I said, “Actually, it sounds quite disturbing. You weren’t frightened?”

“No. I wasn’t. I mean, even if we did have some weird burglar, he was only after, like, candles and ham; that’s not exactly terrifying, is it? I thought if there was someone, it was probably just one of the children from the estate—some of them run completely wild; they’re like apes, screaming and throwing stuff at your car when you drive past. I thought maybe one of them, on a dare. But probably not even that. Things go missing, in houses. Do you ring the police every time one of your socks disappears in the wash?”

“So even when the incidents kept happening, you still didn’t change the locks.”

“No. I didn’t. If there was anyone coming in, just if, then I wanted to catch them. I didn’t want them heading off to bother someone else; I wanted them stopped.” The memory brought Jenny’s chin up, gave a tough set to her jaw and a cool, fight-ready intentness to her eyes; it swept away that nondescript quality, turned her vivid and strong. She and Pat had been a good match: fighters. “After a while, sometimes when we went out I didn’t even set the alarm, on purpose—so if someone did get in, they might stay till I came back and caught them. See? I wasn’t frightened.”

“I understand,” I said. “At what point did you tell Pat about this?”

Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t.”

I waited. After a moment she said, “I just didn’t. I didn’t want to bother him.”

I said gently, “I’m not second-guessing you, Mrs. Spain, but that seems like an odd decision. Wouldn’t you have felt safer if Pat had known? Wouldn’t he have been safer, in fact, if he had known?”

A shrug that made her wince. “He had enough on his mind.”

“For example?”

“He’d been made redundant. He was doing his best to get another job, but it wasn’t happening. We were … we didn’t have a load of money. Pat was a bit stressed.”

“Anything else?”

Another shrug. “That’s not enough?”

I waited again, but this time she wasn’t budging. I said, “We found a trap in your attic. An animal trap.”

“Oh my God. That.” That laugh again, but I had caught the zap of something bright—terror, maybe, or fury—that brought her face alive for an instant. “Pat thought we might have a stoat or a fox or something coming in and out. He was dying to have a look at it. We’re city kids; even the rabbits down in the sand dunes had us all excited, when we first moved in. Catching a real live fox would’ve been, like, the coolest thing ever.”

“And did he catch anything?”

“Oh, God, no. He didn’t even know what kind of bait to use. Like I said, city kids.”

Her voice was cocktail-party light, but her fingers were clawed into the blanket. I asked, “And the holes in the walls? A DIY project, you said. Was it anything to do with this stoat?”