Cherie, who owns the petrol station, once told Niall that the trapper passed away soon after he cut up the staircase. She leaned forward over the cash register patched with lottery advertisements and mouthed ‘hanged himself’ with her hand lying lightly on the base of her neck. Christine was horrified at the story and tried to clutter the house with New Age crystals to ‘dissipate bad energy’.

Niall was told this same fact by Hamish Murray at the Black Horse Inn, who said that Alan found the trapper in the outhouse. Bruce Dunbar the egg man also told this story, sticking his head inside Niall’s truck window, his breath smelling of Golden Virginia. He said the body was hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Local children used to ask Christine if her house was cursed. It explained some of the looks he got when he told people where he lived.

Niall remembers the fate of the old staircase occasionally when he climbs its replacement. It is happening more often now. ‘I’ve had my moments,’ he said to his friend Sandy a few weeks ago at the pub, ‘but can you imagine? No way. Never.’

Sandy Ross just smiled at him. Niall knew it was a smile of sympathy, but in these moments he felt it was insincere, that his friend could not truly understand how he felt. When he had had a few drinks, he felt a growing paranoia that he was being mocked. They both watched Diane, a teenager who worked weekends, carry a stack of foamy glasses. Niall said then, ‘How much more do we need to drink before we start throwing these bar stools on that fire?’

Sandy Ross was calm and when he spoke sounded as if he thought himself full of wisdom. ‘You canna be doing with they thoughts. I’m calling it a night. For me and you, pal.’

Sometimes, more and more, Niall stops dead in the middle of sawing wood or hammering nails and looks down at the metal object he is holding in his hands. He will straighten his back and touch the points of the blade or weigh the heaviness of the iron hammer, maybe take a swing at a post in his workshop, and carry on.

In the past few days he has been thinking of how Christine would have made them call Halloween ‘Samhain’ or ‘Oidhche Shamhna’, the start of the Celtic year and the beginning of the time when the dead can pass to the realm of the living. He remembers how she would make a ritual bonfire, late at night, outside the house. He was never able to live her strange habits down. Once an old man outside a pub told him she was a witch. Everyone else was too polite to say it to his face.