‘So, where were we?’ says Jimmy, seemingly oblivious to the chaos ensuing behind him.

‘You were telling me about the house,’ I say. ‘About something that happened there.’

‘Oh yeah,’ he says, folding his arms and leaning forward. ‘Well, I don’t like to alarm you but Rowan Isle House has a dark history. So dark that it’s known locally as the House of Horrors.’

I look at him, try to read his face for a sign that he is joking, but his expression is deadly serious.

‘What happened?’ I say, shivering as the door opens and a gust of freezing air drifts in along with a middle-aged couple in puffa jackets and hiking boots. I keep my head lowered, glad we’re tucked away in a corner.

‘A bloke got murdered,’ he says, lowering his voice.

My mouth goes dry as he tells me how this man, an ex-soldier, had moved to Rowan Isle House with his young daughter in the early nineties.

‘He’d fought in the first Gulf War,’ he says, drumming his fingers on the table. ‘High ranking, so they say, maybe even SAS. But he’d lost his mind. Isobel says how he was known locally as a madman on account of him wandering into the village and waving his gun around. Nowadays I guess he’d be diagnosed with PTSD but back then he was just the local nut job.’

I look down at the table, memories of that room and her gentle voice swirling round my head. Then I recall the name the others had for her: the nut job. But she was my friend. Why had she not told me about this? About her past?

‘The girl was troubled,’ he says, raising his eyebrows to emphasize the point. ‘Feral even, some might say. The father had kept her holed up in that house, wouldn’t let her mix with other kids. She was basically a prisoner.’

The word slices into my spine as thoughts of a darkened room and a feral girl lying on a bare bed, shouting expletives to the ceiling, creep unbidden into my head. Stop, Lisa, I tell myself, don’t let them in, whatever you do, don’t let those thoughts in.

‘Anyway, one night, just before Christmas, the girl snapped,’ says Jimmy. He clicks his fingers and the noise makes me jump.

‘Snapped?’ I say, trying my very best to remain calm. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She killed him,’ says Jimmy, his voice deadpan. ‘Guess she must have had enough of it all. Apparently, the police found her shut up in a room in the house, muttering away to herself about how she’d shot him. His body was never recovered but police found his blood soaked into the snow in the woods and it was all over her clothes too. People say when they brought her out of that house she didn’t look human. She looked like some kind of rabid animal.’

‘What … what happened to her?’ I ask, though I already know the answer.