She sits up, trying to shake the image of her boyfriend surrounded by a flock of scantily clad women. There’s no point lying here trying to sleep – she’s suffered from insomnia in the past and all the advice she’s read on the subject says to get up. She throws on her hot-pink kimono and opens the bedroom door quietly so as not to wake Saffy and Tom and pads down the hallway towards the little bedroom. She’s drawn to it, that bedroom, that insight into her past. She pushes the door open, wincing as it creaks before continuing into the room.

There are no curtains at the window and a shard of moonlight illuminates a patch of black varnish stuck like tar to one of the floorboards. She stands at the window that looks over the garden. The hole in the ground looks even more ominous in the dark. The woods, thick and dense, line the back boundary. She forces her brain to remember more. What happened here? she whispers to her reflection. But it just stares back at her, like a ghoul with big curly hair and wide haunted eyes. She turns away from the window, to survey the room. Her bed was in that corner, by the door, where the boxes are now. Yes, yes, she remembers. It had a white iron frame and a colourful crocheted throw with large yellow daisies, and underneath she kept a pair of red patent shoes, like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz. She hasn’t thought about those shoes for a long time. They had been her favourite. Where did they go when they moved to Bristol? And the iron bed frame and the crocheted throw?

The wallpaper is faded in parts, yellowing in others. The fireplace looks like it needs renovating, and there is a thick layer of dust on the wooden mantelpiece. The past tenants obviously didn’t use this room. Saffy and Tom will have their work cut out if they want to turn it into a nursery. She turns back to the window. A cloud moves across the moon so that for a few moments the woods and the garden look bleak and sinister.

She should go back to bed and read. She’s got Marian Keyes’s new one ready to begin. She wraps her kimono further around her body. She’s cold now and shivers slightly.