I stand in the hallway and try to think straight. I need to find some kind of normality: a bathroom, a kitchen. I try the door straight ahead of me and as I open it I instinctively put my hand on to the wall to locate a switch but, again, there isn’t one. I step inside and point the torch ahead of me. There is a huge wooden table in the centre of the room. Like the mantelpiece in the living room, its surface is piled with junk and clutter. There are empty food cans, old newspapers, bits of wool and twigs. A flash of colour catches my eye and I bend down to take a closer look. It’s a red ribbon, the kind I used to wear in my hair when I was a child. I pick it up and rub it between my finger and thumb. It’s velvet. I stare at the ribbon, wondering how something so pretty has come to be in the midst of all this junk. Then I coil it round my wrist and tie it in a knot.

I lift the torch and direct it at the far wall, desperately trying to locate something, anything, that resembles a modern amenity – a washing machine, an oven – but there isn’t even a sink. Shining the torch to the left, I see a black metal contraption wedged against the wall. It has ornate tiles on the front of it with blue figures painted on them. There are various knobs and handles on the top of it, though I have no idea what it is. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

Next to it is a glass door. Wiping my hand across the grimy glass, I see that it leads outside. I try the handle. The door is locked. I shine the torch up and down its surface then notice a bolt at the very top. I slide it across and pull the door open.

Standing on the wooden step, I look out on to an expanse of purple wilderness. The hills, which seemed to close in on me as I drove here, now look like sleeping giants, their peaks arching towards the grey sky. A drystone wall dissects the field beyond the house, framing a square patch of land. There are wooden canes sticking out of the ground and what appear to be, in this fractured winter light, the remains of a vegetable patch. The rest of the garden is cluttered with wire cages. I take a deep breath then grimace. Even out here in the open the air is putrid. I turn to go back into the house but something catches my eye; I look closer. There’s something poking out of one of the cages. I walk towards it. It’s a tail of some sort. Orange and wiry. A fox’s brush? A memory of Highgate Cemetery at twilight and the cries of the foxes that would nest in amongst the gravestones flashes across my mind then disappears. I flick the brush with my hand and it falls on to the ground, sending up a flurry of tiny flies into the air. Definitely a fox, I think to myself, but as I glance back at the cage my heart flips inside my chest. There, lying on the bottom of the cage, grey and mottled, is a skull.