She tried her phone once she was back in the attic. She was still allowed to text people, as long as either her dad or Nell checked her messages, only the signal up here was rubbish. And anyway, everyone she knew was at school. She thought about this for a moment – double French with Ms Patterson – and blinked away the tears, she hadn’t thought going on holiday would make her feel so left out, and she’d definitely never thought she’d miss French. She dropped the phone on her bunk.

She emptied her pockets, found an old tissue, and sat on the bed, wiping away the sand from the pebbles she’d collected, smooth and pale and almost the colour of amber, arranging them carefully on top of the pine trunk.

She wasn’t sure what to do next.

There were books, of course, the ones she’d brought from home, and the ones she’d found in the living room; it was a family joke, the rate she went through them. The book she had found about the street was interesting, the one with the old photos, but what she really wanted was to find out more about the house. Maybe she’d go back down in a bit and see what else she could find. Or she could draw instead.

Maude was the best at drawing in her year – probably in the school – and she had packed a pad and some pencils, mostly at her dad’s insistence. He thought she was going to be an artist, like him, and Nell, but Maude wasn’t sure. The more he pushed, the more she felt herself pushing back. Art wasn’t even her favourite subject; just because you were good at something, it didn’t mean you had to like it. But she’d got into the habit of treating drawing like a diary, and there was something about the patterns on the beam, something special, satisfying.

She picked up her sketch pad and took it to the bed; she looked up at the marks, at the circles and the petals they enclosed, staring at them for the longest time, and then after a while, she opened a music file on her phone, found something she liked, and began to draw.

Chapter 5

5

Nell made some tea and she and Chris took it into the living room. She found her book and settled herself in one of the chairs by the window. The light was dull, and the room felt a little chilly; she wondered if they shouldn’t think of lighting the log burner that evening.

Chris took the sofa and opened the laptop. ‘I’m just going to look at some emails,’ he said, ‘unless you want this?’

‘No. I’m fine, thanks.’ She’d check her phone again later.

Nell had finished her drink and been reading for a while before she realised that Chris was still sitting there, hunched over the laptop.

‘Chris?’

‘Yeah?’