What was that about? Was she worried Terry would have judged her for this ordinary, suburban childhood? Or, was she more afraid of him seeing her in a vulnerable state?

Going through the paperwork and shifting things around had tracked dust all over, so she dragged the hoover out and pushed it—somewhat unenthusiastically—around the living room. As she was chasing down a few errant hairs, the edge of the nozzle smacked against something solid underneath the sofa. Reaching down, she tugged the blockage out and was surprised to see it was a book, and quite an old one by the looks of it. She rubbed the dust and fluff off, and frowned at the cover. It was a collection of fairy tales, a battered old paperback, and on the front was a large black wolf, its jaws agape to reveal every one of its lethal teeth.

“Weird.” She chucked it on the sideboard and finished up.

Dumping a sack of recycling outside, by the front door, Heather took a deep breath of cold, autumnal air. Out here, when she had been around seven or eight, she had sat with her new magnifying glass, burning little holes into dried leaves and pieces of paper, whatever she could get her hands on. Ants, she had discovered, popped when you burned them with the magnifying glass, and she’d spent an entertaining afternoon creating lots of tiny shriveled bodies on the path until her mother had come outside and caught her at it.

Heather had been banned from the garden for a week, at the height of summer, and she still remembered her simmering fury so clearly it made her cheeks feel hot. Trapped in her room, she had taken to other petty forms of destruction—breaking the plates her sandwiches arrived on, tipping her mother’s perfume down the bathroom sink. She had been so angry then—and that had only made things worse.

That’s why I didn’t want Terry with me. Who would want their adult friends to see the child they once were? Standing in the cold, Heather felt a fresh wave of anguish move through her.

“The ghosts are just too bloody loud.” She wiped her hands down the front of her jeans and went back inside.

It was after a few hours of sorting and cataloging that she remembered the attic. There had been no more strange noises, but passing under it again with a mug of tea clutched in both hands, she found her eyes drawn to it. The man in the loft, she thought to herself. When I was little, granddad used to blame the Man in the Loft whenever anything went missing.

It wasn’t a reassuring thought, and Heather knew she would have to go up and check it out, or be doomed to lie in bed that night, listening for the Man in the Loft—or even worse, the soft footsteps of her mother.

“Christ, what’s wrong with me? There are no monsters in the attic. A couple of days alone in the house and I’m behaving like a hysterical five-year-old.”