I step back from the door and make my way round to the back of the house. The living-room curtains are closed and there is no light coming from behind them. At the far end of the house there is a stone archway that leads to a small patio. Elspeth and I used to sunbathe out here in the summertime. It was so quiet and peaceful. But now it is overgrown with weeds and dead leaves. I crunch through them as I make my way across the patio to the back of the house.

I gasp when I see the garden. Like the patio, it is a tangle of weeds. The vegetable trenches where Elspeth and I planted carrots and green beans have been ripped out. The roots lie discarded on the path. The air smells of rotten vegetables and something else, a dusty decaying smell that I can’t quite place. It is eerily quiet; the only noise the crunch of my boots on the gravel path. Then I see the greenhouse and my heart sinks. Its windows are filthy and cracked. I walk towards it, aware that something is missing. No, I whisper, surely not. The beautiful wooden summerhouse Sean built for Elspeth when she was three years old has been removed; the only trace left of it a square of scorched dead grass.

I turn on my heels, unable to take it all in. Despite seeing it with my own eyes it still doesn’t seem real. As I make my way round the side of the house to the kitchen I half expect Sean to appear and hand me a mug of tea, tell me this has all been a terrible nightmare. But when I reach the kitchen door there is no Sean, there is just a thick, foreboding silence. I put my hand on the familiar metal latch and click it up. To my surprise, the door yields. I push it open.

I step inside my kitchen. It all looks the same – the Rayburn stove, the black beams, the York stone floor – and yet I can feel a great absence. Everything that was us, the Allan family, has departed. The air is different. It smells stale and oppressive, like the trapped air in the vaults of museums and old churches. Then slowly, as my eyes adjust, I start to see more solid changes. Elspeth’s collage of paintings that hung proudly on the wall by the dresser has been removed and replaced with a white rectangular clock; the kitchen table, where Elspeth and Sean had sat to work on the dream catcher, has gone and a small round one put in its place. The dresser, which once was laden with all our mess and miscellany, now houses a neat collection of blue-and-white-striped chinaware.