I close the scrapbook and take a deep breath as if I’m coming up for air. It takes a few more breaths before I come back to myself; I could lose myself in here, but in the end, what good would that do me? What I should be doing is sorting and separating—for recycling, binning or keeping—but that’s too much to face today. As I’m putting the scrapbook back in the box, I notice a framed photograph tucked down the side. I pull it out warily, but all it shows is a group of people sitting round a dinner table after what looks like a well-lubricated dinner, judging by the glasses and wine bottles strewn across the table. It’s a tableau that smacks of a special occasion, and my mother is at the center of it, clad in a geometric print dress and a big smile, in pride of place at the head of the table. I can make out my father, too, halfway down one side, the same compact, lean man from my bedside photograph, but this time he’s leaning back in his chair, a glass raised in his hand, a smile in place between absurdly long sideburns. He looks happy, or he looks like he’s trying to look happy. I don’t recognize any of the other revelers. I rub the dusty glass with my sleeve, but there’s nothing more to see. Like the other photograph, it’s just a sliver of time. I can’t divine a truth—any truth—from it, but still, I feel like I’m being sucked underwater. I cross quickly to the mantelpiece, which is thick with dust, to leave the photo there.

I’m almost at the door when it strikes me. The mantelpiece was thick with dust. I turn back as if to check. The photo sits on a gray-brown carpet of it, with the only marks of disturbance those that I just made placing the photo. The horizontal edge of the trestle table has the same layer. But the box lids weren’t dusty. I look at them again. There’s no discernible dust at all on the lids of the topmost boxes, and I’m sure that’s not just down to having been disturbed by me. I would have noticed if I’d had to wipe dust off my fingers.

Fair isolated out here, said the locksmith. You and yer sister mind take care.

Someone has been here. It couldn’t have been a tenant; the estate agent didn’t have a key to this room. Someone has been through these things, these memories that don’t belong to them. Someone had a key. To this room, and presumably to the rest of the house.

You want to get to know your neighbors, said the locksmith. Glen McCue is a good man. That daughter of his is . . . well, you’ll meet her. But Glen is a good man.