I cursed mightily, but if I wanted my paint I had no option but to wait outside on the pavement and try and find something interesting about a display of garden rakes, yard brooms and galvanised buckets. Ten minutes was more like twenty, but an old fella turned up, who’d only come out for a couple of screws, so at least I had someone to grumble and moan with until the custodian of the hardware returned, flushed and apologetic, and let us in. Sorry, she said, she’d had to go to the bank. I understood. The high street banks have deserted Ashburton, leaving the town with a solitary cash machine outside the post office; two of them still visit the town once a week in big mobile vans, but they don’t stay long. It’s not what I’d call a service. Anyway, the old fella got in ahead of me and I had to wait whilst she tried to sort out his obscure screw requirements, which took ages, before I could buy my paint.

By the time I got back to the shop I’d been gone nearly an hour. I climbed back into my painting togs, ready to start work. But it seemed that the last time I had used them I hadn’t cleaned the brushes as thoroughly as I might and the bristles had dried stiff. It was clear that no amount of bending them back and forth was going to unglue them. They needed a good soak in white spirit and there was only a dribble left in the bottle. For a moment I resigned myself to another trip to the hardware shop. But I was willing to bet Nick had a bottle, amongst all that paraphernalia in the cupboard under his sink, so I trotted up the stairs.

I went into the kitchen and froze. Someone had been here, I could tell at once. I’d been up there on my last visit to fill the kettle and I knew I hadn’t left the doors of the under-sink cupboard open, the contents emptied out on to the floor. I stared around me. A kitchen drawer was open. I hadn’t left it like that either.

The floorboard creaked a moment too late. An arm came round my neck from behind, a smelly rag squashed over my nose and mouth. It was too late to scream. I struggled, fought to pull the arm away, scrabbled to tear off the acrid-smelling cloth. Strange smell. Not perfume this time; not Nightshade. Not a woman’s smell. A smell that reminded me of hospitals.

The world began to spin. I struggled, both hands tugging uselessly at the arm that held me, a man’s arm, so strong. My hands felt heavy, fell away. The fight within me dissolved. And as the world began to darken, I remember thinking that this couldn’t possibly be happening to me. Not really.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR