She wasn’t amused, though. She was cold, deep in her bones cold, and the damp of the ground and the mud had seeped through her trainers hours ago – she could feel it, congealing around her toes. What in all of heaven’s name was Freida doing, moving to a place like this? No, she wasn’t amused, she was angry.

‘Freida?’ she called. ‘Freida!’

‘I think this house has been empty for a while,’ Eva said gently.

The dust, it was true, was in such a thick layer that no one could have lived here without feeling the urge to wipe it up, surely. But then there were still books on the shelves, glasses and vases in that old-looking cabinet by the sofa – it reminded Holly of the furniture her parents used to have. It looked like an old woman had lived here. No, it looked like an old woman had died here.

‘Do we think she’s dead, then?’ Holly said.

Piotr and Eva just looked at one another, and she had to fight the urge to bang their heads together.

She pushed past them and checked every room of the cottage – bungalow, in fact, with a kitchen at the front, and that hideous dark hall with its ugly yellow glass doors. She passed a bathroom on her way to the final room, presumably that would be the bedroom, but she wasn’t expecting what she saw inside. There was no one there, of course – but the windows! The whole far end of the room was composed entirely of windows looking out, uninterrupted, over a black expanse that led to the violent sea that was thrashing against the coast. As she looked out into the darkness, the wilderness of it, Holly was hit by a sudden wave of homesickness.

She missed her beautiful, comfortable home, her Rosie, with her morning cookies and wide eyes, she missed the Thames, the reflections of the bridges’ lights, the cathedrals on the skyline, the domes and glass arcs that nestled beside Elizabethan theatres. Was there any city in the world so old and new, so full of contradiction? But there was no contradiction here, in this lighthouse bungalow, in this uncompromising view that had been left unchallenged for millennia – it was single-minded. It was awful. The other two seemed to like it here. Acting like they were on an adventure, but that wasn’t what this was for Holly, despite her trench coat and her trusty walking stick. This was no adventure for her. She wanted everything to be OK again, and she wanted to go home. Hearing Eva’s footsteps behind her, she turned.

‘We’ve found something,’ Eva was saying. ‘Piotr’s trying to play it.’

‘What?’

But the silence that followed was soon broken by a voice, too loud – far too loud – filling the low-ceilinged room.