass doors. The cold surface shocked a little sense into me.

"You look..." I began.

My voice emerged as a croak, and I could not finish.

Mara waited. Her cut mouth remained stretched open, and her black eyes did not blink.

I thought of Eleanor in our living room, trying to warn me. I saw the battered silver tin she had offered, and remembered waving it away. I remembered every condescending word, every certainty that I knew better than her family.

I had been catastrophically wrong.

Mara moved closer. From one metre away, I could see the ragged decay around her exposed teeth. My stomach lurched. I pressed against the doors, fumbling behind me for the handle.

"Am I pretty?" she asked for the third time.

She was close enough now that cold seemed to radiate from her body.

I wrenched open the door and fled back into the building. The glass doors slammed behind me. I spun round, expecting Mara to glide through after me.

She was gone.

The pavement beyond the doors was empty. My work bag remained outside where I had dropped it, but there was no sign of the woman.

My heart hammered so violently that my chest hurt. I pressed the lift button again and again before remembering the fault that had sent me down the stairs. Then, with a mechanical chime, the doors opened. Whatever maintenance had been done must have brought it back into service.

I threw myself inside and stabbed at the button for the eighth floor. My hands would not stop shaking.

As the lift rose, her uncovered face filled my mind: the cuts, the exposed teeth, the decaying flesh and that soft, melodic voice. Eleanor had been right about everything.

I had mocked her, called her superstitious and dismissed Eluned's warning as rubbish. Now I had seen Mara Vane with my own eyes.

When the lift opened, I stumbled into the corridor and dragged my keys from my pocket. I dropped them twice on the carpet. Each metallic jingle made me look back, expecting Mara to step from the lift.

At last I forced the key into the lock. I burst into Flat 807 and slammed the door so hard that the frame shook. I turned the deadbolt, fastened the chain and secured the additional latch Eleanor had insisted on installing the previous year, which I had once considered unnecessary.

I leaned against the door and tried to breathe. Sweat soaked my shirt. My legs threatened to fold beneath me.

The flat smelled of coffee, Eleanor's lavender soap and the previous night's supper. Yet nothing felt ordinary any longer.

I had to find her. I had to tell her that she had been right, that Eluned's warnings were not stories and that Mara Vane had found me.

"Eleanor?" I called. My voice cracked. "Are you here?"

There was no answer.

The flat was silent apart from the fridge and the distant traffic eight floors below. Perhaps she was working in the bedroom with her headphones on, or taking a shower. She had to be somewhere.

I moved away from the door. The living room looked as it had when I left. Eleanor's novel lay on the coffee table beside the remote, and her empty tea mug from the previous evening remained there.

"Eleanor," I called again, louder. "I need to talk to you. It is important."

Nothing.

A cold sensation spread through my stomach, different from the terror I had felt outside.

Eleanor worked from home most days, translating material on Welsh seasonal customs and local archives for a London heritage trust. She should have been at the kitchen table with her laptop, dictionaries and reference books.

I went into the kitchen. It was empty. Clean dishes stood in the drying rack, and the cafetiere was still faintly warm, but Eleanor was not there.

Perhaps she had gone to the supermarket or left suddenly to meet Priya Shah. There had to be an ordinary explanation. Yet the flat felt wrong, as though her absence were only one part of something I had not yet understood.

I checked the bedroom. The bed had been made, Eleanor's side as neat as ever. Her slippers stood beside the bedside table. The bathroom was empty, the shower dry and the towels hanging straight.

I opened the wardrobe and looked behind the clothes, then checked the hall cupboard and the small storage room where we kept cleaning products and spare linen. The search felt absurd, but I could not stop until I had covered the whole flat once.

Eleanor was nowhere.

My chest tightened. She would not normally leave without telling me. She always made plans, even for a quick journey across London, and if the heritage trust had summoned her unexpectedly, she would have left a note.

I needed to ring her. Then I could find out where she was, tell her what I had seen and admit how wrong I had been. We could decide what to do together.

I patted my pockets for my mobile and remembered the leather bag lying outside the block, abandoned beside Whitaker's briefing papers. My phone was still inside it.

The landline stood on a small table near the living-room window. I lifted the receiver and dialled Eleanor's number once. A moment later, her ringtone sounded, muffled but unmistakable, from between the sofa cushions.

I ended the call and pulled out her mobile.

She had not taken it with her.

The cold in my stomach spread through the rest of me. I stood in the silent living room, holding her phone and trying to think.

When had I last seen Eleanor?

