Perhaps I’m having a stroke, Heather thought as she threw her satchel on the sofa, wincing at the clank as the biscuit tin crashed against something else in her bag. Sighing, she sat down next to it, sinking into the overstuffed cushions. ‘They say you smell odd things as your brain is turning off the lights.’

Thanks to the chintzy pattern on her mother’s sofa it took her a few moments to spot the three brown feathers, lying against the soft fabric. Three feathers, small and faintly downy-looking, their ends speckled with darker spots. Heather jumped up and looked around the room, although she couldn’t have said what she was looking for.

‘Is someone here?’

She left the living room and quickly skirted around the house, poking her head into the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, the utility room – nothing. Upstairs was a similar story, each room sitting in its own little pool of silence, everything undisturbed. Was it possible she had just missed the feathers before? It seemed unlikely. Without her mum to tell her off, she had eaten most of her meals in the living room, a plate propped on her knees and some old film on the television. After a moment’s further thought, she went around and checked all the windows, but they were shut too. It seemed unlikely that a bird could get in, shed a few feathers on the sofa, then find its secret way back out again. Eventually, she returned to the living room and stood looking down at them.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she said aloud. The house kept its silence, only the faint hum of the fridge breaking it. But they were brown. Brown feathers, the rounded ends speckled with black. She couldn’t help feeling as if she’d seen them before, years ago – that these were the exact same feathers …

Heather shook her head. The image of her mother, her head all caved in and wet sand on her shirt, gleefully leaving these feathers for her to find, was too sharp and clear. Her mother, still smelling of violets and lily-of-the-valley even though her brains were trickling down her neck, the brown feathers held stiffly between her broken fingers.

Heather made a small, gagging noise in her throat. Her mouth turned down at the corners, she went back into the kitchen to get a bit of kitchen towel. She used that to pick up the feathers, and then she threw them in the toilet and flushed them away. Once that was done, she washed her hands and turned all the lights on, before pouring herself a large glass of lemonade to settle her stomach.

Calm down, Heather. It’s just your imagination and an afternoon spent Googling serial killers. It’s okay. There’s no such thing as ghosts, she told herself.