‘We’re fine but I’m afraid Felix has been playing silly buggers. Our cat,’ she adds. ‘He’s one for bringing us, let’s call them “gifts”, it sounds nicer, but he’s got confused by the new area and I know of at least three houses where he’s left little—’ she makes speech marks with her fingers ‘—presents. Has he…’ She screws up her face.

‘We’ve had some dead birds on the doorstep, and a mouse,’ I tell her.

Her expression is pained. ‘That sounds like his handiwork. Little tyke. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ I reassure her. It’s more than okay. The mutilated animals I had found weren’t anyone trying to scare me, Aidan was right, it was the work of a cat, nothing sinister at all. I must stop thinking the worst.

‘Felix is settling in now so hopefully it won’t happen again but please accept my apologies and these.’ She thrusts the Thorntons towards me. I take them and my shoulders drop for the first time in days.

‘I don’t suppose,’ I call after her as she walks away, ‘that you’ve any visitors who have a white car?’

She shakes her head. My muscles tighten once more.

In the kitchen, I sponge off Connor’s blazer and carry it out into the garden. I’ll pop it on the line and fetch the washing in while I’m at it. It must be dry by now.

I notice them as soon as I step outside.

The gaps in the row of laundry blowing in the breeze.

The weather has been calm today, it seems unlikely that anything has been snatched away by the wind. But still, confused, I look around the garden, eyes seeking out clothing tangled in a bush, caught in the tree.

The only things I can see are several candy-coloured pegs dotted around the lawn, some of them are snapped as though clothes have been tugged from the line. I scoop them up, confused.

Someone has been here.

My scalp crawls.

Every instinct screams at me to go back inside but first I hurry to fetch the washing. My fingers fumbling to unpeg the clothes that are left: Aidan’s work jeans; Connor’s American football sweatshirt; Kieron’s Captain America pyjamas. As I shove them all in the basket, it strikes me that the only items missing are mine.

Someone has been here.

How had they got in? The gate is always locked.

My pulse is skittering but I tell myself to calm down. I’d thought somebody had been leaving dead birds and mice on the doorstep to frighten me and I’d been wrong about that. Still, Felix, the new neighbourhood cat, can’t be responsible for missing clothes, can he? Basket against my hip, I cross to double-check the gate is locked and then I see them.

Footprints in the border.

Someone had climbed over our fence.