I was seventeen, and a woman in our little Oxfordshire village, Sue Monks, (*) asked me to babysit her two children one Saturday night while she and her husband went out. She promised me a few pounds for it. So naturally I said yes.

Her two brown haired kids were called Lucy and Sarah. They were four and five. They’d be tucked up in bed when I arrived – it was winter – and I could just sit by the TV and do nothing.

At the time, I was studying for A levels. Art, French and English. My big passion was acting and literature, so I took a book with me to revise. We had a test on Hamlet on Monday morning. I loved Hamlet – all that angst and ghosts and revenge and deception and frailty. What wasn’t there to love? Besides, my dad thought books were rubbish, so that was another incentive.

I turned up at the Monks’s house early and Sue said there was a ham sandwich for me in the kitchen, which I shrugged off with a thanks and wondered how I’d dispose of it, because I didn’t eat ham. Then she and her husband David left. I didn’t like David – he looked at me strangely – but that’s another story. Lucy and Sarah were upstairs asleep. I settled down in front of the gas fire with my book and read happily.

It was at that point that I remembered Simon Monks. He died two years ago, tragically. He’d been six years old, a little black haired boy with a pale face. A group of kids had been down at the Cherwell, playing around. We all used to go there as kids – it was a great place for mischief. I remember stealing an old rowing boat on the Cherwell with Wyndham and Clifford, two friends, and as we bailed our way from one river bank to the other, the boat sank slowly. We escaped with a soaking. Of course, I had a good roasting when I got home.

But Simon Monks never went home. He was clinging to a tree and the branch broke and he fell in the Cherwell and drowned. Everyone knew the sad story of Simon Monks. It was heartbreaking.

My brother told me that he’d heard another kid had pushed him in.

So I’m there, in the house Simon Monks used to live in, babysitting his sisters who were younger when he died, but growing up now. Upstairs, asleep. I’m reading the bit about Hamlet and his father, meeting on the castle battlements just before dawn.

I am thy father’s spirit

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night

And for the day confined to fast in fires

Suddenly, all the warmth was sucked from the room. Despite the gas fire, I shivered. I looked up, towards the door. A small boy in a white shift stood there looking at me. I looked back. He was tiny, pale faced, his black hair sticking up.

Then he walked up the stairs. I didn’t think twice; I leaped up and followed him. The stairs turned a corner and led to the landing.

He was gone.

I rushed into the bedrooms. Two of them were empty, lights off. In the third one, a lamp was on. Two little girls curled in two bunk beds, eyes closed peacefully, brown hair spread across the pillows.

I went downstairs. The room was like ice. I tried to lose myself in the book, but it was difficult. Three hours passed.

Sue and David came back and said they’d had a lovely time and how had my evening been, were the children good?

I could act a bit. I put on a happy face and said yes, it had been a lovely quiet evening and the kids had slept through and I hadn’t eaten the sandwich, thanks. They paid me my money and I went home in the dark.

My mum was waiting when I got in and I told her about Simon Monks. She hit the roof. And did that whispering thing she did when something was shameful or wrong. She said she should have known that it would happen because of how little Simon died. She said, ‘Of course he’d still be there in the house. He’s a ghost of the dead. A restless spirit. What did you do?’

‘I followed him, Mum. Then he disappeared.’

She looked at me as if I was insane. Then she said, ‘You didn’t mention him to his mother?’

‘No.’

She sighed with relief and said, ‘She won’t see him. That’s good.’

Then she told me not to say anything to my dad or my brother about it, and sent me off to bed. As I left the room, I saw her huddled over the fire, smoking a cigarette, muttering to herself.

And to this day I’ve told no one about Simon Monks.

Only you. Now.

(*) All names changed, obvs.