Then sank to the floor next to him. There were things you did, were supposed to do; recovery position, cardiac massage, oral resuscitation, any one of which might sign her own death warrant if she attempted them.
Sid Baker never knew how long it took the ambulance to arrive. But well before it did she could hear its ululation, as if an unleashed spirit were hurtling towards her, screaming through trees and howling through hedges, before finally coming to rest here, in the house that would do for its haunting: a house like many another, and only incidentally the one in which River had grown up – a house with ordinary windows, an intact roof, a garden that had once been loved, and ivy still growing around its poisoned door.
