"Brett? Are you okay?"

"You cut the brakes..."

Lucy swung round, breaking into his field of vision. They were now face to face. Lucy took up both his hands. She looked into his eyes.

"I did it for us, Brett. We talked about it."

"You cut the brakes..."

"We talked about it. Remember?!" Her voice was growing ever more desperate. He wouldn't raise his eyes to meet hers. He was looking through her, not at her. All she could manage now was a whisper: "Remember?"

Slowly he brought his gaze up up to lock with hers. His face was blank, but his eyes said it all. She drew back, claiming a gown from the floor and wrapping herself in it. She backed off to the doorway, but stopped there, hugging herself.

"I-I know David was your best friend..." she said. "But you don't know what he was really like! There was no other way!"

Slowly his eyes panned across to her, settling on her face. He frowned.

She ducked her head guiltily. "That's why I left early. Said I had a headache. I waited until you were with him. I knew he wouldn't come with me then. I-I cut the brakes, then caught a taxi..."

Suddenly there was a sound downstairs, and Lucy jumped. She'd heard the noise a thousand times before, but couldn't quite place it. Then she knew why: it was the sound of the key in the lock, and of the two people who had the key, the only one still alive was in this room.

She heard the front door open. She dared not even breathe.

"Lucy..?" came a voice.

It was David.

Something came over Lucy. Her hands shaking, she charged over to Brett and hurried him out of bed. Her breathing fast and shallow, she pulled open the cupboard door and urged him in.

"You cut the brakes..." came a muffled voice from within.

And then David appeared in the doorway.

She slipped dwon onto the side of the bed, pressing back hard against the headboard. She knew David had used the car. He'd only been drinking orange juice all evening. She knew David was dead.

"Lucy, are you okay?" said David, coming to the end of the bed and sitting down. Lucy immediately stood up, and backed off to the cupboard.

David sighed and began rubbing his forehead. "Sorry I'm a little late. I wanted to show Mr Randall the new proposal and sent Brett to get it. Dunno what happened to him, but I waited until Randall and his partners had to leave. Jeez, if anything's happened to that car I'll kill him!"

It took a second for Lucy to realise, but then she swung open the cupboard door. She found it empty, and began to cry...

NOTES:
I wrote this story in 2000 for the annual ghost story competition of the Southend district Yellow Advertiser. I can't claim it's particularly original. I looked at what had won the competition in the previous two years and they were both stories in which one character is suspected of being a ghost but it turns out to be another character who is the aforementioned spectre. It only won second prize, which was £50. That'll teach me to write to formula like some kind of money-grabbing hack.