"Once upon a time," the man began, leaning slightly on his walking stick, " there was a soldier - and that soldier was me. I didn't want to be a soldier, but there was this judge who said that I had two choices: go in the army, or go to prison - and I didn't fancy prison."

"Had you done something really wrong, then?" Lucy asked. She didn't think this man looked like a criminal type - not like the criminal types she sometimes saw in films on the telly, but, she supposed, maybe that was what made for a good criminal ... he didn't look like a criminal.

"Well, I'd done a few things, but it wasn't much. I just took a few things that weren't mine." The man pulled a small face. Lucy frowned.

"You mean you were nicking stuff?" she exclaimed. The man shrugged.

"Only from rich people, who could afford it and wouldn't miss the odd pheasant or two," he said. Lucy wasn't quite sure what a pheasant was, but she thought it might be some kind of animal, or bird.

"But that's still nicking, whatever!" she pointed out, slightly indignantly. "Nicking stuff" was not nice, she had learned at a really early age. The man sighed.

"Yes, you're right," he admitted, "but things were a bit different then. Anyway, I joined the army and, well, it was a job and I got paid for it and ... well, I stayed in the army for quite a few years, and then we were sent off to fight in a place called the Crimea and I got shot in the leg.

"They took me off to a hospital place by ship. It was in another country, called Turkey, and the hospital was called Scutari, or something - or the town it was in was called that. There was a lot of us there and it was pretty horrible, except there was this lady called Miss Nightingale, who organised a lot of nurses to keep us and the place clean."

"Hang on!" Lucy interrupted, raising her hand. "We did Florence Nightingale in history at school. She was a very long time ago and ... well, she'd be dead hundreds of years by now, wouldn't she?"

"Not quite that long." The man smiled thinly. "But you're right, it was a very long time ago - more than a hundred and fifty years, in fact." Lucy's mouth fell half open and she stared at him.

"You shouldn't tell whopping great porkies like that!" she protested. "You'll get a black spot on your tongue - you ask my nan!"

"It's not a fib," the man said, quietly, "but you'll have to let me explain, all right?" Lucy nodded a sort of "I suppose so" nod, and folded her arms. The man took a deep breath.

"Like I said, I was in this hospital and I was starting to get better. The doctors had got the bullet out of my leg and I was walking around, with the help of a crutch, but then this Turkish bint - that's what they used to call young women in those days over there - this Turkish bint who helped with making the food and tea and stuff, well, she had the influenza and she gave it to me - and I got it really bad."

"Ooh, that must have been horrid," Lucy said. She knew how bad even a bad cold could feel, and that was with mum looking after her and having a comfy bed in her own bedroom.

"It was," the man said. "And we didn't have medicines like you have today, so I just got worse and worse ... and then I died." Lucy's eyes popped wide open at this, and then she laughed.

"Yes, of course you did," she said. "Or it felt like you had, anyway." The man shook his head.

"No, it was the real thing," he insisted. "And then I wasn't dead - or rather I was, but not dead like as in 'dead and gone forever' dead. I just found myself walking around in a rather odd place, where there were other people who were dead, but didn't seem to be.

"I was a bit scared, I can tell you, and then one of these other people, a nice young woman from up north somewhere, explained what had happened." He coughed, almost apologetically. "Yep, she told me that I had actually died, but that now I was a ghost."

Lucy's face worked itself into a curious expression, and she stared over the gate in disbelief. This man probably wasn't a bad person as such, but he was, in the words of Uncle Stan-who-wasn't, as nutty as a sack full of nuts and spanners. The man was watching her reaction.

"Of course, you don't believe a word of what I've just said, do you," he said, with a half smile on his face. "But I can prove it, if you want."

"What're you going to do, then?" Lucy demanded. "Can you walk through a wall - or maybe this gate here?" The man shook his head.

"It doesn't work quite that way, except in stories," he said. "But you're not that far off." He looked at her steadily. "Do you get scared easily?" he asked. Lucy shrugged.

"Not that easily," she said, but there was something like a bird turning somersaults in the bottom of her stomach now. The man nodded.

"Okay," he said, "but you've got to promise me not to scream, or cry, or run off, all right?" Lucy considered that briefly, and then, with her lips pressed firmly together, she nodded.

"Okay," she said. "I promise."

"Right," said the man. "Now this will probably seem a bit scarey, but I can promise you there's no danger and nobody is going to hurt you." And then, before Lucy could do anything else, or say anything else, he simply dissolved in front of her eyes. Of course, Lucy would probably have used the word "melted", but the effect was the same.

One moment he was standing there, large as life, as granddad Colin would have said, and the next he just seemed to fade away, until, within just a couple of heartbeats, he wasn't there any more.

Lucy jumped and let out a rude word, one that her brother Jamie used, when there were no grown-ups around to hear, and her hand flew to her mouth in astonishment.

"That's not very nice language for a young lady to use!" Lucy jumped again and nearly said the rude word a second time, because his voice had come from behind her and, sure enough, when she spun around, there he was, standing on their lawn, only a few feet away from her.

"How did you do that!" she almost screamed at him. "That was awesome! What a brilliant trick! Can you teach me how to do it?"

"Not as such," the man said. "But maybe something close. Like I said, you have to be a ghost to do something like that on your own." Lucy tilted her head slightly.

"You mean you really are a ghost - cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die?" He nodded.

"Yes, on my honour and cross my heart - but, like I said, I already did die anyway."

"Wow!" exclaimed Lucy. "Cool! So what are you doing here? Have you come to haunt us?" He shook his head.

"Nope," he said. "I've come to meet you. You see," he continued, smiling more broadly now, "I've come from your family's past. Actually, I was - still am, I suppose - a member of that family. Your great-great several times over grandmother was my sister Susannah. She was born in 1817, two years after me.

"And in the year I was born, our army beat a French bloke called Napoleon, which is why I was given a couple of extra middle names. Allow me to introduce myself, Lucy Anne Parker - I am Thomas Arthur Wellington George (after the king at the time) Carter. But you can call me Uncle Tommy, if you prefer."

"Wow!" Lucy said again. "What a name! And you really, really are some sort of great-great uncle?" she said. He nodded. "Wow! So you're really dead and you're really, really mygreat uncle so many times over - how cool is that ... my very own Uncle Ghost!"