She probed her fingers around the bottom of her left pocket for the buttons. They felt like grim trophies, pearls of teeth, and she shuddered as her fingers came in contact with them. She pulled them out and threw them out of the still-open front door, one by one, in different directions into the overflowing flowerbeds.

Pete looked at her as if she had gone crazy.

‘Best to get rid of them, don’t you think? Nobody’s going to search the garden.’

‘Hopefully not,’ he said, darkly. ‘Go and sit down, I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Wine for me. There’s a bottle in the fridge.’

She went through to the front room, kicked off her shoes and lay down on her back on the sofa, staring at the nicotine-yellow ceiling, thick wooden beams running along its length.

‘We should still call the police,’ she said as Pete came in with a full glass of wine for her and an open bottle of IPA for him.

‘I changed my mind about wanting tea … Well, maybe – but to say what? We don’t know for sure that any crime’s been committed. You’re going to feel daft if he turns up tomorrow.’

Meredith sat up and swigged the wine as Pete took a tobacco tin and cigarette papers out of his jacket pocket. Something caught her eye: a dark, bulky shape she hadn’t noticed in the hearth when she first came into the room. She screamed, jumping up so violently that the wine sloshed out of the glass and onto the carpet. ‘Holy SHIT!’

Pete followed her horrified gaze, and when he saw what she was looking at, he made a disgusted sound in his throat. It was a huge, fat, dead brown rat, lying belly up by the grate, its yellow teeth bared in a final grimace, its thick, hairless tail stretched out behind it.

‘Oh my God!’ Meredith felt panic rise, a tidal wave of emotion. She was shaking so violently, her legs wouldn’t hold her and she collapsed back onto the sofa. ‘Someone’s left it there! Someone’s been in the house! Pete, get rid of it, please!’

He took her glass out of her hand and set it gently on the coffee table, while she buried her face in her palms so she no longer had to see the abominable rodent.

‘Shhh, it’s OK. It probably just fell down the chimney. Nobody’s been in the house. It’s just a coincidence.’