Annie disappears out of the room and I wait while she rummages in a cupboard at the top of the stairs. When she comes down she is carrying two heavy woollen blankets and a plump white pillow which she leaves on the edge of the sofa. She bends over at my side, gently touching my hair.

‘I did miss your family when you all left,’ she murmurs. ‘Your mother was like a daughter to me.’

‘I know she was, Annie. She thought the same.’

‘I never wanted her to go. Nor you, Stella, you always had a special place in my heart.’

I smile. ‘I know,’ I say gently.

She takes her hand away and sits back in the armchair opposite. ‘Why do you think you need to talk to Bob and Ruth?’ she asks. Her eyes don’t leave me.

‘It’s just a hunch,’ I end up saying, shrugging. ‘No reason in particular.’

I wait for Annie to accept this but the way she continues to watch me, leaning back in her chair, twisting around the gold watch that hangs off her wrist, I can see she’s having trouble with it.

I want to tell her not to worry. That I won’t go anywhere until morning. That the idea of confronting Bob scares me too, but I don’t have any choice. Instead I say none of this as another loud crack of thunder explodes into the room.

At just before nine Annie announces she is going to bed. She places a candle on the table beside the sofa and warns me to blow it out before I fall asleep. I promise her I will, but she wavers in the doorway so I make a pretence of pulling the blankets over me and stretching out. I sense she is about to leave the room when her eye catches sight of the torch and she wanders over and picks it up. My heart plummets as she takes it with her. ‘Sleep tight,’ she says, pausing again, and I can see how concerned she is that I might still try and go out in this weather so I sink deeper under the blankets.

Her slippers pad slowly up the wooden staircase. Every few minutes the sky lights up, thunder growling overhead, and each time the candle beside me flickers, threatening to send me into darkness.

I close my eyes. I really don’t like the thought of going out in the storm but I have no choice. There are only two people who can give me answers and I need them before the morning. Before Danny’s time is up.

The floorboards creak overhead and I wait for them to subside so I can search the house for another torch, but Annie’s footsteps pace interminably up and down the landing, disappearing into rooms, coming back out again, and at some point I drift off to sleep.