That morning, shortly before I left for work.

Eleanor had been in the kitchen making coffee, wearing her deep green dressing gown embroidered with red rowan berries, her dark hair pulled back from her face. She had kissed my cheek and told me to have a good day. She was my wife. I knew every shift in her mood, every small variation in her habits, and there had been nothing wrong. Everything had been completely normal.

Now she was gone.

After what I had seen outside - Mara Vane without her pale blue disposable medical mask, the cuts running from the corners of her mouth to her ears - Eleanor's absence felt like more than a quick trip to the shops.

I used the flat's landline to ring her mobile. A muffled vibration and chime came from near the sofa. I followed the sound around the coffee table and found the phone wedged between the cushions, its screen glowing with my call. I ended the call from the landline, and the ringing stopped.

Why would Eleanor leave without it? She used it for her work with the heritage trust, for keeping in touch with Priya Shah, for everything. She barely crossed a room without taking it with her.

The phone felt faintly warm, as though she had used it recently. I checked the recent calls. The last was to Priya the previous evening. Before that were several calls connected with her translation work earlier in the week. There were no unexplained messages, no missed calls that suggested an emergency and nothing to tell me where she had gone.

I put the mobile on the coffee table and looked around the living room again. Eleanor's novel about inherited customs in rural Wales lay open near the sofa, bookmarks protruding from the pages where she had stopped reading the night before. The television remote was exactly where I had left it. Her empty mug, stained with the last trace of chamomile tea and honey, stood on the side table.

Nothing had moved, yet the room felt wrong. It had the charged stillness of a place someone had entered without permission.

I went to the window and looked down at the street. Office commuters, sixth-form pupils and passengers heading for the Tube passed along the pavement. A bus edged through the traffic. There was no sign of Mara in her long charcoal raincoat, and no sign of Eleanor.

My hands were still trembling. I kept seeing Mara's exposed mouth, the decayed edges of the cuts and the teeth visible through her cheeks. I remembered the sickly smell of old blood and decomposition. Eleanor had warned me about precisely this encounter, passing on what Eluned Price, her Welsh grandmother, had taught the family. I had laughed. I had called it folklore and superstition.

Now Eleanor was missing, and I could no longer pretend there was no connection.

My watch showed 09:45. Eleanor should have been at home working. She had a deadline that week for a translation project concerning Welsh seasonal customs and local archives, commissioned by a London heritage trust. The work had kept her at her desk late into the evening for several days.

In the kitchen, her lunch remained in the fridge: the sandwich she had made the night before, a container of leftover soup and a yoghurt marked with its use-by date in her neat handwriting. The cafetiere was still faintly warm.

I tried to force the facts into an ordinary shape. Perhaps she had gone to the library to check a reference. Perhaps Priya had rung with an emergency. Perhaps Eleanor had discovered that she needed something for work and had hurried to the local newsagent.

But she would have taken her mobile. She would have left a note. Whenever she went out unexpectedly, she left a scrap of paper on the fridge beneath one of our little slate magnets shaped like Welsh cottages.

There was no note.

I returned to the living room, expecting at any moment to hear her key in the door or her voice from the bedroom, mildly amused that I had worked myself into a state. There was only the hum of the fridge, the muted city beyond the windows and, far below, the distant rumble of the Piccadilly line.

I sat on the sofa where she had been reading. One cushion retained the shallow impression of her weight. I picked up the novel and turned a few pages without taking in the words. Its stories concerned customs passed through generations, warnings preserved because someone had survived long enough to pass them on. They reminded me of Eleanor's account of Mara Vane, the masked woman who stopped strangers and asked whether she was pretty.

Stories I had dismissed only days before.

A faint movement darkened the window.

I looked up and froze.

Mara Vane stood at the far side of the living room. She was no longer wearing the pale blue medical mask or the charcoal raincoat. Instead, Eleanor's deep green dressing gown hung from her unnaturally thin body. Eluned had given it to Eleanor, and the red rowan berries embroidered along the sleeves and collar had always seemed bright against the cloth.

Now the gown was streaked with blood.

My gaze swept frantically across the room.

"Eleanor?" I called. My voice cracked. "Eleanor, where are you?"

Then I saw her.

She lay between the sofa and the window, partly hidden by the coffee table. Her body was twisted at an angle no living person would have chosen. Blood had spread beneath her head and soaked into the pale grey wool rug we had bought the previous winter.

Her face had been cut from the corners of her mouth to her ears.

