The steps led up to the left side of the house, and to the narrow flagged path that ran around it. There was a sheer drop of ten or twelve feet between it and their nearest neighbour, Spinnaker Cottage, and Nell had to resist the urge to warn Maude to stay away from the edge. She was a sensible kid, as a rule.

Chris was waiting for them by the front door. He found the right key, inserted it into the lock, struggling with it as it seemed to stick, shudder, then give. The door opened into a hall, a gleaming parquet floor dominated by a wide, wooden staircase. It was silent and the air was still; the house smelt faintly of beeswax polish and lavender, and underneath that, something else, something . . . Nell couldn’t place it. They stood there for a moment, the three of them, waiting.

‘Are we going in, then?’ Maude pushed past her father and dropped her things at the foot of the stairs.

Nell followed her, flicking on the hall light, hoping to dispel the gloom. A sharp prickle of static electricity took her unawares, and she caught her breath; Maude turned away, not quite masking a smirk.

There was a door to the left, and Nell opened it, revealing a long room that ran right through the house – the kitchen-diner. At the far end, on the counter, next to the Aga, there was a welcome pack, a cellophane-wrapped hamper filled with someone’s idea of essential groceries and finished off with a shiny blue bow.

They had done a decent job of knocking through a wall; the shift from polished floorboards to worn flagstones was all that indicated there had once been two rooms where now there was one. The leaded windowpanes lent the room a slightly greenish cast.

Without thinking, Nell crossed the kitchen, squatted and lay her hand against the stone floor. It felt cool beneath her palm, and – this must have been imagination – slightly damp.

She stood up. There was a smell here too, although this was easier to place; it put her in mind of wet soil and rotting vegetables. It might have been the rag rug in front of the Aga, but it seemed new enough, the regular, clipped tongues of fabric springing up from the sacking base. Maybe they were the first visitors of the summer season, that would explain the damp, unused air of it all.

She didn’t like it.

More than that: she didn’t want to stay. The thought took her by surprise, and she tried to ignore it. It wasn’t as if she had a choice.

*

It took a couple of trips to get everything out of the car, and by the time they were done, Chris’s mood was beginning to sour. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘we choose somewhere with parking.’

‘You were the one who wanted to stay in a yard,’ said Nell.