As the car tyres splashed down the narrow lane and Cheryl and Andrea dozed on the back seat, the windscreen wipers beat a steady rhythm. I could see nothing but blackness beyond the headlights.

Suddenly, something bright red flash past on my right, above the level of the car roof, and the thunder of hooves pounded in my ears. ‘That’ll be an excise man, on the look-out for smugglers,’ I thought.

It was only when my friends laughed that I realised I’d spoken out loud. Now they were wide awake and asking me questions.

‘ Not now. I need to concentrate on the driving.’ It was as good an excuse as any.

Besides, it was true – I was relying on reflected light from the trees to spot the cottage I was looking for. With only an address sent by email to go on –‘Coastguard’s View, Frenchman’s beach.’, and the almost invisible map spread on the seat beside me, it wasn’t easy to spot. So they’d have to wait for an explanation.

I was exhausted. It had been a long drive from London on a rainy October night and I was beginning to regret agreeing to a weekend in a seaside cottage with my teaching colleagues. It had been Cheryl’s idea, but I was the only driver among the three of us.

‘Bound to meet some hunky guys, fishing types in those cable-knit jumpers’, Cheryl had said in the staffroom that afternoon. She’d only just dumped the latest in a string of boy-friends.

But once in the cottage she couldn’t wait to ask me about what I’d seen. ‘So, go on! Don’t keep us in suspense -tell us what you meant. What’s an excise man?’ I managed to persuade her to wait at least until after we’d eaten.

The cottage owners had left basic supplies in the modern kitchen. There was even a microwave oven which helped speed up the preparation of the food we’d brought with us. While Cheryl and I saw to the meal, Andrea lit a fire under the logs in the grate.

After dinner, the rain was still pelting at the windows, but hot food and wine had made us feel much more cheerful – pleasantly warm, instead of cold and fretful. The cottage was cosy now, the log fire crackling and throwing up flames that made the corners of the room brighten and then disappear. It was late, but we were all set, or so I thought, to continue with staffroom gossip and moans about boyfriends. But Cheryl wouldn't let me forget what I'd said.

She had a tendency to over-react at the best of times, which I suppose is typical of drama teachers. Now she sat on the sofa with a shawl round her shoulders, rolling a glass between her hands. With her silver ear-rings gleaming among her dark curls and brown eyes reflecting the firelight, she could have taken the lead in ‘Carmen’.

Andrea was sleepy and murmured, ‘Cheryl, leave her alone.
She doesn’t want to talk about it.’ Andrea was the sensible one. Probably lulled herself to sleep most nights with a nice book of mathematical formulae.

Cheryl wasn’t to be put off, though ‘Oh, come on, Barbara! If you don’t tell us, , I won’t sleep for wondering.’

I decided to get it over with. ‘It's believed there were smugglers along this coast, and excise men were just guards employed to keep look-out. It’s nothing, really…’

‘Yes, but why did mention it tonight, as if you’d seen one?’
Cheryl sensed there was more to it, so I made my mind up to satisfy her curiosity. Maybe then we could all get some sleep.

‘It’s just that since I was about twelve I’ve had the knack of latching on to things that happened in the past. I see things and people that nobody else can . It’s like…like an after-image, when you stare at something and then close your eyes.

‘Ooh! You mean ghosts?’ Cheryl’s eyes widened and Andrea frowned at her but even she was intrigued.

‘I suppose so. So I imagined I saw an excise man. It must have been a trick of the light.’

I was too tired to talk anymore; we all were. As Andrea raked the grate we knew from the silence outside that the rain had stopped, though he wind still stirred the curtains.

Tomorrow, first thing, we’d go to the tourist information centre in the town, to ask if there’d been smugglers on this part of the coast. My red-coated apparition could have been hunting them down.

Next morning dawned with a sea-reflected brightness and the air had that sharp quality you only get along the coast. Any doubts or gloominess disappeared and we were keen to get out walking by the sea, to explore the nearby town, especially its historic pubs, and forget all about school.

Andrea was already in the kitchen setting out bowls when I came down to breakfast. We could hear Cheryl’s footsteps on the boards above. Andrea looked at me.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking that the story you told last night. I’m sure it comes from teaching all that literature’. She laughed, and then said in a voice meant to be spooky, ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again….’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Or maybe it was something I saw in a brochure…’

As we drove down the lane, fringed with tall grasses, I had to admit it did seem ridiculous. The lane was narrow and steep in places, but now the green hedges looked friendly. Occasional gaps and barred gates allowed a glimpse of grazing sheep. Twists in the lane revealed neat cottages and gardens bright with Chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies.

All of a sudden Cheryl laughed out loud. ‘Oh, look, there’s your excise man!’ Straight ahead, fixed to a telegraph pole at chest height, was a bright red mail box.

Cheryl chuckled, and I joined in. Only Andrea looked serious again and tried to make me feel better. ‘You know, a lot depends on a place, and how we feel about it. It made sense to think you saw a man last night, when you saw something red in the rain. Really, it was just a trick of the light.’

I wasn’t entirely convinced. What about the beating of hooves, so loud I felt rather than heard them? Could it really have been thunder I heard instead?

We called in at the tourist office as planned. While the others were examining postcard racks and looking at model boats, I approached a small grey-haired woman perched on a stool behind he counter, to ask if there were any smugglers’ haunts we could visit. It seemed unlikely there were caves on this flat stretch of coast.

‘Oh, no, there are no caves; just places where they landed after crossing the Channel. There’s one not far from here, called Frenchman’s Beach.’ She turned to consult a calendar on a rack behind her.

‘Ah, what a shame; you’ve just missed him’.

‘Missed him? ‘

She gave a lop-sided smile that made wrinkles radiate from her thin lips, then unfolded a paper map on the counter top. A gnarled finger pointed to a place very near the cottage. Sure enough, Frenchman’s Beach was clearly marked.

The old lady leaned towards me and lowered her voice.
‘They say that on the last Friday of October he can be heard riding along the lanes. The story goes that he was ambushed and killed by the smugglers. Sometimes you can only hear the hoof beats, but there are those who say they’ve seen his red coat. They call him ‘The Excise Man’. Yes, m’dear; you’ve missed him by a day. ’

I thanked her in a daze, as Cheryl and Andrea came over with their postcards.

‘Right, where’s this Mermaid Inn, then?’ said Cheryl, holding up a card with a picture of a quaint old tavern. ‘It’s not too late to meet up with a real hunk, and I don't mind what colour coat he's wearing!’