She cast her eyes into the lounge as she passed back through the hallway, but didn’t go in. Tiff barely used that space. She might check back there at a later date. It would take a while to sort the entire house, and Shirley said she had family who could help with that; she just wanted a friend of Tiff’s to do the personal stuff. Louisa wheeled Noah to the foot of the stairs. Although he was quiet, she couldn’t bear to leave him downstairs alone in his pram.

Why not? What am I afraid of?

She lifted him out and carried him upstairs. Each foot on the stair caused a creak – an eerie groan, as though they’d forgotten the weight of the many footsteps that had gone before, the imprints left now mere ghosts. A chill shot up her back. It wasn’t really that she didn’t want Noah to be left alone downstairs; it was because she didn’t want to be alone upstairs.

The stairway curved to the left before it reached the landing. Three rooms and a bathroom went off from there, each door closed. Louisa hesitated on the top stair as she caught sight of the boxes. Shirley had told her there’d be some there for her to use. One for personal things to keep, one for charity, one for the dump. Louisa screwed her eyes up tight. She should’ve asked someone else to come with her. Her plan to carry this out on her own, to ‘spend time’ with Tiff, had been ill-conceived. This was an awful task to do alone. Forcing herself to move forwards, Louisa padded to the far door on the right.

Tiff’s bedroom.

As she didn’t have anyone else living with her, it was obviously the biggest – the one with the luxurious en-suite where, on a number of occasions, she and Tiff had got ready for a night out. Louisa balanced Noah in one arm as she lowered the door handle and, inhaling deeply, gently pushed the door open. The room was in general disarray: clothes flung onto the bed, where she supposed Tiff had been deciding what to wear that day; make-up products littered the dressing table, a book lay open, face-down on her mirrored sidetable – Louisa raised her eyebrows at the title: Gone Girl. Her throat constricted, tears threatening again.

She had to do this. She had to start packing things up. Laying Noah in the centre of Tiff’s king-sized bed, she went to the landing to retrieve the boxes.