‘Ask Beezer. Ask him what he saw at four o’clock on the morning that . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘. . . That little Jake died.’

Charlie was staring at her, open-mouthed. ‘Beezer?’ he echoed faintly. ‘What the fuck’s he got to do with anything?’

Nula stood up on shaking legs. ‘Ask him,’ she said, and walked over to the door and opened it. Harlan was there, hanging his coat on the hook that was a mere five feet from the sitting room door. Had he heard? Milly and Belle were upstairs, thumping about. Then Milly’s sound system was cranked up to full volume and the bass started pounding faintly through the floor. The Bay City Rollers, ‘Bye Bye Baby’. You always knew when Milly was in the building. She wasn’t exactly dainty. Now Nula could hear her daughter and Jill’s singing along up there. Harlan was different. He was quiet as a mouse. No, not a mouse. A cat, maybe, stalking about silently, in pursuit of a kill.

‘Hi, Mum,’ he said.

Nula went past him, into the kitchen. And then she heard it. Not just Milly’s music. She could hear Jake, crying. It was real.

Harlan had followed her into the kitchen.

‘Can you . . .’ she started to say, then her voice died on her and she had to gulp and start again. ‘Do you hear that, Harlan? That noise?’ she asked him.

‘What noise?’ Harlan was staring at her blank-eyed. ‘What, Milly’s row, d’you mean?’

Nula didn’t reply. Instead she hurried out into the hallway and up the stairs and along the landing and up more stairs. Then she was running, she was sprinting along the second-floor hallway and then she reached the door. The nursery door, next to her and Charlie’s bedroom.

Her hand reached out to the doorknob and then she drew it back, fearful. She could still hear Jake crying, and it was a sound that wrenched at her. She didn’t believe in spirits, in ghosts, but what if she was wrong, what if Jake was crying for his mother somewhere, in torment?

She opened the door and stepped into the room.

‘Jake?’ she whispered.

Her voice echoed back at her from the walls. The room was completely empty. After Jake’s funeral, Charlie had insisted all the nursery stuff be disposed of, he’d said it was too upsetting for them both to have the room left like some sort of shrine. Nula had resisted, cried, pleaded, but deep down she knew Charlie was right. There was no point holding onto the past. It was gone. It was dead.

She stood there in the empty nursery, shivering with dread. There was nothing now, nothing but the noise of Milly’s music and the frantic beating of her heart.

The crying had stopped.

I’m going mad.

‘Mum?’

She whirled around with a shriek. Harlan was standing there, staring at her.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked her.