Inside the hall again, she switches on the light then closes the front door, crosses to the far wall and examines a set of five metal letter boxes nailed side by side. She goes through a present-day roll call.

FLAT 1: GIOVANNI GAETTI

Flat 2 is hers, unlabelled.

FLAT 3: HYDE

FLAT 4: MR AND MRS HAMILTON

FLAT 5: KOLINSKI

Kolinski. A connection, the only one, reaching back into the past. Natalia, or a relative?

The silence of the house is broken by a piano. Chopin. The notes drift and, like soft chains, shackle Marina in the hallway. The music stops and she is released, but drawn to its source. The original light has clicked off, but she turns on another – a switch near the stairs this time – and heads up, one hand on the rough bannister, going slowly, taking everything in. The paint is the same cold blue as in the hallway, showing the occasional warm tone of dark green underneath. In places, chunks of plaster have dropped from the ceiling, leaving layers of fine white dust. The house is neglected inside and out, with cracks in the walls and cobwebs in the corners. The landlord should be ashamed, letting the place fall in on itself like this.

The light is weak and barely lasts the climb to the first floor before there is a popping sound. Darkness returns. Fumbling for a switch, Marina discovers another button on a timer, just as in the hall below. She pushes hard and the mechanism whirrs.

The landing is an empty rectangle with bare, dusty boards. Straight ahead is the next flight of stairs. The doors to Flats 3 and 4 sit squarely opposite each other. Marina listens at each one, but there is no sound or movement. She has an odd sensation of having been here before, but knows that she hasn’t, not even with Wayne. It’s a trick of her imagination, or else she has seen this part of the house in a newspaper clipping and has forgotten.

The music starts again – coming from above. The next flight that leads to the second floor is in darkness. Finding another button, Marina pushes firmly and looks around. Warily, she follows the sound. This stairway is narrower than the first. It’s steeper too. Perhaps once upon a time this was the servants’ quarters.

She goes slowly and by the time she reaches the second-floor landing, which is much smaller than the one below, the light has clicked off again. However, there’s a tiny window set high in the wall on the side of the house, and the late-afternoon sunshine spills weakly through. Marina can see the door of Flat 5 to the right, but there’s a door opposite too. She moves across, twists the handle and it swings open. A staircase leads to what must be the attic, high in the eaves. The bare wood steps are stained and splintered and she’s about to climb them when the music stops.