‘I wake up and I can’t move. I’m paralyzed, as if something is pinning me down and I’m petrified because then it feels like I’m choking.’

His hand went to his neck.

‘And I’m trying to move and I’m trying to breathe and it all just gets worse and worse. It’s over in a few minutes but I can do that a couple of times a night. Lucky I have no one to wake up, eh?’

He lowered his voice even further to a sad little whisper. ‘I’m too scared to go to sleep.’

His head drooped.

There was a pause and Harriet looked up from her tablet. ‘Right! Lovely!’ she said and Thea got the distinct impression that she hadn’t been listening. ‘Now, next. Please think of a dream or nightmare that has stuck in your head and share it with your partner.’

If she’d had nightmares, which she didn’t, nor dreams either really – but if she did, Thea would have had nightmares about the monastery. The rust staining the tower wall, spires like needle teeth and the blank dark windows where the blackness inside the old place came seeping out …

If she had nightmares, she would have had them about the pale blob of a face, only half-glimpsed.

‘I was in a cuckoo clock,’ Rosie said in a soft voice. ‘It must have come from my grandparents, right, because they had this cuckoo clock I was absolutely fascinated with as a child. Huge old thing. Anyway. I’m in the cuckoo clock having scones and tea with the cuckoo and it’s great. It’s all warm and cosy and the cuckoo is telling me how much she loves her job. She’s wearing a shawl and she’s got little glasses perched on her beak, even though her eyes are totally on the side of her head, right, so they’d be useless. Every so often she gets up and shoots out of the door to call the time, but she always comes back and we carry on having tea. I loved it in that cuckoo clock and I was really sad when I woke up.’

‘Have you still got the clock?’ Thea asked.

‘Nah. I was too little when they died. My mother sold all their stuff, used up the money. She’s a peach, my mum.’ Rosie’s smile didn’t quite convince. ‘Was. She was …’ She sniffed.

Thea started to say something but was interrupted by Ethan marching back into the main hall holding his mobile phone aloft as if it was lighting his way.

‘This is bollocks!’ He tossed the phone onto the little table they were clustered around and crossed his arms, those much-appreciated-by-Rosie biceps bulging. ‘We should be able to use our phones, like normal people. I didn’t sign up for this!’

Eye contact was carefully avoided.