Nell picked up Maude’s phone, and let the torch shine into the gap behind the panelling. The shoe had tumbled down the wall and was wedged behind the skirting board. She leant forward, changing the angle of the beam, shifting its focus. It was a small red trainer, its long lace trailing in the dust.

It was Maude’s. She had put her own shoe in the box.

Irritated, Nell reached into the wall to pick it up, then her fingers brushed across something else, something different; whatever it was she had knocked from the shelf. She shone the torch into the corner of the void again, then she sat back abruptly, letting the phone fall to one side. ‘Jesus,’ she said softly.

*

She took everything down to the kitchen. She’d found a used carrier bag and scooped the contents of the void into it, knotting it firmly. She dropped the bag on the floor and went to the sink. She turned the hot tap on and, picking up a bar of soap, began to scrub, the soap foaming through her fingers.

You could date it, she supposed, the plastic cylinder, the pregnancy tester – used, as far as she could tell. Although for one extraordinary moment she had thought it was the one she had bought – you could date it from the design, the brand or logo, if there was one.

Used.

She had the urge to run upstairs and check the bin in the bathroom, to make sure no one had . . . But it wasn’t a joke; it couldn’t be a joke. A thick layer of dust had coated the small plastic cylinder she’d found lying in the gap between the old stone wall and the panel. The corresponding imprint left in the dust on the shelf; it had been there for a long time.

That’s what she’d felt briefly, knocked, and heard falling off the shelf and next to it . . .

Something soft, dusty, yielding. Her fingers brushing over it in the dark.

A used tampon.

Blackened with age.

She lathered up her hands again. Dust seemed to have ingrained itself in every crease, beneath each nail.

Dust and . . .

Gina’s words came back to her. Why do people tie shoes to newlyweds’ cars? Why do we go on about the patter of tiny feet?

She was drying her hands, trying to reason it out, when she heard someone coming slowly downstairs.

Maude had brushed her hair and tied it back, she had washed her face and found a clean T-shirt and a pair of shorts. She limped across the kitchen. ‘Can I have some juice?’

‘Sure.’