Gently, I slid the ladder back down until it rested on the ground. I tiptoed up to the banister and peeped over. The front door was shut. Mother wasn’t back yet.

I exhaled a whoosh of hot breath and rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. I was on edge and had imagined the sound, a bit like I had the other day in the kitchen.

I looked at the ladder. Now that I was on the landing, I found it impossible to make myself go back up into the attic. How long had Mother been gone? It could not have been more than twenty minutes, surely?

I padded into my bedroom and checked the clock. Yes, Mother had left twenty-two minutes ago. She would not return yet. Hopefully.

But my heart still hammered in my chest and my palms sweated. That noise had given me an awful shock. I stood and listened. Nothing. I must have imagined it.

Deciding all was safe, I climbed up the ladder and carefully retraced my footsteps.

I found the album and turned the page.

The next photograph was of the pretty girl sitting on a bed dressed in a frilly nightdress. She was surrounded by dolls. A strange, sick feeling entered my throat. My fingers hovered on the edge of the page. The girl was probably about two years older than she had been in the previous photograph. Her mouth was fixed in a smile but her eyes were wide with what looked to me like terror.

I could not make sense of what I was seeing. The girl’s face was painted like mine. She looked like me. I scanned every inch of the image, but there was no trace of Mother in the picture.

An unpleasant feeling slithered in my tummy.

I did not want to turn the page, but I had to.

Slowly, I lifted the page. My hand flew to my mouth. Anger twisted inside me. No. No! I knew what that was and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. It was horribly, horribly wrong. Mother had warned me about the foul things some men did in the outside world and this was one of those things.

Once, when I was eight or nine, I’d begged Mother to let me go outside at night, begged her to take me for a night-time walk somewhere close by. I hadn’t cared if it was right outside the house, I just needed to be out there, breathing the air and looking at something different, even if it was hidden by darkness.