Even so, she was thrilled and amazed when the beam of the torch picked out a series of bells high up on the wall. The pulleys and springs, connecting each one to a room, were intact, as though only moments earlier, they had summoned staff to the rooms indicated on the plaques above - Dining Room, Drawing Room, Library, Ballroom. But how had these bells survived when the rest of the house was crumbling around them? Was it because they were so specific? There couldn’t be many people in need of a set of bells denoting the bedrooms of Sir Charles, Lady Mandeville, Mrs Hart, Captain Thomas, Mister Edward and Miss Charlotte, but surely, they would have a value as collectables.

Lou shone the torch along the names again. The Mandevilles and their guests at that last party in Christmas 1913, described by Julie’s uncle, could have had no idea that in a few short months, the war already brewing in the fractious politics across the Channel would sound the death knell for their comfortable Edwardian world. That their life of house parties, hunts, and hand-painted wallpapers was about to come crashing down around them.

Pressing on, Lou became aware of a smell like school dinners – meat in gravy and boiled cabbage. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She should have eaten breakfast. She came to a staircase that lead down, and grinned as she placed her trainer into a groove worn smooth in the top step by centuries of feet passing this way. Making her way down, in search of the kitchen – the beating heart of the house – she noticed how the walls of the staircase appeared to have been recently whitewashed, and how it was much lighter down here than in any other part of the house. It quickly grew so bright that by the time she reached the flagstone floor at the bottom, she no longer needed the torch. She switched off the light and placed the torch on the floor.

She looked around the basement, struggling to take it in. At the end of a long corridor was a door to the outside, its glass intact. Unlike the windows upstairs, there were no grilles shutting out the world, and Lou could see an external set of steps leading up to ground level. The doors to various rooms off the corridor stood open, daylight casting squares of light on the floor; a floor clear of dirt and debris. Everything gleamed, sparkled. This wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense. Unless some kind of house-proud squatter had taken up residence.

‘Mon Dieu!’ a heavily accented man’s voice shouted. ‘I said salt not malt. What is wrong with you, girl? How am I to create meals fit for zee table when you cannot follow a simple instruction!’

Lou’s blood drained to her feet. With her mind full of gory movies set in abandoned houses, she spun around and ran slap bang into the broad chest of a man.