We are in the kitchen, Fiona, Carrie and I. The three of us are in the kitchen, while the skull remains on the navy bedspread, propped in the slight gap between the pillows, like a grinning child that has commandeered his parents’ double bed. I am not screaming out loud anymore, but inside it hasn’t stopped. It may never stop. In my job I have experienced riots, shoot-outs, earthquakes and, once, a volcanic eruption, but I am not prepared for whatever vicious malevolence this is. The Manse has served this up to me. The Manse has passed judgment and it doesn’t want me here . . . But no, I cannot afford to indulge my fanciful leanings. The skull is solid and tangible and real, and someone very real broke into my house and placed it there. Someone doesn’t want me here, but who? There’s a list forming in my head of all the people I know round here—Carrie, Fiona, Ben, Ali, Jamie, Piotr, Glen, Callum, Morag, Jean the shopkeeper, the locksmith whose name I can’t remember, all the people at Ben’s birthday dinner . . . I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel and still the list barely makes double figures.

I distract myself with a quick swallow from my mug. We are British, and this qualifies as a crisis, so obviously we’re drinking tea. It’s reassuring to have something to do. Perhaps that’s the point of it: a way to inject some element of normality in times of extreme stress. Ben, Piotr, Carrie, Fiona, Callum, Ali, Morag, Jamie, Glen, Jean, the locksmith . . .

“Are you sure we shouldn’t call 999?” asks Carrie again. Her long-fingered hands are wrapped tightly round her own mug, as if she is afraid they might shake otherwise. Her face is sickly white, with bruises under her eyes along with smudged eyeliner.