As I pack, with very little method and all amounts of haste, tears run down my face unheeded to drop from my chin. I don’t understand where the urgency has come from, but it’s rising inside me, an inexplicable drumbeat that’s picking up in pace, exhorting me to leave, leave now, leave while I still can. At least Carrie has gone; she is safe—but it doesn’t seem like she will be someone I will have to worry about again. Perhaps it was a fool’s errand all along, to think we might salvage a relationship after all these years. Other people might have managed it, but not me. I haven’t had the training. I was stupid to even try.

The bathroom door bangs. Again and again it bangs. I have to go, I have to go. The Manse is telling me to go. I don’t know where the threat is coming from—Jamie, Ben, Ali, Fiona . . . or someone or something else entirely—but the Manse is telling me as plainly as it can. I have to go.

I won’t return to London, to my job—that life is over for me. Perhaps it was over for some time; perhaps it took my mother’s death for me to recognize it. For a little while, I thought that meant I could have a different life, but now I see that I’ve completely unhooked myself. I could slip my skin and disappear, like my father did before me, except in my case, nobody would care.

I have to go. I must go. I must go, I must go, I must go.

Toiletries—I need to clear out my stuff from the bathroom. It’s colder in there, but it often is. Possibly the pilot flame on the boiler has gone out again. I don’t bother checking; there’s no point when the house will be empty. I stand at the bathroom door and run my eye over it for a last check. I can’t see that I’ve missed anything. Though the bathroom window is open and there’s a pool of rainwater collecting on the sill. I don’t remember opening it, but it doesn’t matter now. I turn to the landing.

Jamie is standing in the middle of it.

I manage to cut off my half scream. “Jesus, Jamie, what are you doing here?”

“Sorry, sorry,” he’s saying. He’s holding his palms out placatingly. “I wanted to—”

“How did you get in?”

“The usual way,” he says impatiently. “But look, I wanted—”

“Jamie, it’s not a good time. You can’t just come into people’s houses uninvited—”

“Have you been crying?” He drops the tote bag that was over his shoulder and takes a step toward me, pushing back the hood of his dark raincoat. The shoulders are soaked through.