She goes downstairs. The door to the cellar is open. She can hear a strange gurgling, a scratching, like a rat caught in a drain. She’s not someone who experiences fear, but something speeds her down the cellar stairs so fast she can’t feel her own feet.

Peter is waiting for her at the bottom. He smiles up at her, those beautiful tawny eyes clear and untroubled.

‘I was just tidying up for you,’ he says.

chapter 60

millie

Stacey’s front door is not only unlocked, but open. I go into the house, fear gnawing an acid path through my insides. Too late now. What did she mean by that? If she’s done anything to Peter, if she’s harmed a single hair on his head—

I head up to the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time. An empty bowl smeared with chocolate and vanilla ice-cream is on the counter. A dirty coffee cup bearing the imprint of Stacey’s signature pink lipstick sits beside the sink. The kitchen has the deserted air of a hastily abandoned shipwreck.

My anxiety builds as I go back downstairs and check the bedrooms. There’s no sign of Peter or Stacey.

It occurs to me she might have tired of waiting for me and driven Peter home instead, but a quick text soon establishes that’s not the case: Tom hasn’t heard from either of them, and I can’t see Stacey leaving her front door wide open anyway.

Something bad has happened, I can feel it.

I check every inch of the house again. Stacey still hasn’t responded to my texts, and when I call her, her phone rings out on the kitchen counter. She’d never have left her phone behind if she’d gone out. Something’s wrong.

I stand in the hall by the front door, debating what to do next.

And then I see the cellar.

The door is just a fraction ajar, which is the only reason I notice it. It’s been ingeniously designed to blend seamlessly into the wall at the foot of the stairs: I’ve walked past it a dozen times and never noticed it was there. I know this house almost as well as the architect who designed it, and I’m quite certain there isn’t a cellar on the plans. There was a small workman’s cottage on this site before the Second World War, if I remember correctly: the basement must be part of that.

‘Stacey?’ I call, opening the cellar door wider. ‘Peter? Are you down there?’

No answer.