Very slowly, Emmy’s mouth twists, her brow puckers and she’s off. I hold her through the window, kiss the tangled hair on her head, reassure her with everything I have left, but nothing is big enough to stop the flow of her misery.

‘Mummymummymummy,’ she wails and clings to my arm and I know it’s only a matter of time before I lose it too. ‘Emmy, my darling . . . please.’ But my resolve is nearly spent.

‘Emmy, let go, for God’s sake!’ Robert utters in desperation.

‘Let go, Emmy,’ I say gently. ‘Please .. . let go.’

‘It’s all right, Mummy, let me talk to her,’ Jack says. He climbs over the divide into the back seat and shuffles in close to his sister, then puts an arm round her shoulders and starts stroking her hair, smoothing it down on either side of her blotched, teary face over and over again. ‘It’s okay, Emmy,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s okay.’ He pulls a strand of hair out of her mouth with infinite tenderness. ‘Jack is here now, Jack will sit in the back with you.’

29

I make it upstairs, throw myself onto Emmy’s bed and shut my eyes tight, but they’re still there, like ghostly negatives, Jack biting down on his lip, Emmy mouthing my name, Benjamín’s name, her fists banging against the glass. The tears come then, in great gulping sobs. I beat my own fists against Emmy’s pillow, find a small hole and rip into the cotton in a fit of rage and guilt. When it’s over I give way to some kind of semi-conscious paralysis and lie there in a fug of self-loathing for what seems like hours until, finally, I become aware of a sound. A scraping noise then another, coming from the stairs.

I push up off the pillow and listen. If you live in a house built of wood you become an expert on its idiosyncrasies. A sort of Miss Smilla of the creak, able to identify every sound it makes. Apart from the fact that every floorboard takes it upon itself to moan at will as though the breaths of the miners’ ghosts are forever blowing on them, there are other noises I’ve come to recognize, a shudder prompted by wind, a stingy little protest induced by the unrelenting dryness. I have tried to exorcize the children’s night fears, explaining that it’s only when we’re asleep that the house gets to relax and succumb to its aches and pains – but the creak on the stairs has a furtive, dishonest quality to it, that of footsteps being deliberately suppressed – and it scares the hell out of me. I grab the small fire extinguisher from the corner of the room and, raising it, step out into the hallway.