Shoulders hunched, exhaustion pulling at my core, I push the front door open, a deafening silence telling me that Fran and Dominic aren’t back yet. Tugging my boots off, I pause as a noise from overhead filters downstairs. The sound of a floorboard creaking. I freeze, wondering if I imagined it, before it comes again, the soft creak of someone walking around upstairs. Slowly I lower the boot to the floor and step quietly onto the stairs, creeping my way up. Maybe Fran is home? But no, Fran wouldn’t be creeping around, you can always hear Fran coming a mile off. At the top of the stairs I stop, holding my breath, listening hard, and see that Laurel’s bedroom is partially open. Pushing it open, I see Ruth standing in front of Laurel’s chest of drawers, a tiny T-shirt in her hands.

‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ I demand, a tiny thrill shooting through me at seeing her jump, a scarlet flush creeping up her neck. ‘Does Fran know you’re here?’

‘Anna . . .’ Ruth turns, laying the T-shirt back in the drawer. ‘I didn’t hear you come home.’

‘And you didn’t answer me. Why are you in Laurel’s room? And where is Fran?’ I thought she was a bit odd before, the way she’s forced herself into our lives, offering her help even though we’ve told her we don’t need it, but this is simply too weird.

‘I was just . . . I came to help Fran.’ Ruth steps past me into the hallway, leaving me no choice but to follow her downstairs.

‘So, Fran knows you’re here?’ Now I am convinced something isn’t quite right, Fran would never leave someone she barely knows alone in the house, no matter how many pre-cooked dinners they brought over.

Ruth walks into the kitchen and lifting an apron from the hook that hangs behind the door, she ties it round her waist and opens the oven. ‘No, not exactly, but Fran needs me. I heard what happened today with you all having to go to the police station and I came straight over. I thought you’d be hungry.’ There is the smell of garlic in the air and my stomach turns. So now she’s taken to cooking in the house instead of just bringing food over, it seems.

‘So . . .’ I frown, the ease in which she moves around the kitchen as if it is her own making me feel quite uncomfortable. ‘How did you get in?’

‘Oh, I borrowed the spare key,’ she says breezily, and I feel a chill snake down my spine. She’s still wearing those horrible, grubby, paint-stained jeans, and as she reaches towards the tap for boiling water, I glance at her fingernails, shuddering at the black marks beneath the nails. I can only hope that it’s paint. ‘Will you have tea?’