The second door won’t open all the way. The room is too full of Mary’s pictures. Carefully, I manoeuvre myself in. There’s a pounding sound coming from downstairs: music. I hear the word ‘survivor’ shouted once, twice. The smell of smoke drifts up to me. I know she’s in the kitchen with a cigarette in her hand, waiting for me to admit defeat.

If a person wanted to hide in this house, this is the place they’d pick. One by one, I drag the canvases through to the other room, Mary’s bedroom. She must be able to hear what I’m doing, but she doesn’t try to stop me. Before long, the room is full. Canvases are piled up on the bed, leaning against it on every side. I’ve used up every inch of space, yet the front bedroom is still far from empty. I’ll have to start putting things in the bathroom.

My arms ache, but I can’t allow myself to give up, even though I know by now that I won’t find Aidan here.

I stop when I see a word I recognise. It’s been written in black marker pen on the back of an unframed picture: BLANDFORD.

Abberton, Blandford, Darville, Elstow, Goundry . . .

Hardly daring to touch it, I force myself to turn the canvas round. A chill spreads through me. It’s unfinished, but Mary has done enough work on it to make it instantly familiar. An outline of a person—again, one that could be male or female. Head and shoulders only this time, and nothing inside the black line, not yet. Behind the figure, part of the background has been painted in: a bedroom. This one, the one I’m standing in—Mary’s picture room. The curtains and wallpaper are the same, though there are no piles of pictures in the painted version. Instead, there’s a double bed with a chair next to it. On the chair, there’s a glass ashtray with a hand holding a cigarette over it, the ash waiting to drop.

. . . Heathcote, Margerison, Rodwell, Winduss.

Aidan was right. Abberton was the first of a series. Blandford , though incomplete, is the second. I heave things out of the way, looking for other similar pictures, perhaps one that Mary’s only just started, but I find nothing. So far she’s got no further than the second of nine.

My breaths come too quickly, making me feel dizzy. I tell myself there’s nothing to be afraid of: a mystery is only a mystery until you know the answer. I’ll ask Mary—I’ll make her tell me. There must be a reason why Aidan knew all the names. Who are they, these nine people?