Behind me, I hear footsteps. I glance around to see one of the security guys I’m not too familiar with going off duty.

‘Is there any chance I can have the volume upped on this TV?’ I say but he tells me the settings are fixed and he’s no way of increasing it without climbing up and adjusting it from behind. The maintenance room is all locked up for the day so he can’t access the ladder but he suggests I go to the patients’ TV room down the hallway. I don’t want to do that. I’ve a load of paperwork to get finished and if I go in there someone will delay me.

‘Ok thanks,’ I say. My eyes continue to watch the drama unfolding silently on the screen until it disappears into the next story. I take my phone from my pocket and open my newsfeed to see if I can find out anything more.

So far there’s just a body. No name, no date, no suggestion of murder. I walk down the corridor and sit at my desk where I open a file, hoping to distract myself. I need to take my mind off the discovery but I’m finding it impossible and now I’m holding my phone again and searching a few more sites. Still nothing. I’m about to stop looking when a news alert flashes on the screen. Woman Found in Disused Pit. Shit. I remember that pit. Nobody ever went near it when I was living there. It was covered in weeds and brambles and barely visible. If we hadn’t been warned about it when we first moved in, we may never have known it was there.

My eyes devour the information on the screen. Huntley Lodge is currently being renovated and that’s how the body was discovered. The builders found it at the bottom of the ten-foot-deep pit while they were digging new foundations for a massive extension being planned to the rear of the old house. The report goes on to say that no one is currently living at Huntley Lodge but it doesn’t say when it was last inhabited. Were we the last people living there? I hope not.

I close the phone and picture the building as I remember it. The red brick, the white wooden sash windows all in need of repair. Granite ledges. The old red wooden door with beautiful stained-glass panels. One of the panes of glass broke during a party one night and we replaced it with cheap plain glass. As students it was all we could afford but it looked terrible.