The wounds made a grotesque imitation of Mara's smile. Eleanor's eyes were open, fixed on nothing. Her dark hair was matted with blood, and her hands lay near her face, fingers curled as if she had tried to shield herself. Torn pages from the novel were scattered around her.

"No," I whispered.

I dropped beside her. "No. No, no, no."

The metallic smell of fresh blood filled the room, mingling with Mara's sweet, corrupt stench. I reached for Eleanor's hand. Her skin was cold. Whatever uncertain sequence had brought Mara into the locked flat, I knew there was nothing I could do for my wife.

I did not know whether Mara had entered while I was downstairs or whether she had already breached the flat before I left. Locks and electronic entry systems suddenly seemed like childish assurances. Eleanor must have been surprised before she could reach the battered silver peppermint tin in her handbag, which she kept in the bedroom. The spare peppermints in the kitchen had been no use to her either. Mara had caught her away from both.

A soft, melodic voice spoke behind me.

"Am I pretty?"

I turned on my knees.

Mara remained by the window, wearing Eleanor's dressing gown as though it belonged to her. Fresh blood darkened the embroidered rowan berries. The cuts in her cheeks reached almost to her ears, their edges blackened and decayed. Her teeth showed through the open flesh, and intermittent threads of blood ran down her chin.

"You did this," I said. The words were scarcely audible. "You killed her."

Mara tilted her head.

"Am I pretty?"

She said it as if I had not spoken.

I looked at Eleanor's body. She had tried to warn me. She had carried Eluned's peppermints because she understood that the old story was not entertainment but instruction. I had mocked the precaution and made her defend something she knew to be true.

"She warned me about you," I said. "And I wouldn't listen."

Mara took one silent step forwards. The long sleeves of the dressing gown brushed through Eleanor's blood.

"Am I pretty?"

I pushed myself upright and retreated to the living-room doorway. My shoulder struck the frame. Mara followed with the same gliding grace I had seen in the street. Blood was lodged beneath her fingernails and smeared across her pale hands.

"How did you get in?" I demanded, although the question emerged as a croak. "The door was locked."

She offered no answer. Her black eyes did not blink.

"Am I pretty?"

She came closer until there was approximately one metre between us. I could see every fixed detail of her wounds: the blackened edges, the exposed teeth, the fresh beads of blood forming where the old cuts strained. The smell made my stomach contract.

I remembered what Eleanor had told me. If I said yes, Mara would cut my face to resemble hers. If I said no, she would kill me. An ambiguous answer might confuse her or buy a little time, but it promised nothing. My earlier reply in the street - "You look fine" - had apparently delayed her decision and allowed me to pass. It had not protected Eleanor, and it would not protect me now.

Mara raised one bloodstained hand and touched my cheek. Her fingers were so cold that they burned. I felt the sticky trace of Eleanor's blood against my skin.

She leaned towards my ear.

"Am I pretty?"

I could not answer. Grief and terror had closed my throat. Behind her, Eleanor lay on the rug in the gown's empty place, and for one wild instant I expected her to move, to tell me what to do. But her eyes remained glassy and still.

Mara withdrew her hand and waited. She seemed entirely at ease, as if she had claimed Flat 807 along with Eleanor's life. Her patience was worse than anger. She had no need to hurry. Every possible answer drew me towards her.

My breath came too quickly. The room began to tilt at the edges. I pressed my back against the doorway and tried to make my mind work.

Then I remembered the peppermints.

Eleanor had said Mara had to collect them. Every one. It was a compulsion, not a charm. The sweets did not make anyone safe, but scattering them could create an opening.

The battered silver tin was in Eleanor's handbag in the bedroom, far beyond my reach. Then I saw the ceramic bowl on the kitchen counter. Eleanor routinely kept spare individually wrapped boiled peppermints there, and she had refilled it the previous week.

The counter was to my left, beyond the edge of the doorway. I would have to move farther into the flat and bring myself closer to Mara to reach it.

Mara watched me.

"Am I pretty?"

"I..." My voice failed. I swallowed and edged sideways. "I don't know how to answer you."

Her expression did not change, but she stopped advancing. The uncertainty had bought me a moment, no more.

I took another step towards the kitchen counter. She turned smoothly to remain facing me. The dressing gown hung loose from her skeletal frame, the embroidered berries nearly lost beneath the blood.

"Am I pretty?"

I reached behind me and found the ceramic bowl. My fingers closed over a handful of wrapped peppermints. Cellophane crackled in my palm.

Mara's black eyes shifted towards the sound.

