There’s nothing on the second floor, except confirmation that Carrie’s room gets better reception when my phone suddenly unleashes a torrent of text messages. The first beep of the sudden onslaught makes me jump, but the adrenaline wave subsides quickly. They’re all administrative—confirmation of change of billing details for the phone and broadband. Nothing from Jonathan. I turn my attention back to the room. Carrie’s bedroom is in the same muddle that she left it, the duvet tangled on one side of the bed and a hairbrush and makeup bag on the exposed bedsheet. Two of the drawers in her chest of drawers are half open. It would probably be possible to entirely ransack this room, and I would just put it down to Carrie’s relaxed attitude to tidying up.

Only the top floor is left. I climb the stairs slowly, poker in hand, feeling less able to congratulate myself on calm rationality. Sheepishly neurotic might be a more accurate description. The poky bedrooms upstairs aren’t a worry, and in any case, they offer scant concealment—in one glance it’s obvious there’s nothing and nobody hiding within them. It’s the box room that looms in my mind. Of course it would be that room, with its cartons of who-knows-what waiting to drag me down into the past. No wonder my tired anxious brain placed a figure in that room, of all rooms. The door is slightly ajar, the hall light spearing inside in a single slanting stripe. I slip my hand inside without disturbing the door and fumble for the light switch. The bulb flickers mulishly for a moment then yields to give a steady glow.

I take a deep breath and fling the door open, brandishing the poker. The door bounces off a box and smacks the poker back into my face, right on the bony crest of my eyebrow, hard enough to make me yelp. If someone was watching, they would have found it hilarious, but at least I’ve already seen that the room holds nothing more than it did earlier today. I rub my eyebrow ruefully and look around once again, then move to the window, trying to figure out what I might have seen from where I was standing, if I had indeed seen anything. A box perhaps, maybe this one, topped by a rather bedraggled beige tasseled lampshade. It’s not exactly triangular, but in the dim light, with a fleeting glance and a suggestive mind, probably anything can morph into any shape. It doesn’t matter anyway. I turn for the door, then on second thought lift down the lampshade, and also the box it was sitting on, so there’s no chance of making the same mistake twice.