Yolan was born into a carpenter’s family. He trained from childhood, following his fada around until he knew how to make cabinets, doorframes, tables and chairs. His fada said he would excel. The business was in good hands.

When his apprenticeship finished, Yolan rejected his trade and began a new one: toymaking. His fada disowned him.

A year later, he opened a toy shop. It was an old, grey shell when he bought it. He painted the whole place in bright colours: sunset oranges, evergreens, raspberry reds. The villagers followed his progress as they passed by in the street.

Inside, he sat at the window, from dawn to dusk, hammering little blocks of wood. He transformed them into dolls, trains, rocking horses, jigsaw pieces, spinning tops… everything. Then he stood them all in a row across the window-ledge.

Children began to notice the toys. They stood in the sunshine, fog and rain, noses pressed against the glass, watching the carpenter at work. On weekends, they watched him painting the toys he had made that week, with fine brushes and a steady hand. Sometimes, a bold child ventured to knock on the window. He never looked up. The children spoke of the dolls’ heads turning to stare at them.

It wasn’t long before they began to pester their madas. So, while the children were at school, their madas visited the shop. They whispered over the toys, glancing across at Yolan. He never left his seat by the window, or even looked up from his hammer and wood. They tossed the coins at his feet on their way out, and that was how he did trade.

I met him two weeks after he opened his shop. At the time, I was engaged to a young man from the neighbouring village. I went to pick a present for his niece’s birthday. Instead, I picked Yolan. He didn’t notice me, at first, so I went back – a total of ten times before he looked at me.

We were married on my wedding day.

The young man from the neighbouring village married my sister.

Yolan and I settled into a pattern of existing – not as much with each other as alongside each other.

He woke up at dawn, every morning, for fifty years. At first, he woke me up, too. We would eat breakfast together at the kitchen table, in the pale grey light. Dawn was never a special time in the Western villages; not like dusk, which set the treetops alight. In those cold, early hours, we listened to the birds’ conversations outside the window. We rarely spoke. I tried to, sometimes, but unless we were talking about his toys, he never responded.

As our first year of marriage trickled by, he became a local celebrity. The shop’s popularity grew like an overfed pig. Children dragged along their parents every weekend, and sometimes after school, to play with the toys. Then they refused to leave until their parents had bought them something. Yolan became a rich man. He never looked up from his toys.

I managed our finances simply because I needed something to do. I would have gone insane, slinking about the shop, being of no use. Once, I offered to help him paint the toys. He ignored me, his hammer beating the space between us.

I started attending the Wives’ Council meetings. Nobody stopped me; I was married to the richest man in the village. The other wives eventually began talking to me. I bought feathered hats and velvet shawls like theirs. Yolan’s fada was on the Husbands’ Council, but we never spoke.

In our second year of marriage, I told Yolan to stop waking me up in the mornings. I had started spending my evenings with the other wives, and our parties ended after dark. Dawn was for sleeping. Yolan woke alone, ate alone and went downstairs alone. His hammering and the sunlight through the curtains woke me up for the next ten years.

When we had more money than we could keep, I gave it back to the villagers through charity. I also became Chairwoman of the Wives’ Council.

After that, I hardly ever saw him. We met briefly in the evenings. I came home to change into my party dress while he locked up the shop. In those moments between here and there, we would brush fingers in the doorway, or he would touch the silk of my blouse, or I would stroke a strand of his hair. That was all. Then we went our separate ways.

I remember exactly when the ghost arrived. It was our tenth Winter together. I had just employed a young man to help around the shop. Eman took care of things while Yolan remained bent over his toys. He was our first employee; we gave him a good wage. Everyone was happy without ever saying so.

Evening arrived and Eman went home. I came to change my clothes. Yolan was painting a Russian doll, his spectacles slipping down his nose. I leaned against the doorframe and watched him.

“Marta,” he said, without looking up. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean, dear?”

He put down his brush with a sigh. The doll was only half-painted.

I went over to him and draped my shawl around his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something following me.”

“What’s following you?”

He hid his face in his hands. “A ghost.”

I began to see it: the faint, greyish figure of a boy. It was standing near Yolan’s shoulder, looking down at the unfinished doll.

“What does it want?”

“I don’t know.” He stood up and walked across the room.

The ghost boy followed him slowly, turning its head to look at each toy they passed.

“How long has it been here?”

“Three days.”

It remained for the rest of his life.

Eman left the shop after two weeks. He said he could feel it, moving around, disturbing the dust on the shelves.

