I step over the piles of vinyl records that are scattered across the floor. The air is thick with dust and I put my hand over my mouth. Then I see it, a small wooden door almost hidden in a little alcove on the far side of the room. Don’t do it, Maggie, I tell myself, but my feet are leading the way.

Slowly, slowly, I push open the door. I’d forgotten how tiny this room was. In my memories it had taken on epic proportions, become a monster of a thing. The reality is a small, round bedroom with a curved window looking out on to the farmland and the Downs beyond. I stand at the door, not daring to enter. The single bed still has the red and black quilt cover on it. The walls are bare now though I remember there being a huge black-and-white print of Marilyn Monroe leaning over a balcony. I remember because I had fixed my eyes on her all the time it was happening.

I step inside the room, keeping my hands clasped to my mouth. I don’t want to breathe this air because I know what it contains. I step towards the bed and place my hand on the pillow, checking to see if it’s real. When I bring my hand back it is sticky with cobweb.

I turn from the bed and slowly walk across the room. The bulky oak wardrobe stands by the window. I remember that. When we were kids and this was simply a playhouse, Ben used to make us stand in there with our eyes closed. ‘When you open them, we’ll be in Narnia,’ he’d tell me.

But we never were.

I open the door of the wardrobe and a waft of dust and mothballs hits me. It’s empty save for some wire coat hangers and a sticker on the inside door showing a smiley face and the name Benjamin spelled out in stars.

I close the wardrobe and turn to the chest of drawers wedged against the wall on the other side of the window. I pull out the top drawer. It’s stuffed with papers. I pick one out. It’s a cardboard certificate. I read the words across the top of it: ‘Awarded to Benjamin Cosgrove for excellence in spelling 13/09/1980’. Why the hell have they kept all this junk, I think to myself as I put the certificate back and close the drawer.

I pull out the middle one, expecting to see more rubbish, but this drawer is full of photograph albums. The top one has a Union Jack cover. I lift it out and open the first page. It’s full of baby photos of Ben. The first shows him, chubby-cheeked and grinning, on a rocking horse in the drawing room of Ketton House. The next one is a photograph of Ben’s father, Harry, sitting on a horse.