Lauren looks at the clock. ‘It’s six thirty now. Not for a while. He’s going to be home late. I know it. Ann-Marie, you don’t want to stay here late, do you?’

‘He’s up at the Castle Hotel, right? My parents are too. It’s for charity. To help people who aren’t very well.’

Lauren scrunches up her mouth, thinking.

‘How was your day at school?’

‘OK.’ She catches the smell of something rotten, like meat left in the sun, but different, more floral.

Ann-Marie looks over at the lamp again. ‘Do you mind if I switch that off? It’s bugging me.’

Lauren nods. They are next to the kitchen, but she is sure her father hasn’t left anything out to rot.

‘So,’ Ann-Marie continues, ‘school is just OK? What did you learn?’

‘About pyramids.’

‘Pyramids?’

‘When a pharaoh died, they buried all his things with him in the tomb. We had to write what our favourite belongings are.’ She remembers once a mouse died in the wall, but this doesn’t smell the same way.

‘That … you would have buried with you? Hmmm. I’m not sure about that.’

‘Why?’ She feels embarrassed by the smell. The dripping from the utility room seems to be getting louder, somehow.

‘Have you told your dad about that?’

‘No. I said I wanted my Jacqueline Wilson books buried with me.’

‘I see.’

‘And Jameson might be buried with me. But he would have to die too.’

‘Oh, Lauren. Are you still playing the fiddle?’

‘Yes.’ Surely Ann-Marie can smell it too and she is just being polite.

‘Do you want to play something for me? What have you been learning these days? Can you play “Mairi’s Wedding”?’

‘Can you read me a story at your house?’

‘Why not here?’

‘I don’t like it here.’

The house is called the Elms. It is made of dark brick and black slate. The panes are painted white. There is a well-kept walled garden with topiary hedges and rose briars. A red hen house and a white duck house stand adjacent in one corner of the garden. The edges of the sloping grounds are dotted with birch trees. Lauren’s feet slip unsteadily in the gravel as she crunches up the dark incline to the house. Ann-Marie is wheeling her bike after giving Lauren a backie down the forlorn hill to her house. She looks over at her. ‘I forget how dark it gets here. In Edinburgh there are always people around, and so much light. It’s so quiet here. So quiet.’