‘I remember breaking the house,’ says Aaron.

He has a dreamy expression.

‘That was amazing.’

The road unspools in front of her, between endless hedges. Yes, it was. The day they did it was amazing. Their mother took them at night. She was ten and Aaron was seven. Their mother had seen the door was broken. When they went in, Rose thought they were going to stay. The house had been empty since they left. Their crockery was still in the cupboards, and their list of important numbers was still taped to the inside of the cutlery drawer. The people who’d broken in had left drifts of cider bottles. Their mother looked around. Then she handed Rose a plate, and Aaron a plate, and she took one herself.

‘Ready?’ she said.

Rose didn’t know what they were ready for. Then her mother yelled, ‘Go,’ and hurled the plate at the wall so hard it smashed into what must have been a thousand pieces.

They broke everything they could. It was amazing. But afterwards, Rose felt an emptiness inside her, hard and strangely solid, like she was hungrier than she had ever been before, but was too full to eat.

They follow the road, between the hedges. She is tired. The road curls. She feels like she is travelling in circles.

She remembers the house. The dark. Dillon, on the stairs. If she closes her eyes she can hear him.

‘Rose!’

The car swerves. Sticks clatter against the wing mirror, then she’s up on the other bank and then down again with a bump. The engine cuts out.

Aaron grins, excitedly.

‘Sorry.’

The engine starts again, and they curl on, between hedges. Her hands grip tight on the wheel. They turn a corner, and roll to a slow stop.

They are here.

The wooden gate is set in a low brick wall. The garden is small, trim, lined with busy clipped box hedges and a tiny twisting paved path. Roses climb the whitewashed walls, hanging low over a bench, and beside it, a birdbath. The roof is a smooth curve of perfect thatch over twinkling black timber-framed windows, capped with a squat chimney.

Behind the wheel of the car, Rose closes her eyes. She breathes deeply. In her pocket she fingers the hard shapes of the key she took from Titch’s kitchen two weeks ago.

Aaron gazes in awe. It seems like a house from a dream, not one that you might go into. It is a house from a book, from a fairy tale.

He expects dwarves. Or bears. Or best of all, gingerbread.

The smell is what strikes them first. You might expect a house like this to smell damp, and old, but there is a rich vanilla scent that greets them. The porch is dark, but they see curling leaves covering the walls. They find the light. The leaves are filled with birds, bright parrots perching in the wallpapered foliage.