Evie was hovering over her mother, who was still slumped on the floor. She was conscious and – thank God – she had finally stopped talking when Kym ran back into the kitchen.

‘Do you have your phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. You need to ring for an ambulance, Maude’s really ill.’ Kym couldn’t help looking down at Carolyn. ‘Nell can’t wake her up.’

Evie fumbled in her pocket. ‘No signal,’ she said after swiping at the screen. ‘Hang on.’ She picked up her bag, opened the kitchen door and vanished into the gloom.

*

‘It hurts,’ said Carolyn, looking up at Kym, then rotating her wrist experimentally. ‘I think something might be broken. Give me a hand up, will you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Kym, ‘not yet.’

Carolyn sighed, and shuffled back until she was resting against the wall, her legs stretched out in front, one shoe loose, adrift. Kym sat down next to her, almost as if they were friends, and regarded her seriously. ‘I was chatting with Pete Chappell earlier. I think I’d like you to tell me what you did to my dad.’

*

It took a surprisingly long time to persuade the person on the other end of the line to send an ambulance. She kept asking peculiar questions about the patient, and her symptoms, and she didn’t seem to understand that Evie wasn’t actually there, right next to her.

It was Maude’s age that tipped it, in the end, and the fact that Evie was beginning to sound frantic.

‘Go to the end of the yard,’ the woman on the phone said, ‘and wait for the ambulance there.’

‘Right.’ Evie shoved her phone in her pocket, then hesitated, looking up at the drying ground.

It wasn’t yet fully dark, but it was still difficult to find her way. The security lights weren’t working, and the light from the kitchen didn’t help much; it only seemed to cast deeper shadows the higher she climbed up the bank. Evie followed the fence until she found the open gate; she looked up at Elder House, then taking a deep breath, stepped inside.

It was cold. Still.

But it seemed to her that very faintly, beneath her feet, there was – something, a tremor, a vibration.

And it was getting stronger.

*

Nell pulled the panel out of the wall. She picked up the shoe – one last time, just this one last time – and tried to clear her mind, to focus; to set her intention. Outside, on the landing, the lights wavered; there was someone, something there, just out of sight.

*