He’d told her that he had another hiding place, away from the farm, and together they were going to get there, whatever it took.

He’d told her that he had an emergency kit in the cellar of the farmhouse that contained all they needed to survive for a few days.

He’d told her where exactly to find the kit.

And he’d told her that she wasn’t to go anywhere else inside the house.

When Ella had asked him if it was dangerous, he hadn’t said anything.

That was it.

So now here she was. The windows of the house were dark and she wondered whether Scarface had boarded them up. All this time it had been sitting here, in the middle of the yard, with its black windows and black walls. And she was going inside it.

She slid the key into the lock. It turned easily and the door clicked open. As it did, she heard a noise. A sort of humming noise, as if from an engine, and she had the spooky feeling that the house was somehow alive.

She pushed the door open wider. Stepped over the mat. Wiped her feet out of habit. The noise was all around her now. It felt hotter in there than outside and the feeling that the house was alive was even stronger. There was a stink in here as well. A stink of damp and mould. The stair carpet was green and grey from fungus, and more climbed up the walls like ivy.

Turn left into the kitchen, Scarface had said and Ella did as she’d been told. The kitchen was neat and tidy, everything in its place, except that the walls were streaked from water leaking in and it was crawling with flies. They covered every surface and, as she passed the windows, a great swarm of them took off from the glass and swirled round her head in a black cloud. Light burst into the room. The windows hadn’t been boarded up, they’d been covered in a layer of flies, like a living curtain.

She put her hands up to protect her hair and face and waved them around to keep the flies from landing. Some battered into her and she shook her head. She carried on walking quickly to the door on the far side like she’d been told, snapped on her torch and opened it.

It’ll be dark in the cellar …

There was a short corridor leading to the cellar, with hooks along the wall for coats and a rack for shoes and boots. The door was at the end. When Ella got to it, she once again selected the right key and then started to go down.

She couldn’t stop. Couldn’t think about it.