The word ‘hallucinating’ made me shiver. My own hallucinations were not pleasant. In fact, they were terrifying. Memories would come charging out of the walls with the force of a tornado. Not wispy fragments of remembrance at all, but real, blood-and-flesh incarnations with the power to knock me to the ground. Hallucinations that could transform ordinary objects into talking characters. And whereas a talking candelabra in a Disney movie was cute, in reality I found these kinds of hallucinations the most terrifying. Your brain knows full well that a laundry basket that’s singing isn’t actually singing, except it is. And at any moment you might be having a natter with your boyfriend about Strictly or X Factor and the yucca plant on the coffee table will announce – in a thick Spanish accent, no less – that you don’t deserve to live.

I hadn’t expected the hallucinations to follow me here. Deep down, I knew I didn’t really come to Norway to write a book, or because I was homeless – those were superficial reasons. The deeper reason was that I was running away from my life in England, from talking toasters and swearing cutlery drawers. And it had been working. But then I’d seen a woman in the kitchen here, standing by the window, and I’d heard a voice in the basement. No, it said. And I’d felt something grab me. My hallucinations hadn’t just followed me – they were gathering strength.

‘What sort of things did Aurelia see?’ I asked carefully.

Maren finished off her cigarette with a sigh, scratching her temple with a thumbnail. ‘She said she’d seen animals in the house. An elk, I think. It’s not completely unlikely that she did see an elk, a real one, but she was so freaked out by the fact that she might be losing her mind … I think she wasn’t sleeping very much. She wasn’t the sort of woman to heed limitations. Even her own. Still, what I saw gave me cause for concern.’

‘You hallucinated too?’ I said, stupidly.

‘Hallucinate?’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘No, no. I mean, what I saw in the household. Between Aurelia and …’ she trailed off again.

‘Tom?’ I asked, only mouthing his name. She stared at me for a moment, and I suddenly panicked in case I’d misjudged the conversation entirely.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s not my place …’

She set down her glass, leaned both elbows on the table and stared me in the eye. ‘Nobody can fathom why he came back here to continue the build. Aurelia’s friends, even Tom’s own family.’

‘Why?’ I said.