It was all exactly as she’d left it, neat, tidy. The smell was worse here, and she crossed the room and opened the window, extending the latch as far as it would go. The poor little boy, she thought suddenly, dying all alone.

Then something, someone, walked slowly along the landing.

The skin on the back of her neck prickled.

‘Maude?’ She took a single reluctant step towards the door, and the slow, stuttering rhythm was replaced by a swifter double beat as if someone, something was skipping along the landing.

One-two, one-two, one-two.

It was better to stay hidden, surely, better not to look; but there was Maude to think of. She forced herself to move, she stepped back onto the landing and listened. Suddenly, inexplicably, above her, there it was again, footsteps pattering across wood; one-two, one-two, one-two. Scrabbling, like rats in the dark.

It was in Maude’s room.

*

The air in the attic was stale and underneath that there was something else – something human, unwashed, sour.

Nell looked up at the windows, all of them open, but to little effect; she didn’t know how Maude stood it. Her gaze travelled along the central beam in the ceiling. And then, finally, she saw them.

*

The oddest thing was, perhaps, that the marks were so – familiar. Craning her head back she tried to take them in, she’d seen something like this before, she was certain. Automatically, her hand went to her hip pocket, for her phone, her camera, but the pocket was empty.

She had seen it before, or something very like it, anyway. The letters were crude, slightly uneven, like a child’s drawing; the flower image – for that’s what it looked like, stylised petals – was clearer, cleaner, more practised. The memory was just out of reach – she closed her eyes, and immediately the smell in the attic grew worse.

On the beach, that first morning, Maude drawing flowers in the sand. Flowers, daisies, nodding their heads in a row. She opened her eyes. How on earth had she managed to carve them into the beam?

Maude’s notebook lay on the bed, and Nell recalled their quarrel, Maude snatching the book away, furious and maybe even – frightened. She opened it at random.

They were the same designs swirling and looping across the paper, drawn in a bold, confident hand. Nell turned the page, there were more flowers, with sentences, or fragments of sentences weaving in and out of the petals.

Her own name leapt out at her.

Very faintly, on the landing below, someone was walking again, slowly, hesitantly, one-two, one-two.

Maude.

*

She was where Nell had left her, standing obediently by the front door. ‘Nell? What is it? Who’s there?’

‘Was that you? Making that noise?’

‘No.’

‘It’s not funny—’

‘It’s not me – I was right there next to you in the kitchen, how could it be me?’

‘Because I’ve really had enough of this—’