‘He shouldn’t have been there,’ said Kym, bluntly. ‘It was empty, and they were done for the day, and he had no reason to be there.’

‘Oh. Didn’t anyone ask the owners? I mean – there would have been, like, an inquest?’

Again, that look. It was as if she kept giving the wrong answer.

‘There was; death by misadventure,’ said Kym, ‘and that was that, pretty much. My gran hasn’t been inside the place since, as far as I can tell – but still lives right next to it, and my mum never goes anywhere near it either. And they don’t talk, not to each other, not really – they don’t get on, they – they don’t talk to me either. But the one thing they have in common is the way they feel about that house.’ The last few words came in a rush. ‘And I can’t work out why he was there, no one will tell me, and I need to know.’

‘Right.’ Evie didn’t know what to say, she’d never seen Kym looking less fierce, less sure of herself. It must be awful, to miss someone you’d never known. She took her hand, squeezed it.

‘So. Anyway,’ Kym went on, ‘Ty knew all this because – well, of course he did. And a few weeks back he told me this story.’ She held onto Evie’s hand, gripping fiercely. ‘He does a bit for his uncle, you know, taking out fishing parties, and they’d had this bloke on a charter and he lives away now, but he was born here, grew up here, and he comes back sometimes.’

‘And?’

‘There wasn’t much fishing, according to Ty. And this bloke is a bit – he started talking about odd things that had happened in his job. He’s an architect and a couple of years ago he’d come back to work on Elder House. And – he was telling them all about it and how bloody weird it was.’

‘Weird how?’

‘He was doing some sort of preliminary visit, a meeting with the builder on site, and he said it took him ages, he kept losing things, pens and the relevant documents and even a mobile phone. They tried ringing it, and they could hear it in the house, they even took up some floorboards, but they couldn’t find it.’

‘It must have been – I don’t know, wedged behind something?’

‘He said the house wasn’t empty, that they both heard someone walking about; someone who shouldn’t have been there. He said it was – freaky.’

There was a long pause.

‘He was winding them up,’ said Evie uncertainly.

‘Maybe. That’s why I thought – that’s why I thought it was Ty last night. He didn’t like me talking about it.’ She smiled sadly. ‘It’s not healthy, apparently.’

‘And that’s why you two split up?’