I hurled the peppermints at the floor between us.

They struck the boards and the edge of the rug, scattering in every direction. Some bounced beneath the coffee table. Others rolled towards the sofa and the hall. One landed against Eleanor's outstretched hand.

Mara's ruined smile vanished.

Her gaze snapped down. She dropped to her hands and knees and began gathering the peppermints one by one. Her movements were swift and precise, wholly absorbed by the task. She picked one from the blood-soaked rug, then crawled beneath the coffee table for another.

I ran.

I passed within an arm's length of her and sprinted for the front door, approximately three metres away. Behind me, her nails scraped against the floorboards as she searched for every last sweet.

I was about one and a half metres from the door when a hand clamped around my ankle.

I crashed forwards. My chin struck the floor, and pain burst through my jaw. Mara's fingers tightened through my sock, cold and rigid as a steel trap.

I twisted round. She was crouched behind me, one hand gripping my ankle while the other continued collecting peppermints. She had not escaped the compulsion. She was obeying it and trying to prevent my escape at the same time.

I kicked at her with my free foot. My heel struck the side of her face. Decayed tissue tore from the edge of the wound with a wet sound, but Mara gave no cry and showed no pain. Her grip loosened just enough.

I wrenched my ankle free and crawled the remaining distance. Her fingers scraped across the boards behind me, snatching up another peppermint. Then I heard the slap of her bare feet.

I hauled myself upright against the door. My ankle throbbed, and my hands shook so badly that I missed the lock on the first attempt. I turned it, dragged the door open and stumbled into the communal corridor.

Behind me, Mara's voice remained as gentle as ever.

"Am I pretty?"

The peppermints had bought seconds, not safety.

I ran for the stairwell. The lift would have taken too long. I shoved through the fire door and started down, taking the concrete steps two and three at a time, one hand on the rail. Pain shot through my injured ankle at every landing.

Mara followed without hurrying. Her bare feet made scarcely any sound, yet I knew she was above me. Her presence seemed to fill the stairwell.

I passed the seventh floor, then the sixth.

"Am I pretty?"

Her question drifted down through the stairwell and echoed from the concrete walls. My lungs burned. By the fifth floor, my legs felt weak; by the fourth, the rail was the only thing keeping me upright.

My ankle gave way on the third-floor landing. I struck the wall, caught myself and looked back.

Mara stood on the landing above. Eleanor's bloodstained dressing gown hung from her narrow shoulders. The red rowan berries showed in patches between the dark stains. Her black eyes stared down at me, patient and unblinking. She was not even breathing.

"Am I pretty?"

I pushed away from the wall and kept going.

Second floor. First floor. The communal exit was directly ahead, a heavy door with a crash bar. I hit it with my full weight and burst through the access-controlled lobby into the morning light.

The Finsbury Park street was busy. Office commuters hurried towards the Tube, sixth-form pupils clustered near the corner shop, and traffic crawled past beneath the ordinary pulse of London noise. I stumbled onto the pavement, gasping, my ankle beating with pain.

When I turned, Mara was standing behind the communal glass doors.

She wore Eleanor's dressing gown and watched me through the glass. She placed one pale hand against it, leaving a bloody print, but did not open the door. Whether she could not leave or simply would not, something appeared to hold her inside the place she had claimed.

A man in a grey suit approached the entrance. I nearly shouted a warning, but he tapped his electronic entry fob against the reader and walked through without hesitation. Mara neither turned nor acknowledged him. He passed her without any visible reaction.

Her attention remained fixed entirely upon me.

I backed away. She grew smaller behind the glass but did not move from the entrance. She only watched.

I found a public telephone outside a late-opening corner shop three streets away, close to a cashpoint and the neighbourhood kebab shop. Mr Rahman looked up from behind his counter and raised a hand when he recognised me through the window, as he often did. I could not bring myself to respond.

My own mobile was still inside my leather work bag, along with Graham Whitaker's briefing papers. I had dropped the bag outside the block during my panicked retreat upstairs. With no other telephone available, I lifted the receiver and dialled 999. No coins were required.

The emergency operator answered, and I forced myself to speak clearly.

"My wife has been murdered," I said. "She's in our flat. Flat 807."

I gave the full address and told the operator that I had seen Eleanor alive shortly before leaving the flat that morning, then found her body when I returned upstairs. That much was true. When asked whether the attacker might still be present, I said I had seen an intruder but believed she had fled.

Then fear of disbelief took over. Fear that they would hear the truth and decide I was mad. Fear that, with Eleanor dead and no credible intruder to be found, they would decide I had killed her.

