She made a sympathetic murmuring noise. Angus couldn’t abide shoddy work. She led the way outside and he followed.

His phone rang then and he answered it. ‘Oh hell, I forgot. We’ll be with you in five. We’re at the other end of the garden.’

He turned to Nell. ‘I forgot. I invited the lads and their wives over for a drink – you’d call it a sundowner in Australia, wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s a good thing I always keep stocks of emergency snack food, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Ah, your friends are nice. I’m sure they’ll understand why we weren’t ready for them. They must know you lose track of time, if they’re such good friends.’

It was strange, though, how something always stopped them from doing a thorough survey of the houses. It felt as if things were being gradually revealed. She still wondered who this Stacy was who was supposed to come and live in Number 2.

After all, everything else the family ghosts had told her had come true, so a woman called Stacy might turn up any day.

Chapter Four

Elise Carlton stared at her face in the hand mirror and stuck her tongue out at her reflection. She often did that when she was feeling particularly old and it usually made her smile, it was such a silly, childish thing to do. Seventy-five today! She hadn’t told anyone in the rehab hospital, didn’t want strangers pretending they cared about an old woman’s birthday.

How could she possibly be so ancient? Inside her head she felt young, as if she was still able to run and dance round her little corner of the world.

One of the nurses came into her room and started chatting, her eyes assessing Elise, her busy hands straightening and tidying automatically.

Then Elise’s niece arrived and asked the nurse if she could take her aunt outside into the gardens to have a private chat.

That seemed strange because Mary was usually in and out of the place within a quarter of an hour at most, and as for privacy, this room was totally private if you shut the door. But Elise welcomed any excuse to leave this dreary little space whose window didn’t open and they wouldn’t let her move around the hospital grounds on her own. It had been fine all day and she would love some fresh air and sunshine on her skin.

Mary didn’t bother to ask the usual perfunctory question about how Elise was, but said abruptly, ‘They won’t let you stay in this rehab centre for much longer now you’re walking better, so Kerry and I have found you a place in a care home, Auntie, a really nice one.’

As her niece went on without waiting for an answer, her voice becoming soft, as if talking to a half-witted idiot, Elise struggled to hold back her anger, because she knew that Mary’s mother-in-law had developed Alzheimer’s, and Mary and her husband had borne the brunt of caring for the poor thing. Perhaps Mary now expected all older people to be a bit stupid. Who knew?