She leaned even closer. ‘Let me ask you a question,’ she said, sliding her eyes to one of the portraits on the wall of a doleful woman with wide green eyes and long flaxen hair. As she struggled to find the words for her question, I wondered what she was going to ask me. Was it a proposition? A confession?

‘If someone you loved committed suicide, would you return to the exact spot that they died and build a house on it?’

I gave this some thought. It did seem in poor taste, even callous, for Tom to do such a thing. I thought back to how angry he had been earlier when he discovered I’d been in the basement. I had pegged him for a placid sort of guy, but the outburst was unnerving – for a moment, he had actually looked like he might strike Maren. And yet she hadn’t had anything to do with the basement door.

‘Have you heard what the workers have said?’ she said, lighting another cigarette.

I shook my head. Workers? She meant the builders.

‘They’re scared by this place. Many believe it is haunted. And for Tom to return here only months after she died and build a family home on the very site of her death …’ Her eyes drifted away from me, suddenly filled with fear.

I opened my mouth to mention what had happened in the basement. The voice. The hand grabbing me. No, I told myself. Don’t mention it.

‘You might call it superstition,’ Maren continued. ‘In Norway, we call it …’

‘Distasteful?’ I offered.

‘Egregious,’ she countered through a mouthful of smoke.

‘Do you think he is just in shock?’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s a pretty awful thing to experience. The death of his wife, I mean. Maybe he wants to remember her here …’

‘He’s been manipulated,’ she said, in a way that suggested I had missed her meaning entirely. ‘Tom is not an evil man. Stupid, yes. But to come back willingly would have been egregious, even wicked. He was persuaded.’

‘By who?’ I said.

She ignored me. ‘When the first house was destroyed, he was furious. I mean, of course. I would be. A lot of money to lose because of a storm.’

I was struggling to keep up. ‘What first house?’ I said. ‘Do you mean their home in London?’

‘Basecamp,’ she said. ‘The house they built before this new one.’