I force myself to put one foot in front of the other, edging ever closer to the flint cottage with the blue front door. As much as I love this house, I suddenly wish I didn’t live here. I consider calling Leon, just for reassurance, but since when did I become the woman who calls her husband to ask if he left a light on?

I check the side gate as if it’s something I do every night, and I pretend not to look for unwelcome footprints on the black-and-white chequered porch tiles.

Nothing seems to be amiss, yet it still feels like I’m letting myself into someone else’s house, silently turning the key in the lock so as not to disturb whoever’s in here and then waiting, tense and rigid as I listen for movement. It occurs to me as I stand here on the parquet wooden floor whether it might be best to make as much noise as I can, giving anyone who might be in the house a chance to escape unchallenged. Because by the time I get to the top of the stairs, there’s going to be nowhere else for them to go apart from through me, and I’m assuming neither of us want that.

I walk down the hallway into the kitchen and clunk and clatter my way around the room, opening and closing cupboards, banging saucepans against each other and rattling the cutlery drawer. I eye the carving knife and find myself wrapping my fingers around the handle without even realizing what I’m doing. This is ridiculous. I’m allowing a whole load of nothing to turn my normally calm mind into a chaotic frenzy of suspicion and fear.

Leaning against the countertop, where I can still see the bottom of the stairs, I force myself to take a deep breath and get some perspective. I know, if I think about it logically, that what feels like a personal vendetta right now is just as likely to be a series of tenuous coincidences and absentmindedness on my part. I wish I could convince myself that I’d imagined Aunt Meryl’s phone call though.

The faintest creak comes from overhead and I instinctively look up to the ceiling, though what I’m expecting to see, I don’t know. My eyes follow what sounds like footfall as the wooden joists bow and sag under the weight.