“I think I’ll head up to bed,” I say, when Fiona’s beeping watch has alerted me that it’s eleven o’clock. They chorus good nights to me. I glance back from the doorway to see their heads together, giggling at the kitchen table. It’s so precisely the image I conjured up, mere days ago, that it stops me dead. But Carrie and Fiona are oblivious, in a bubble of wine and shared laughter. I could be invisible. I feel invisible.

•   •   •

My sleep is disturbed by dreams that don’t feel like dreams. My father drifts in and out of them—he doesn’t look anything like either my memories, insubstantial as they are, or the photos I possess, but somehow I know it’s him—whilst I’m looking for something in a house that doesn’t look like the Manse either, but I know it is the Manse, though the rooms seem to shift and change when I’m not looking at them. I don’t know what I’m looking for, and I’m late for work, but I can’t stop looking.

I wake suddenly, gasping, dragged abruptly into reality. My bedroom door is open, with the hall light spilling through it, and there’s a figure in the doorway.

Fiona.

She’s standing there looking at me. I don’t know how long she’s been there.

“What are you doing? What are you doing here?” I scramble up to a seated position in bed.

She doesn’t answer. My eyes are adjusting. Perhaps she never left; perhaps Carrie suggested that she stay over. I grope for my bedside light switch, bumping my BlackBerry in the process so that it lights up. Finally I find the switch. She blinks in the light but doesn’t move in the slightest. She’s wearing a long white T-shirt—or at least, it’s long on her—that I think I recognize as Carrie’s, over black jeans. It’s her stillness that is the most chilling.

“How long have you been there?” The bark of my words is undermined by the tremor in them. I glance at the BlackBerry screen. “It’s two in the morning.”

Finally she speaks, in an oddly thoughtful tone. “Oh. It’s not the right time.” Then she turns and leaves. Did I see a flash of something silver in her hand as she left? What was that? My fevered brain is running through worst-case scenarios. Some kind of blade? A knife? Or something more prosaic, like a silver mobile phone? I stare at the empty doorframe for a moment, then scramble out of bed and grab my dressing gown. The hallway is empty and quiet. The Manse is listening, holding its breath.