On the wall just outside the room, a brass crucifix clings to the anaglypta. Chloe quickly looks away.

‘Here we go,’ Maureen says, stepping inside. ‘It’s a bit stuffy.’ She swats at tiny motes of dust as she crosses the room to open a narrow window at the top of a larger one overlooking the back garden. Chloe stands in front of it, staring out at miles of unbroken flat Fenland, now soaked in rain.

‘Nice view,’ she says, searching the landscape for a glimpse of another house on the horizon and finding nothing but fields.

‘We think so,’ Maureen says. ‘When we moved, we wanted somewhere quiet.’

Chloe turns back and smiles, trying to work out how she should be behaving, what she would say if she didn’t know what she already knows. In the end, she settles for ‘Where did you move from?’ It comes out naturally, she hopes.

‘Peterborough,’ Maureen says, without elaborating.

‘Right,’ she says, feeling the sting of duplicity. She thinks of the notepad she dumped in the bin, how she wishes she still had it. She couldn’t write here, in front of Maureen, of course not. But the minute she left, before she even got back to the top of the lane, she would be writing notes for her own archive.

Maureen wanders around the room. Chloe follows her. There is a single iron bedstead in the left-hand corner, made up with a white valance sheet that reaches down to the floor and a blue and green floral duvet. Opposite there’s a wardrobe so tall it looks like it might topple over onto the mahogany-stained floorboards. And in the right-hand corner of the room, a closed door that appears to lead to an adjoining room. It is locked with a shiny silver padlock. Maureen opens the wardrobe and the hinges creak loudly.

‘Must get some of that WD40 on that,’ Maureen says to herself.

Chloe pokes her head inside, inhaling the musty smell of mothballs. She knows this smell from Nan’s house; it feels like some familiarity to hold on to.

‘It’s a bit sparse but that’s how people seem to like things these days – minimal, I think they call it.’ Maureen says. ‘But if you wanted anything else, a rug or something, I’m sure we could find you one.’

Chloe strolls around the room, hoping Maureen won’t hear her heart thudding inside her coat if she’s over by the window. She fingers the duvet for something to do, to buy herself seconds. What does she say? She hadn’t expected any of this.

‘Yes, it’s very nice,’ Chloe says. ‘Obviously I’ve got a few places to see . . .’

‘Yes, of course,’ Maureen says. ‘Perhaps it’s too quiet out here, for a young girl like you.’