I claimed there were signs of forced entry. I described the wounds as knife cuts inflicted by an unknown woman. I did not mention Mara's pale blue medical mask, her question or the fact that she had been wearing Eleanor's dressing gown. I said nothing about the peppermints or the figure behind the communal doors.

The operator told me officers were being sent and instructed me not to re-enter the building. I had no intention of doing so.

Metropolitan Police response cars arrived soon afterwards. I watched from across the road as uniformed officers approached the entrance. By then Mara was no longer visible behind the glass.

The officers entered without any obvious reaction. There was no shout and no sudden rush back outside. They disappeared into the block while I stood beneath a lamp post, sweating in the cool morning and trying not to put weight on my injured ankle.

Other residents came and went: an older woman carrying supermarket bags, a courier in a high-visibility jacket, a parent pushing a buggy. None appeared to notice anything unusual.

When the first officers emerged, however, their manner had changed. Two looked pale. Another glanced repeatedly towards the glass doors, one hand resting near the radio clipped to their uniform. They gathered beside the response cars and spoke too quietly for me to hear.

More calls were made. Detectives arrived, followed by forensic investigators carrying cases and protective clothing. Each person who entered seemed composed at first. Several who came out looked relieved to have crossed the threshold. When they had to return, they hesitated for a fraction of a second before opening the door.

No one said what they had encountered inside, if anything. No one pointed towards Mara or behaved as though they could see her. Yet something in their faces told me that Flat 807 did not feel empty to them.

I gave a detective my name and repeated the account I had given the operator. I admitted that I had left for work late and returned upstairs almost immediately because I had forgotten something and become concerned when Eleanor did not answer. I kept the supernatural part hidden and maintained the lie about forced entry. The detective's expression made it clear that the story would be examined closely, but grief and terror had reduced my voice to something raw enough to sound convincing.

Hours later, Eleanor's body was brought out in a sealed black bag on a wheeled stretcher. A private ambulance waited to remove her under the coroner's authority.

My knees failed. I caught the lamp post and clung to it while they loaded her inside.

That bag held what remained of the woman who had tried to save me. Eleanor had trusted the warnings passed down by Eluned Price. She had carried boiled peppermints because her grandmother had taught her to prepare for dangers that rational people laughed at.

I had laughed too.

I refused to return to Flat 807. The police retained some of our possessions as evidence and later recovered others for me, but I abandoned everything that was not essential. I could not imagine touching the furniture again or sleeping in a room Mara had claimed.

That night I stayed in a budget hotel near King's Cross station. I used my real name because the police already knew where I was, though every frightened instinct urged me to disappear. The following morning, I rang the office and told them I needed emergency leave after a family death. Graham Whitaker, exacting even on a good day, did not question me when he heard my voice.

For a time, the police contacted me regularly. Detectives asked about the supposed forced entry, the missing dressing gown and the injuries to my ankle. I repeated the conventional story because the alternative sounded like confession through madness. I never told them that Mara had touched me with Eleanor's blood or that peppermints had allowed me to escape.

I spent several weeks moving between hotels and temporary rooms. Eventually my firm arranged an internal transfer, and I relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne, roughly 280 miles from London. I took a small flat in a modern building with controlled access and bright lights in every corridor. The distance did not make me feel safe, but it allowed me to pretend that safety was possible.

I told new colleagues that my wife had died and that I needed a fresh start. I did not elaborate.

Among the belongings later released to me was Eleanor's handbag. Inside it, untouched, lay the battered silver peppermint tin she had inherited from Eluned. Eleanor had not reached it when Mara came into our home.

I opened the tin and found the individually wrapped boiled peppermints still inside.

From then on, I carried it every day. I took it to work, on trains, into supermarkets and along crowded streets. I checked the contents each morning before leaving home and replaced any peppermints that had softened or stuck together. They had to scatter. They had to roll.

Some nights I sat awake and shook the tin, listening to the small hard sweets rattle against the silver. The sound brought back Eleanor's warning and my own dismissive laughter.

I never saw Mara Vane again. I believed she remained bound to the London block she had claimed, perhaps still standing in Flat 807 in Eleanor's embroidered dressing gown, asking her question of someone only she could choose. I could not know whom she might hurt or whether anyone else would ever see her clearly.

But I finally understood what Eluned's stories had been.

They were survival instructions.

And every day, wherever I went, I carried Eluned's silver peppermint tin in my pocket.