Ben walked through to the kitchen. Its bulb was even more nauseating having come from Sparling’s low-lit study, where the hearth held the brightest light and its sombre fittings melded seamlessly with the shadows. Chloe was stomping around in the sitting room now, swishing its curtains together. Ben – playing his part – lowered the blind above the sink and drew the slatted curtain across the back door, dusty to the touch with ends discoloured from damp.

He peered out between the slats where the last cinders of dusk burned in the black. Chloe’s backyard was surrounded by similarly miserable enclosures. So tall were the walls dividing them that the creeper would want to be in the shape of his life if he planned on staring into Chloe’s kitchen.

As inventive as these superstitions were, they fell apart when examined too closely. It was more convenient to muddy the details or to breeze over them completely. The creeper must have rented a room in a neighbour’s house if he planned on appearing seven nights a week. Maybe he was the one watching them from the window, sipping on a steaming mug of coffee, bracing himself for another night standing out in the cold.

It had been decided during the drive that Ben would stay over. Chloe hadn’t asked but he knew that Sparling’s scare tactics had left their stain on her, and so he had volunteered, casually and without inconvenience.

Under no circumstances was he leaving her alone. There was one truth that they could both corroborate. Someone – a man, not a curse – had spied on them the two nights prior. Ben wanted to be there in case he returned, to disprove the myth once and for all and, in doing so, expose Alec Sparling as the fucked-up liar he knew him to be. He was still seething over his invitation to Chloe. Ben wished he had copped on to the doctor’s sordid little plan sooner. He would have landed his first punch for sure, right in that sickly smile of his.

The laptops were on the kitchen table, surrounded by scatterings of paper and Ben’s mug of stale coffee – mementos of a project that would never be completed; one that never really existed. Not that he cared anymore. On Monday, he would be the wealthiest he’d ever been.

He began tidying Sparling’s precious maps into a pile, soon to be reduced to tinder.

‘What are you doing?’ Chloe asked him, appearing in the doorframe.

With eyes that big there was no disguising her tiredness. The night before, Ben had conked out without a fight, the journey to and from Tír Mallacht having left him a hollow husk of a human being. A week’s worth of sleep wouldn’t replenish what he had spent. Chloe had probably sat till sunrise, watching over them, as he had tried to do in the tent.