When her newborn daughter was put into her arms, Doris’s eyes filled with tears. Such tiny fingers, such peaceful innocence...

It took a long time for her to accept that the child had a congenital heart defect. Paula lived for six years, during which time she underwent surgery and treatment, but eventually she succumbed to complications and left Doris and her family grieving over their tragic loss.

Life goes on, no matter how empty it may seem, and Doris had another daughter, two years younger, who also needed her. They gradually put back together the pieces of their life and a few years later, in the early 1980s, they moved to Holland and eventually had a baby son.

At first it was tough settling into a new country and the family concentrated on moving their possessions into the house to make it a home. They always seemed to be busy but there was one afternoon when Doris realised that the house was silent.

It was a rare treat. Her toddler son was asleep, her husband was dozing on the sofa and her daughter, Caroline, was reading. She pottered around the kitchen, relishing the peace.

And then the phone rang.

It seemed louder than normal that afternoon, jangling in the uncanny quiet.

Caroline looked at her dad and, realising that he was asleep, picked the phone up herself.

From the kitchen, Doris could hear her say “hello” a few times, and wondered idly whether it was an overseas call from home, still put through by the operator in those days. After all, they really didn’t know anyone in Holland yet.

Caroline’s voice faltered. “Sophie, is that you?” she asked, thinking that it was her cousin.

And then she went quiet.

The child on the other end of the line giggled

“Mum, can you come here, quickly...” she said in an unnaturally tense voice.

Doris walked over to the phone and looked questioningly at her daughter, but Caroline refused to look her in the eye. She took the receiver and put it to her ear, not sure what to expect.

The static on the line hissed and she could vaguely make out the sound of children’s voices in the background. She assumed that it was an overseas connection, until the line suddenly cleared and a voice came clearly, if somewhat distantly, across the line.

“Hello.”

“Is that you, Sophie?” she asked. But she could feel a tingle work its way up her spine.

“No, mummy. It’s me,” the voice said, a voice which sounded just like Paula’s.

And then the child on the other end of the line giggled and Doris could feel her legs weaken under her. There was no mistaking that familiar sound, etched into her memory.

“Mummy,” the voice insisted. “It’s me, Paula...”

And then the line cut dead.

Doris stood there for an eternity, unable to move. The sudden turmoil of emotions made her incapable of even putting down the receiver.

She looked at Caroline, who was also rooted to the spot.

“Who was that?”

She still couldn’t look her mother in the eye. “I don’t know.”

Doris could not quite come to terms with it. For three weeks, she could not bring herself to answer the phone, torn between fear and hope that it might be her dead daughter again. She tried to find a logical explanation but who else could it have been? She didn’t know anyone in Holland, certainly no-one who would have known about Paula. And a prank? Who would have done such a thing?

And then there was the giggle, that beloved, unmistakable giggle. The only thing that kept her from believing that she had somehow imagined the whole thing, perhaps through delayed grief, was that she knew that Caroline had also recognised the voice, even though she refused flatly to discuss it.

Doris has spent years trying to get in touch with other people who have received phone calls from beyond the grave.

Most of the people she traced had received phone calls from a close relative, just a seemingly normal chat, only to find out that the person had died a few hours before. She has never heard of anyone else receiving a call four years later. It was not even a significant date, birthday or anniversary. Was Paula just calling to let her mother know that she was OK?

That was the conclusion that Doris came to, after many years of soul-searching, a conclusion that finally let her put the episode behind her. Until the year before she told me her story, when Caroline finally admitted that she too had recognised her sister.

This is the seventh in a series of short stories The Sunday Times of Malta is running every Sunday. It is taken from The Unexplained Plus (Allied Publications) by Vanessa Macdonald. The first edition was published in 2001 and reprinted twice. It was republished, with added stories, as The Unexplained Plus. The Maltese version of the book, Ta’ Barra Minn Hawn (Klabb Kotba Maltin), is available from all leading bookstores and stationers and from www.bdlbooks.com.