There was a police notice on the front of Lorelei’s house, warning people not to enter, but no one was around to enforce it. Once again, I stole in through the back gate. In the dusk the garden seemed different – thicker and danker as I trod through finger-like tugging weeds and over mounds of earth to the kitchen door.

I didn’t dare turn on the lights when I got in, so the house stayed hidden from me, until, slowly, my eyes adjusted to the weak glow from the streetlights outside. I slipped silently through the hall and up the damp stairs, and I couldn’t help but open the door to the bathroom, to see stagnant pools of water on the floor. Even though I knew Lorelei’s body was long gone, my stomach twisted when I gazed at the copper bath, before my eyes rose to the gilt mirror on the opposite wall. And then, as my heart began to beat faster, I tried to picture someone in the dark glass, to bring the memories back. Something began to form.

A sound made me stop: creaking from somewhere in the house. I froze, nervously trying to hear; all I could make out, though, was the wind outside and a draught through the cracks. After a while, not moving a muscle, I decided that it had only been the house settling, but I knew I shouldn’t spend any longer here than was necessary, so I hurried out to find Hazel’s bedroom in order to collect what I had come for.

One of three on the upper floor, Hazel’s bedroom was pleasant and airy despite the gloom. She liked books, I could see from her shelves. They were filled with a mixture of classics – Dickens, the Brontës, Louisa May Alcott – and the sort of girlish romances that I used to read at her age. If I had been there any other time, seeing this would have made me smile – to know that, when it came down to it, each generation was just like the last. But the circumstances hardly allowed for sentimentality.

There was a desk and a chair that she had covered in a velvet throw. I pulled the chair underneath the wide brass light fitting and stood on it to reach. Just as Hazel had told me, the fitting unscrewed. It came away quite easily, hanging from the cable, to leave a roughly cut hole in the ceiling. I stretched up so that I could see into the cavity above it and gingerly, worried about what I might find, slipped my hand inside. I felt about until I touched something smooth, something that moved as I probed it. Reaching further, I managed to twist it out.