As soon as Kirsty walked into the living room, just behind Jamie, she knew something was wrong. There were no immediate tangible signs, but she could feel it. The atmosphere in the room felt wrong. There had been a shift in the air, a strange shape imprinted on the molecules that hung around them and made up the fabric of the room. She could smell it, this unwelcome odour. She felt like an animal, its hackles rising as it caught the scent of a stranger, an invader, an enemy encroaching on its territory. She put down the fistful of post and walked very slowly into the room, looking around, scanning every surface for evidence that their possessions had been touched, moved or tampered with. She sniffed the air and turned round in a slow circle. She couldn’t see anything obvious; there was nothing she could point to and say, Look, that’s been moved – that wasn’t there before, or Where’s such-and-such – it should be there. But if there was such a thing as a sixth sense it was working now, telling her that someone had been in here. She felt cold. ‘What are you doing?’ Jamie asked nervously.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Somebody’s been in here.’

‘What?’ He looked around, apparently checking for the same signs she had looked for. ‘It all looks fine. Nothing’s missing, is it?’ His voice wavered; he didn’t sound very sure of himself.

Kirsty shuddered. The idea of someone coming into the flat when they weren’t there terrified her. Worse than being recorded. More awful than spiders. The only worse thing she could imagine was rape. This was the second worst violation.

Jamie continued to check around the room. He went into the bedrooms and bathroom, Kirsty clinging to his arm now, afraid that someone might leap out from behind a piece of furniture or appear in a doorway. They would be large and would almost certainly be holding a knife. They would tie Jamie up and make him watch as they raped and murdered her, also killing the unborn child in her womb. Then they would kill him. She gripped Jamie’s arm tightly.

There was nobody there. There was no sign, in any of the rooms, that someone had been in there. The windows were shut and locked. The front door had been locked, as had the balcony door, which Jamie checked twice.

‘I can feel it too,’ he said. ‘A lingering presence.’

Kirsty shivered. ‘Jamie, you’re scaring me.’

She was just beginning to recover from her moment of horror in the graveyard, and now this. The fact that that they could feel it but not see it made it even more scary. It was as if there was a ghost in the flat.

She had to sit down.