Face

Anna had just settled down with a glass of wine and a book when she heard the sound of crying. She put down the book and the glass and went upstairs to her daughter's room.

Little Elle was scared of The Face. Again. She could see a face in the wall. It was an old house and the walls were uneven and an imaginative child could easily convince herself that she could see a face, here, just above the bed. Anna explained that it was just the light and the "wobbly" walls. She told Elle that, when she was "very, very little girl", Mummy herself had seen a face just like this one in this very same room. As a girl, Anne had lived, alone with her mother, in the house where she now lived, alone with her daughter. The familiar novelty of stories about grown-up Mummy having once been, unbelievably, a little girl, distracted Elle and she was soon quiet and, after a short interval, asleep.

It was an old house and the walls were uneven and an imaginative child could easily convince herself that she could see a face, here, just above the bed. But should an unimaginative woman also see the face? The same face that she had been seeing for thirty years - despite the room having been redecorated so many times in the intervening years?