No ghosts appeared when we moved in. But neighbours did. When they first came over, they wandered through, saying polite things: ‘So much natural light!’ ‘That garden will be gorgeous come spring!’ And, most often of all: ‘I just love what you’ve done with the place.’

We went through the little pantomime, seeming gormless and enthused about our good luck. We told them we thought it must have had vermin, generations of rats and the dust of their ancestors, termites patiently hollowing out the foundations. We thought it must have been full of rot, or a spreading lace of black mould we’d somehow missed during inspection. How else could we get so lucky? That’s what Tate would say. Then he’d smile: at me, at them, at the cornices, the walls, the electric kettle with its transparent window through which you could see the water hit a rolling boil.

If you want to know what people do when they walk into a murder house, I’ll tell you. They look around, pointing out things they’re not interested in while their gazes sweep the room for traces of the evidence. Blood spatter, perhaps, brain matter, shards of bone, dents in the wall to indicate a struggle. But the place was spotless. New paint. New appliances. New floors. In some rooms, new windows. The real estate agent had been surprisingly frank about all of this. He’d said, ‘I want you to know what you’re getting into. I don’t want there to be any nasty surprises.’

‘Is that a Smeg?’ Tate had asked, staring at the chrome oven. He looked at me with an expression of absolute sincerity. ‘I’ve always wanted a Smeg.’

Tate worked in sales. He sold advertising for a suite of websites directed at ‘liquid’ men. This did not mean what I had initially pictured: men made from ice or quicksilver, melting or darting about on the floor. It meant men with ready disposable income. There were websites on fitness, grooming, how to talk to women. It was all run out of a small office on the tenth floor of a building in the city that looked out onto another floor of offices where similar men at similar desks stared back at Tate and his colleagues.

Tate spent his days on the phone with businesses that sold protein powders or bespoke suits, beard oils, spy cameras, home-brew kits, body sprays. Anyone, Tate said, who could offer life-enhancing products to the aspirational modern gentleman.