She tried to recall the last time she’d seen Maude and had a proper conversation with her, lunchtime? Earlier that morning? She had assumed Maude was sulking. She had relied on Carolyn, trusted her. She’d been grateful to have Maude taken off her hands. She hadn’t even bothered to pass on Chris’s message.

Love to Maude.

She was covered in a thin film of sweat, her eyes fluttering behind their lids, and there was a peculiar rasping quality to her breathing.

‘Maude?’

The girl’s eyes fluttered open, her gaze fixing upon Nell, looking right through her. ‘Serve . . . serve you right . . .’

Meningitis might have been Nell’s first guess, but now – some sort of infection, perhaps, connected to the cut on her foot. She knelt up, leaning forward, the better to see the expression on Maude’s face, and to check on her breathing.

Nell was holding the shoe. It was an odd thing, supple, alive, almost. And she had brought it up with her for a reason, hadn’t she? She had to think for a moment.

Carolyn believed it would give her what she wanted if she kept it close by.

But she was supposed to put it back.

It speaks to me, this house, it always has; it speaks to you too.

Nell held up her hand, balancing the shoe in her palm. A child’s shoe, a child – no more than three or four years old, perhaps.

What we’re really talking about is sacrifice.

Poor Carolyn, she must have been – desperate. And the shoe seemed to offer some sort of comfort. Nell understood that much at least.

It knows what we want.

She closed her eyes, and she could hear it once again – footsteps passing slowly along the landing below.

She’d read all about him earlier. Dr Bishop, so eager, so ambitious. He’d probably been delighted with his find – a little prestige at last, even if his practice was struggling with so many mouths to feed.

A bargain struck.

A sacrifice.

There was something about it that let you think about these things, she noticed – consider them. Something about the house.

Nell looked around the attic.

A little boy playing in the corner, his father watching over him, moving closer, reaching out.

And worth it in the end; he’d filled his life with good works. Did all those good deeds make up for that one bad thing?

Oh God God Almighty

The words of the prayer floated into Nell’s head. They were very old, buried for centuries in the drying ground, the midden. Another idea, less seductive, began to form.

Why did he bring the prayer into the house? Why place it so close to the shoe?