That was how my life in The Mills house with the ghost of Pippa AKA Pepper Mills began.

Pepper was a wonderful addition to the place. Full of vim and vigor as she would say. Pepper had lived in the house with her husband Walter Elias Mills until she died of consumption. After she died she stayed in the house with Walter who for some reason could not (or perhaps would not) see her. She believed that when Walter died they would be together but then he moved to New York City and, as she was unable to leave the house, she never saw him again.

Of course, she told that story much more eloquently and with more feeling than I have relayed it here. There were tears, which in my mind sounded like the soft rustling of wind chimes and her face glistened wetly as she poured out the pain of her loss. As I'm sure you can understand this was all very difficult what with my own loss so fresh.

Pepper as I have told you could not leave the house. It was not so much that she was trapped but there was some force preventing her from venturing out into the world. She did not feel that she was a prisoner but she told me of how sad she was when the house fell into disrepair.

My purchase and restoration of the Mills House gave her a new lease on... life. She was a constant presence at first, jabbering away about the old days. Telling me stories of the neighbourhood. She was very perturbed that she could no longer see Niagara Falls from the big bedroom window upstairs. According to Pepper, that view was the main reason she and Walter had purchased the place. At some point a large brown hotel had been built and now blocked any chance of seeing the raging waters less than a mile away.

After some time Pepper and I settled into a routine like old friends. I would work from my home office, having decided I didn't need to waste time and money on the commute into the city. At lunchtime, I would come down for something to eat, and Pepper would be watching television which she loved. It was all new to her. I would leave the set on and she would sit in front of the small screen for hours entranced by reruns of The Honey Mooners or Gilligan's Island.

We would chat as I ate and then I would head back upstairs to finish up for the day. At dinner time I would come down and fix something to eat. She would sit with me at the table. Sometimes we spoke, but often just having each other's company was enough for both of us.

In the evening I might watch some sports, a hockey or baseball game and she would sit with me like an old friend. It was a comfortable relationship and one that I treasured deeply.

All this is not to say that living with a ghost in the house was perfect. There was a period of adjustment, to say the least. Pepper was used to having the place to herself and at first it as clear that she felt I was little more than a lodger. She would come into my bedroom at odd hours and stroll blithely into the bathroom while I was in the tub or worse.

She appeared solid but her touch as I have mentioned was nothing more than a feeling of cold air. There was one exception to that rule but I will come to that in due course. For now, suffice it to say that there was a learning curve for both of us but it was short and eventually we fell into a comfortable rhythm.

Years passed as they do and eventually I sold my business and retired. That was in 2002. Pepper and I had been together for over twenty years, and I was fifty-five.

Strangely enough, after I retired, not much changed. Instead of working, I took up hobbies. I spent many long pleasant hours making model airplanes and ships in bottles. Pepper had finally grown tired of television, as had I, and there were weeks when I might only see her for a few hours. Where she went the rest of the time I had no idea and, although I wanted to, I didn't ask.

She was my friend, not my employee, after all. We weren't married and what right did I have to keep tabs on her?

August of two-thousand-and-four was when the trouble started. It was a hot one, muggy and hazy. The fine mist that always seemed to hang in the air and catch like tiny cotton balls in the pine trees was banished by the unrelenting sun and I was running the air conditioning at full blast day and night.

I had taken up writing and turned my upstairs office into a small library. My old IBM Selectric and I knocked up a slew of short stories that seemed fairly good. I read them to Pepper and with her encouragement, I purchased my first laptop computer and signed up for a creative writing class at the local college. As it turned out, many old duffers like me took such classes and that was where I met a raven-haired beauty named Bianca.

I had arrived early that first day, as I was feeling nervous and had no idea where I was going. When the classroom door opened I took a seat near the front and laid out my notebook and pencils like an over-eager schoolboy. The teacher, a harried-looking man of about thirty-five named Lindsay, not Mr. Lindsay just Lindsay, had just begun to tell us what to expect over the next four weeks when there was a sudden commotion.

The door flew open with a bang and a tall striking woman strode into the room. She cast her dark eyes about and they fell on poor Lindsay.

"Porca puttana!" She cried loudly and then rounded on the poor man behind the desk. "Is this the writing class?"

Lindsay, a small bird-like man with thick black-rimmed spectacles, had cringed back from her and now he nodded warily. His glasses slid down his thin nose and he pushed them back up with the middle finger of his right hand. I wondered if he were secretly giving her 'the bird' but I doubted it.

"Finalmente!" She said, in a voice that held just the trace of an Italian accent. "I have been walking around this fucking place for twenty minutes."

Lindsay motioned her towards the empty seat beside me without a word and then watched as she stomped across the room, her incredibly high heels clicking loudly on the tiles and squeezed her impressive frame into the desk-chair combo. She reached down and took a spiral notebook and pen from her red leather bag and slapped them loudly on the desktop before turning to me.

"What the Hell are you staring at?" She demanded.

I chuckled and shook my head with a smile. "I'm just enjoying the view, my dear lady," I said, from within the cloud of sweet flowery perfume that had enveloped me at her approach. In truth I was suddenly feeling lightheaded and the words just tumbled out of my mouth of their own accord.

Bianca was a woman like none I had ever met before. She was a force to be reckoned with taking no-nonsense from Lindsay or her fellow classmates. I was immediately smitten, finding her fiery eyes and husky voice especially alluring. She was not perhaps what young people today consider beautiful. Unlike most of the young girls I saw around the campus with their bony hips and razor-sharp features who look like they haven't eaten a square meal in a week, Bianca was in a word, Rubenesque. She was not fat, please don't misunderstand. She was, in my opinion, at the full blooming of womanhood. Her hips were large and round as were her breasts and her legs were strong and well-muscled.

