Maude clearly wasn’t happy about the whole babysitting thing, and Kym could hardly blame her. They were sharing a huge pizza, with Maude ignoring the bowl of salad Nell had placed on the table to accompany it, and answering Kym’s well-meant questions with single words and the occasional eye roll. It was going to be a long night. Nell had told Kym to help herself to anything she might fancy in the fridge, but she wasn’t sure if that meant the wine in the door. Probably not – not with her being all responsible.

Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket. It was Ty again. She lay the phone on the table and watched as it shuddered its way towards voicemail and silence.

‘Who’s that?’ Maude asked, craning her neck to get a better look at the caller ID. ‘He’s fit. Is he your boyfriend?’

‘Ex-boyfriend.’

‘Really? Did he dump you? You must be gutted. Is that why you didn’t want to go to the party?’

‘Excuse me,’ said Kym, playing up the outrage. ‘I dumped him.’

Maude snorted. ‘Yeah, right,’ she said, then, ‘Really? Why, though?’

‘None of your business.’ Stifling a smile, Kym picked up another slice of pizza.

Maude sighed theatrically. ‘People never want to talk about interesting stuff,’ she said.

‘Private,’ said Kym, ‘it’s private, OK?’

‘Did you go out with him for a long time?’

‘Long enough.’

Maude was staring at her thoughtfully. ‘I’m not allowed to pierce my ears yet,’ she said. ‘It’s so not fair.’

‘Oh.’ Kym raised her free hand to her ear, slightly thrown by this sudden change of subject. ‘Well, what can you do?’ she said. ‘They always expect you to be so reasonable about the things they say you can’t have.’ She looked around the kitchen, trying to be casual. ‘I mean, you can argue about it, but that only makes things worse – like it’s proof you’re immature or something.’ They had taken the old house and tried to open it up by knocking a wall through. You saw it all the time, of course, people making improvements bit by bit, priding themselves on retaining period features, the character of a place, barely aware that with every inconvenience they removed, every decision they made, they were obliterating history.

But here, it was as if underneath the renovations the house was still – itself, solid and unchanging. The bare floors were cold with a suggestion of damp, the leaded windows lent the whole interior a grey-green light that wasn’t entirely healthy. And there was a weird smell.

She almost laughed. Ty would completely take the piss if he could hear her. She wondered how she might get the kid to show her around.