“It made them feel better. Neither of them can believe they hadn’t realized what Jamie was really like. And what with Ali’s mum, too—you know,” she says thoughtfully, “if you are planning to stay for good, I think you could do pretty well out of this if you really milk it.” I laugh, as she means me to, and it warms her gray eyes, which warms me too. “Tea?” she asks.

I leave her making the tea, ostensibly to go to the bathroom, but really to walk through the Manse. It feels different, but Carrie is here. I can’t tell how I feel about it with her pottering in the kitchen. Belatedly it occurs to me that I missed her real question: If you are planning to stay . . . I know what I want to do, but I don’t know for sure if the Manse wants me. In the dining room, I cautiously touch my fingertips to the golden lettering, ready to snatch them away at the slightest hint of a buzzing in my ears, but the inscription remains inert. A furnace: I wonder again what kind of love my parents had. Enough to marry, enough to have me, but beyond that, neither of them can ever tell me. Though perhaps I should see that as a gift: I have a clean slate, with no pattern to fall into. Any mistakes I make will be my own.

In the middle of the night, I wake with the pain from my collarbone gnawing at my consciousness, and lie still for a while, listening for sounds. There’s the low hum of a car engine that must be coming from the main road a couple of miles away. It dies away into silence, and somehow I can feel that silence; I can feel the space that extends beyond me in my bed, the way the landscape within which the Manse sits spreads out and soars. The Manse itself doesn’t feel silent, even though I can’t hear anything. It feels like it’s breathing steadily—not at any pitch my ears can detect, but I hear it nonetheless. It’s reassuring, like the feeling of a cat purring on your lap.

Eventually I realize I won’t go back to sleep without a painkiller, or ten, and reluctantly leave my bed. Now that summer is just around the corner, the wood of the stairs holds no chill for my bare feet. The faint green light of the alarm panel glows reassuringly at me when I pass it. I lay a hand tentatively on the doorframe of the kitchen. The Manse doesn’t stir.