Bianca, I guessed, was forty-something. She would never have told me her age and I was raised to never ask a woman such a personal question. She wore short leather skirts and high heels without stockings but somehow she made the whole package look... elegant. When she walked her hips swayed like a ship on a rough sea and all of the men, even the young ones, couldn't help but stare. I think it was because she carried herself with such confidence. Bianca simply knew who she was and what she wanted.

That was good news because within a week she had decided that one of the things she wanted was me.

I don't actually know how that happened. I was never a suave man, Cheryl could have attested to that fact. When it came to romance I was usually all thumbs, never picking up on subtle flirtations or innuendos. But with Bianca I was different. It was almost as if I was a different person saying and doing all the right things and she responded immediately.

After that first class, we went for coffee and talked for over two hours. I think I could have talked all night. I took her home and standing on the stoop of her little bungalow, I suddenly swept her into my arms and we kissed. I was as shocked as she was at my impulse but Bianca melted into me and I think, if I was that kind of man, I could have taken her inside and made love to her right then. Of course, I didn't do any such thing. I was not in the habit of bedding women on the first date and frankly, the kiss was far more than I had ever expected.

I bid her adieu and floated home on a cloud.

When I arrived Pepper was waiting for me at the door.

"Where have you been, Paul? I was worried." She asked wringing her hands... hands I could never touch.

"I'm sorry Pepper." I began and then a strange feeling came over me. It wasn't exactly guilt, but I didn't feel comfortable telling Pepper about Bianca just then. "I went for coffee with some of my classmates."

It was the first lie I had ever told Pepper and as much as I knew it was wrong I just couldn't stop myself.

She nodded solemnly her head tilted slightly to one side but then smiled.

"So, how was the class?"

I felt a flood of relief at this and proceeded to tell her all about Lindsay and the other old farts I had met. There was the big Swede with the crazy accent named Anders who kept asking silly questions and ancient Mrs. Matthews who incessantly snapped 'speak up!' because the batteries in her hearing aid were dead. In fact Bianca was the only one I didn't mention and later as I lay in my bed I felt like a dirty old bastard. Pepper deserved better than that, and I resolved to tell her about my new lady friend the next day.

But I didn't.

In fact, a week passed and still, I had not found the right moment or so I told myself. In all truth I might have never told Pepper at all. Instead, on a Sunday afternoon, there was a knock at my door. I put my newspaper aside and rose from my well-worn armchair to see who it was and saw Pepper peeking from her room at the top of the stairs. I winked at her and she winked back as was our custom.

I turned and opened the door, ready to shoo away a salesman and found myself face to face with Bianca. I stared at her slack-jawed. She was dressed in blue jeans and an incredibly tight white t-shirt that strained across her enormous breasts leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Her eyes were mostly hidden behind blue mirrored sunglasses, but as she dipped forward and slipped passed me through the door I caught the gleam of mischief they held. In her hands was a casserole dish and she was asking which way it was to the kitchen.

"Oh, through the parlour and straight back," I said feeling completely off balance. I looked up and saw Peppers wide eye staring from the crack of the guest bedroom door. There was a question in that look and I turned away feeling like a snake.

Bianca had cooked something she called Spaghetti con Bottarga and said it was very special. She tied a napkin around my neck as she pushed me down into a chair at the dining room table and then went into the kitchen. She emerged a minute later with a plate (one of the plates Cheryl and I had only ever used for Christmas dinners) heaped with noodles and handed me a fork and spoon. Dutifully I twirled a reasonable amount onto the fork and popped it into my mouth.

It tasted like no spaghetti I have ever eaten before or since. A second earlier I wasn't hungry in the least. My thoughts were whirling around Pepper and what I was going to tell her once Bianca left. How would I explain myself?

That first bite of spaghetti, however, seemed to push all concerns from my mind. I ate like a starving man and when Bianca offered me a second helping I nodded, unable to speak around the huge mouthful of pasta I had unceremoniously rammed into my greedy gob. Redish-orange olive oil coated my chin in a shining tangy slick and as Bianca returned from the kitchen I quickly wiped my face with the napkin and went to work on the next plateful.

I felt like a wild man, my head was swimming. Had I been a younger man I think I would have flung the cutlery to the side and thrust the food into my mouth in huge handfuls.

Unbidden Bianca left and returned with a third helping and I am ashamed to say, I grabbed it from her outstretched hands and fell upon it like an animal. I emptied the plate in a matter of seconds and when a fourth helping did not present itself I turned to Bianca. I think I might have yelled at her, might have called her filthy names and even pushed her into the kitchen to fill another dish so crazed was I at that moment. What stopped me was an even more animalistic drive.

Bianca was standing in the arch of the doorway to the kitchen completely naked. Her breasts, so big but still standing proudly were tipped with hard dark nipples. Her stomach was not flat but round and smooth above the thick thatch of pubic hair hiding that secret place. Perhaps nothing else could have stopped me from eating myself to death except for the thought of being invited into that place, of gaining entry were so few (I hoped) had ever been.

The food was forgotten and I went to her to be enveloped in her arms and pressed between those breasts as a young girl might press a rose between the pages of her diary. Corny... yes but these were the things that flitted through my heady and confused mind at that moment.

These thoughts were mine and yet not mine in some way that I would only understand much later. As for what happened next, I will leave it to your imagination as I am not a man who would discuss such matters. Suffice it to say when I awoke the next morning Bianca was gone. She had left me the kind of note that lovers leave each other. Hinting that more of the same delights would be mine for the asking and making it known that she had been more than satisfied in her own right.

I lay in bed smiling stupidly, running through the events of the evening (and the wee hours of the morning) and wondering if there was any of that amazing spaghetti left for breakfast when I remembered Pepper.