We climb out and I follow him inside. It should be special, this moment, being back at the house, my grandpa’s home as a pregnant woman once more. It should be exciting, imagining the life we will soon have here, but it’s not. It’s tainted by my fear of Daniel, and the memory of losing the last baby, the blood and the clot on the bathroom tiles. That slow drip over the following days, emptying me out. It’s still so raw it might have happened yesterday.

The place is… spotless. It seems almost as clean as we left it, the floors mopped, free of shoe prints. A few dishes sit on the drying rack. The table is clean with the bottle of wine we left out at its centre, unopened. It’s as though no one was here at all.

‘I feel like it’s too tidy,’ I say.

Cain raises his hand, focusing on something on the dining table. A slip of paper. He crosses to it and picks it up.

‘What is it?’

When he holds it out, I see messy, rushed handwriting. Almost as messy as a doctor’s scrawl.

We just loved our time here. We will definitely be back.

Thank you.

They haven’t left us a review yet, but they wrote us a note.

‘Odd,’ I say.

‘It is.’ He drops the note. It falls through the air, swinging back and forth with the languid cut of a cello’s bow pass, then comes to rest on the floor. ‘Let’s get tidying.’

‘Tidy what? It’s tidy already.’

‘We should still vacuum, and we will have to do the sheets for the guests coming next weekend.’

He goes to the kitchen, pulls the fridge open. ‘They’ve used the milk.’ He holds the open carton up to me.

‘I’ll do upstairs,’ I say.

‘You can relax if you like.’

‘No, I came to help. I insist.’

Cain’s phone pings. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he says. ‘Their review has just come through.’

He hands me his phone and I read it aloud.

‘A gorgeous house on the lake. Great amenities and very tidy. That’s nice I guess. A bit formal.’

‘Hard to please, aren’t you? Do you want to write them a review now?’

I click their WeStay profile, to see what other reviewers have said about them. The reviews are all great. Every single host has mentioned their cleanliness.

It’s like they never stayed, one review says. Then I see something that causes my heart to stop. A room I recognise. I swallow, but when I do, an itch starts at the back of my throat. I cough, and my eyes water. I feel sick.

‘You alright?’