Moving down the small space she came to the little work area next to the sink. Here, a stained wooden chopping board had been left, its surface crisscrossed with deep knife marks. On the floor next to it was a big tea chest, decorated with pentagrams and runes in paint that had probably been silver once. Heather smiled slightly, imagining the hippies that had once lived in this cramped little space, and reached down to open the lid. Disappointingly it was empty, but just as she was flipping it closed again Heather spotted a tiny corner of white sticking up from the bottom panel. She leaned down and took hold of it with her fingernails. When she tugged, a false panel in the base of the chest popped up, revealing a small recess filled with old Rizla papers and bits of foil. Underneath the old drug paraphernalia were a couple of Polaroids, their familiar white borders catching Heather with an unexpected stab of nostalgia. She fished them out and took them over to the closest window to take advantage of the weak natural light.

They were both of babies, both very young, their faces still quite red and raw-looking. One was lying on a yellow blanket, wearing a white Baby-gro that was too big for it – the sock ends were flat where the baby’s tiny feet did not quite reach them – and the other was being held by a woman whose head ended at the chin, cut off by the framing. The baby was wrapped in a blue and pink knitted blanket, and it was looking up at the camera with the particular expression of annoyed confusion special to all very small children. There were tiny wisps of ginger hair on its downy scalp.

Heather stood very still. There was nothing especially sinister about this, she told herself. People loved to take photos of babies. Judging by her Facebook feed, it was a pastime destined to be forever popular. But her mind kept returning to Anna in the visiting room, touching a hand to her stomach, saying ‘they took my baby’. And the more she looked at the photo of the woman, the stranger it was to her that the photographer had cut her head off – if they’d taken a step back, they could have got both mother and baby in the picture easily enough.

And why were the photos still here? And hidden?

She turned the Polaroids over. On the back of each, someone had drawn a tiny heart in red felt tip.

Taking a stumbling step backwards, Heather’s boot landed on something soft and yielding. She lifted her foot and made a small noise in the back of her throat. It was a dead bird, quite a large one. Maggots moved busily under and around the feathers, a tiny squirming civilization.

Just a coincidence, Heather told herself as she stuffed the photos in her pocket. Just a coincidence, just a coincidence.