Maude went upstairs. Her phone lay on the bed, but a quick tap on the screen revealed that, as usual, there was barely a signal. Her growing collection of shells and pebbles, the quartz ones she liked so much, was crowding the window ledges. She went round the room, checking they were all in place, arranged just the way she liked, before retrieving the shoebox from its hiding place under the bed.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to mess around with the shoe; that was one of the conditions about keeping it up in the attic. She wasn’t supposed to touch it, because it was old, fragile, important, but she couldn’t help it. And after all, she wasn’t doing any harm. She opened the box and lay down on her bunk, balancing the shoe on her belly.

She lay still for a moment or two, trying to imagine how it might have looked when it was new, when it still had its twin and had been used, worn by someone’s child.

Maude closed her eyes and tried to imagine the child – a little boy, she decided, for no real reason at all – running through the house. The soft leather shoes padding over the flagstones in the kitchen, the toes scuffing as he stumbled up the wooden stairs. She began to wonder again if Nell would notice if she sneaked the shoe into her bag when they left; if there was any way she could hide it from both Nell and her dad. There had been two messages so far from the woman in the letting agency. Maude had listened to them both before quietly deleting them. It wasn’t her fault, she decided, that her phone signal was so rubbish here.

Nell’s voice on the landing below startled her, and when she opened her eyes, there was someone in the corner of the room, watching her. She sat up abruptly, and the shadows resolved themselves into one of the unused bunks, its pillows piled up and crumpled. No one there after all. Looking down, she found that she was clutching the shoe in one hand. The leather was warm and she was glad she had hold of it. It was like the marks on the beam; it made her feel safe.

*

‘Hi. Maude?’

Maude put the shoe back in its box, gave it a minute, then peered down from the attic.

The babysitter didn’t really look like a babysitter; she was wearing lots of make-up and she had thick black hair, too black to be natural. She was wearing skinny jeans and a sweat shirt, and inky blue nail polish.

‘This is Kym, sweetheart, she’s going to . . . keep you company this evening.’