Heather nodded and peered at the electronic map. They drove for another hour or so, trundling up and down roads boxed in with trees and low stone walls, until it was completely dark. There were very few lights out here, and more than once Heather found herself staring out into the night, at the yawning blackness of the fields.

“When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to imagine how scary it would be to suddenly be transported somewhere like this. If you were just at home, watching television in your pajamas, and then suddenly you were in the middle of a field at night, no idea where you were, no way to contact home. Cold and alone, no idea what might be in the woods. I used to imagine that a lot.”

“Do we take the next left? No wait, I’ve got it …” Nikki nodded toward the windscreen. “There it is, look. There’s the entrance.”

Their headlights caught it—a flash of white in the night. It was a big shiny board, advertising the Fiddler’s Mill Spa Complex in an ostentatious green font. Underneath it was a big stylized acorn with the words Oak Leaf written through it, and beyond the sign they could make out a long, smooth road, helpfully lit with discrete lamps. Somewhere out in the dark, up a gradually sloping hill, Fiddler’s Mill House lurked. Heather squinted at the windscreen, thinking it would be possible to see lights in its windows perhaps, but the glow from the car cast everything beyond the road into a blank kind of darkness.

“Our cottage should be left of here,” Heather leaned back. “It’s a little way from the big house.”

Dutifully they turned left, and after about twenty minutes of driving through more fields and trees, they came to another signpost, discreetly lit with a softly glowing lamp. It displayed directions to five holiday properties, each of which had been given their own name: Herne, Titania, Puck, Woden, and Frig.

“We’re staying in Herne, apparently.”

They drove on, following a narrow country road that seemed to hug the edges of a sprawling field, until a cottage loomed up in their headlights, box-shaped and oddly inert looking. Heather retrieved the keys from the lock box by the side of the front door, and together they brought their stuff in; suitcases, a bag of food and drink. Inside, all was cozy and neutral, and Heather found that she was oddly relieved. This was a place designed to be inoffensive, palatable to any holiday maker—no personality required. There were biscuit-colored sofas, deep red rugs, and discreet modern lighting, hidden among the beams that crossed the ceiling. No chance here, she told herself, of coming across sheets of paper from the notebook your mother used for her suicide note, no danger of some innocuous object rousing some long-forgotten trauma. Whatever was haunting her in Balesford could stay there.

Someone had thoughtfully left a small pile of the day’s newspapers on the central table along with a pair of empty wine glasses, a bottle of wine, and a box of posh biscuits. Nikki went to the small open kitchen and began unpacking food, while Heather searched for a corkscrew.