The house had stood for more than a hundred and twenty years, so she was told. It rested behind a cluster of ash trees, taking its name from them: The Ashes, carved in one of the stone pillars at the gate. Her father-in-law, Francis—Francie, as he preferred—had found the house. Bought it for a song and gifted it to Sara and her husband Damien. A fire had left the place a shell, but it had been rebuilt. The original stone flooring remained intact, worn smooth by a century and more of footfall, dark and glossy like the skin of some ancient creature. It felt sinful to walk on it with bare feet, and all the better for it, the stone cooling her soles.

The first morning, however many days ago that was, Sara had come down here at dawn and made coffee while Damien snored upstairs. She noticed the stains over by the alcove that used to be a fireplace. An Aga cooker had been fitted where a wood-burning stove had once been. The stone in front of it was mottled with a deep red, as if something had spilled there years before. Clean it, she had thought. Damien would not tolerate mess. She had fetched a surface-cleaning wipe from a packet by the sink and got down on her knees. The stains seemed to fade as she rubbed the stone, though no residue was apparent on the wipe when she was done. Still, they were gone, and she thought no more about them until the following morning, when Damien was eating toast at the island in the centre of the room. She saw the stains, returned, as morning light brightened the kitchen.

“Look,” she had said, touching them with her bare toe, seeking a change in texture against her skin but finding none.

“Hmm?” He did not look up from his phone, one thumb scrolling while he sucked melted butter from the other.

“Those stains are back,” she said. “I cleaned them yesterday morning, and now they’ve come back.”

“Yeah?” He took another bite of toast, a sip of coffee, kept his eyes on the phone.

“Look,” she said, “here.”

Damien huffed out an impatient breath and put his slice of toast on the plate, leaned over on his stool, tilting his head one way, then the other.

“Here,” she said again, tapping the stain with her toe.

“I don’t see it. It’s just the pattern of the stone, no?”

Damien wore his good Hugo Boss jeans with a striped shirt tucked in at the waist, brown Grenson brogues, his Canali blazer on a hanger, suspended from a cupboard door. He was starting work today, the new in-house architect at his father’s property development firm.