We knew we couldn’t tell anyone. What would people think? There goes the haunted toymaker. There goes the haunted toymaker’s wife.

Through carefully-worded questions at the Council meetings, I learnt that the ghost was from the neighbouring village: a boy had died there at the same time as Yolan’s haunting began. He had no fada and no siblings. His mada was a regular receiver of the charity bundles the Council sent out.

I told Yolan this.

He sighed, hiding his face in his hands. “I would have given them anything.” Turning to the ghost, which stood staring at a row of miniature boats, he said, “Can you hear me? You could have had anything.”

The ghost boy ignored him.

We both grew accustomed to its presence, over the years. Soon, it was no more than a second shadow. Sometimes, I didn’t even notice it. Sometimes.

I left the Wives’ Council, saying that I wanted to spend more time with my husband. They approved of that sort of thing, and baked a heart-shaped cake for me and Yolan. I donated my clothes and jewellery to the charity bundles. After that, I only ever left the shop to buy bread and eggs.

Yolan continued making his toys and the villagers continued buying them. Occasionally, he made something that was too strange to sell. A doll with one arm longer than the other. A swan with a broken beak. A rocking horse with tears painted on its cheeks. I hid them upstairs, in the bedroom, which became a gallery of oddities.

Parents never noticed the ghost boy, but the children did. They whispered about it as they left the shop.

Twenty years passed, then another twenty. Yolan became Old Yolan and I became Old Yolan’s Wife. The first children who had bought his toys now came back to buy more for their grandchildren.

Everyone who walked into the shop noticed shadows and cobwebs. Even though I dusted the place every morning, there were always cobwebs.

One night, I woke up to find Yolan pacing around the bed. He was mumbling.

“Yolan, dear.”

He stopped. In the moonlight, the ghost boy shimmered behind him.

“I can’t sleep. He won’t let me.”

Together, we went downstairs to sit on the doorstep. It was where we always went when the night disappointed us. The ghost boy stood behind us, facing the window display. Yolan had made a collection of Green Man miniatures, to celebrate the Leaf Festival. We had almost sold out – he would have to make more in the morning. He closed his eyes and leaned against the doorframe. I leaned against his shoulder. We stayed like that until morning, when the sun’s grey light broke through our eyelids.

Cobwebs fluttered in the early breeze.

Yolan skipped over to the window as if he was young again.

“Marta,” he announced. “I have a plan.”

Creaking, I pulled myself up. “What is it?”

“I am going to give him the shop.” Spreading his arms out, he turned to the ghost. “Did you hear me? It’s all yours, boy!”

I touched his arm. “Listen to yourself.”

“I heard myself perfectly.”

“You can’t give the shop to – a ghost.”

“Of course I can. I can do whatever I like. It’s my shop.”

“Yes, but how can a ghost take care of it?”

He sat down by the window and began hammering at the wooden leaf carvings. “Not my problem.”

“Where will we go? What will we do? You can’t just give up the toyshop.”

We moved out at the end of the month. Without the toys, our entire possessions fit into two bags. We took all the money we could hold in our pockets. The sun had not yet risen. It was part of his plan, to leave in the dark, before the villagers could ask questions. We would be long gone by the time they realised, and the ghost boy would remain to greet them.

I stepped out first. Wildflowers were wilting on either side of the door. Yolan remained in the shop for a moment, saying a silent goodbye. When he joined me on the other side of the doorway, he took a deep breath. It was the first time he had left the shop since he opened it. More than fifty years ago.

The ghost boy followed him.

That was Yolan’s only attempt to lose the ghost. After our minute of freedom, we went back into the shop and closed the door. He sat down at the workbench, staring out of the window, the leaves scattered over his desk. I began dusting away the cobwebs, as usual. The ghost boy squatted by the wall, staring at a tiny ballerina. She was frozen in an eternal pirouette. We were all frozen.

Yolan did not last long. When he died, the ghost boy went with him. I spent the next Winter alone. It is customary for widows to die of heartbreak, but I didn’t. With no carpenter to make the toys, my only choice was to sell the shop.

I live in my old family home, now, among more cobwebs than I can count. More ghosts, too. But I don’t mind them. Anything, give me anything, as long as it’s not toys.

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Bhagwant Kaur received a First Class BA Creative Writing degree and is now studying MA Creative Writing. Her short fiction has been published in several magazines. Currently, she is working on a collection of short stories and attempting to write her first children’s novel.