Over the rumble of the motorway, the clock of St Mary’s chimed the hour. Eleven peals echoed around the snow-covered landscape. As a kid, playing hide-and-seek here with the other kids from the estate, she’d been the only one bold enough to ignore the tales of ghosts and hide in the dark outbuildings. The other kids thought she was brave. She hadn’t bothered to set them straight. There was no harm in letting the estate hard cases think it might be wiser to steer clear of her. If they’d know the truth, they’d have dished out the same brutal treatment they did to all the nerds. They had no idea that it was curiosity that had pushed her on: the desire to see more of the house they had all learned about at Hill House Primary.

While the rest of the kids had yawned over the old photos of Hill House and made paper planes out of the photocopied worksheets, it had sparked something inside Lou. It had ignited a passion for history. Much good that had done her. If she hadn’t put as much effort in to partying at uni as studying, she might not have left Sheffield with a debt so huge that the only option was to come home to live cheaply in the hope of paying it off. If that was the only reason for coming home, why hadn’t she looked for a better-paid job? It had been seven years, after all. Convincing herself that she was actively paying off the debt was far more palatable than facing the truth that she had slipped in to an easy life. A few less evenings at the Hill House Arms and a few more fivers in the bank, and she might have actually saved something towards paying for a PGCE. Instead, here she was, desperately filling in applications in the hope that a school might sponsor her through teacher training when she was up against kids fresh from uni, the whiff of history books still about them. Stephen was right; she really did live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The snow began to fall again. At first, fat flakes, like feathers, floated from the sky, but within minutes, it turned into a blizzard. Lou ran the rest of the way up the drive and took shelter beneath the portico. She shook the snow from her hair and looked out at the white sky meeting the white ground. What would the little girl who used to play on that snow-covered lawn think of the woman she had become?

She slumped against the grille covering the front door and felt something shift. She looked around. For the very first time, the padlock that should have been securing the grille hung unlocked and redundant from the bolt. Lou took it in her hand. She couldn’t, could she? Sure, she had been in and out of the dilapidated outbuildings more times than she could count, but entering Hill House itself, now that was the forbidden fruit. How many times had she dreamt of roaming the panelled rooms to marvel at the hand-painted wallpapers and interiors caught in black and white in the photographs hung on the walls in the school library? She let the padlock slip. It would be just her luck that this was a trap set by the Council. Even now, a clipboard-wielding official was no doubt hiding behind the door, primed to pounce and slap a fine for trespass on anyone stupid enough to venture inside. So what if there was? The Council couldn’t get what she didn’t have.