‘The stairs creak but they don’t seem rotten in any way,’ he called. ‘Come up and join me.’

She went up to find that there was an attic, after all, but it had its single dormer window in the rear side of the roof, so it hadn’t been visible from the front. The space was completely empty.

‘It’s huge. You could easily put another bedroom up here.’

‘Or a separate workroom.’

‘OK. Let’s move on.’

In the next house the shop area was a little smaller, the middle room bigger with a French window opening on to a side garden about three yards wide.

Before Angus could stop her, she had gone on ahead and disappeared into the back part of the house. ‘Nell, wait!’

There was no answer. Suddenly afraid, he rushed after her and found her standing staring round her as if someone had hit her on the head. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. I just—don’t laugh, but I thought I heard voices. The same voices I heard before I ever came to England: your family ghosts.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’m not making it up. I did hear them!’

‘Did they sound threatening? Something terrified the man who tried to break in, after all.’

She smiled. ‘Not at all frightening. They never do. They sound like a group of motherly older women. Today …’

‘What?’

‘They told me this will be Stacy’s house.’

‘Who the hell’s Stacy?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I thought you might know.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know anyone called Stacy. Did they tell you anything else about her? Did she once live here?’

‘I don’t know. That’s all I heard.’

‘Maybe you were just imagining things.’

She pretended to beat him over the head while chanting the lines from Hamlet at him – and not for the first time: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ They’d had this discussion before and she refused to back down.

‘Well, if you’ve finished communing with my ancestors, let’s continue our explorations.’

They went upstairs to an area that seemed larger than that of the first house, with two decent-sized bedrooms and an old-fashioned bathroom with the sort of free-standing bath on curly feet that was fashionable all over again.

There was nothing in the rooms and the bare boards echoed beneath their feet as they walked to and fro.

The silence was suddenly broken by his phone playing the beginning of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. ‘Just a minute. I need to answer that ringtone quickly because it’s the agency that gets me casual project work and it usually means a job.’

After a brief chat with someone called Jared, he turned to her. ‘I was right. They’ve offered me a small job. It’s urgent and they’ll pay a bonus for a speedy result.’

‘And the houses?’ But she knew the answer already. When someone from the IT industry called, Angus stopped what he was doing and paid attention. It was usually very lucrative, because he had some sought-after specialist skills, and a reputation for an uncanny instinct for diagnosing problems quickly and accurately.