Will waved them off, went back into the house and ran up to the studio. As he had expected, the door was locked, which meant using the ladder again.

Will hurried downstairs. He stopped in his tracks. Lying on the hall table were her keys. Seeing them there, he realised just how anxious she had been about venturing into the outside world. She normally took them everywhere with her, even to the toilet.

Back upstairs, he unlocked the door and went in.

The doll.

It sneered at him from the window seat, its derisive expression making him uneasy. He picked it up, turned it to face the window and wiped his hand on his jeans. Even touching the thing repulsed him.

He took out each painting and photographed it with his phone, making sure to put them back exactly as they had been. There were more than he’d thought. Nine dark and frightening paintings, all depicting a concealed and apparently dead child with some dreadful evil entity lurking in the vicinity.

He lingered over the one that Matt had seen. His friend had said it scared him to death. Awful in its content, it was nevertheless brilliantly executed. Soft luminescence from a lantern illuminated the scene. Though the subject matter was ghoulish and macabre, Kate’s talent was undeniable.

Will quickly went through the paintings again and came across one he had missed. He stood back and stared at it. Though it contained no monster or partially hidden baby, the painting seethed with an almost palpable sense of foreboding.

A girl of about nine or ten with wavy dark hair stood alone on the salt marsh. She wore a T-shirt and faded denim dungarees and was desperately searching for a way out of the marsh to escape the encroaching tide that was already soaking her dirty white trainers.

Unlike the others, it was set in daylight. In this painting, a swirling mist crept across a watery sun, its last rays falling on the pale and terrified face. To Will it was the most frightening of them all.

He had no idea how long he stood gazing at it — probably only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Suddenly he was aware of the phone in his hand and he took a couple of shots of the painting. He replaced it and left the room, locking the door behind him.

He needed air. That last painting had hit him like a punch in the gut. Gasping for breath, he sat down heavily on the wooden seat.

Oh God! The keys! He ran back indoors and placed them back, exactly where they had been. He looked at his watch. They had only been gone for just over thirty minutes but there was no telling when Kate’s nerve might fail. They could be back at any moment and he needed to be found doing an outside job, nowhere near the hall table and those forgotten keys.