I nipped upstairs to shower and dress, then remembered the phone call from Dad. It felt like a drunken dream, but I knew it had been real. He wanted to visit today, of all days. I stuck my head into the spare room. Dad had always been the tidy one – trailing round after me, Mum and Carrie, tutting and putting cereal boxes in cupboards, books on shelves. When Carrie got ill, she’d had a free pass. Cancer trumps having to tidy up. Cancer trumps everything. So his full irritation had been unleashed on me and Mum. The prospect of him staying in this room didn’t bear thinking about.

At least I’d changed the sheets, and there was a path to the side of the bed. I frantically piled the books into higher towers, thus freeing more floor space, albeit at the risk of Dad becoming entombed in the night. While I worked, I thought about Violet and the Pale Child. Obviously the child wasn’t a ghost, but who was she? Was she the reason for all the fences? The sign about Village of the Damned?

The vacuum cleaner enjoyed a largely untroubled life in the corner of the spare room. I plugged it in and shoved it halfheartedly over the areas of carpet not covered by books. It made quite an impact – one advantage of cleaning on an annual basis was that you could see the difference. I reminded myself that I was in my thirties and if I wanted to live in a house with books piled on the floor and cobwebs hanging from the beams, that was my decision. It wasn’t that I enjoyed living under layers of dust, surrounded by spiders, but getting the hoover out had never been a priority in my life. Besides, spiders had the right to a peaceful existence.

I folded two towels and placed them on the bed, chucked a hotel shampoo bottle on top, and decided that would do. My eyes were drawn to a pile of framed photographs stacked in the corner. Photographs I’d not felt able to display. I fished one out and wiped the dust from it. Carrie and me on a beach, before she got ill. She was about eleven, squinting into the sun, blonde hair blowing into her eyes. I must have been around seven, although the way I was clutching a red bucket made me look younger. The colours were distorted, as if it was another world where greens were more yellow and reds more purple. I took the photograph and placed it gently on the bedside table. If Dad couldn’t cope with it, he could always put it away again.