I look across the road and up to Davina’s house. It’s in complete darkness. I need to speak to her tomorrow, so I hope she doesn’t avoid me again. We need to get firm evidence that Barb is interfering with the house sale and that Carl is faking the viewings. I need her help.

A scream rips through the house.

Leo.

I take the stairs two at a time and reach his room as he is running out of it. His little body crashes into mine. His skin is slick with sweat, his face the colour of milk.

‘He was there, he was there,’ he shouts. ‘At the end of my bed. Watching me.’

‘Shh, shh, darling, it’s okay, it’s okay.’ I try soothing him. His body trembles underneath my hands.

‘What does he want, Mummy? What does the man in our house want?’

Chapter Forty-Nine

Amber

‘Is it haunted?’ Jo says. I’m at home, the first full day of my “encouraged” annual leave. I knocked on Davina’s door again first thing this morning and she wasn’t in. Neither was her husband – the mysterious Wayne – so I’ve set myself up on a stool, with my laptop balancing on the windowsill, enabling me to search the internet and watch out of the lounge for Davina to come home.

How the tables have turned.

‘What kind of question is that?’ I shout down the phone.

‘All right – calm down. It’s a relative one, don’t you think?’

‘Why would it suddenly become haunted after all these years, Jo?’

‘Poltergeists aren’t attached to houses; they’re attached to people. And children in partic—’

‘Enough, Jo, please! It’s not a ghost.’ I type in poltergeists into the search bar on my laptop, then immediately click off the page-full of resulting hits. I don’t need to add to my paranoia.

‘So, you think an actual person – a man – is breaking into your house and standing over your son when he’s in bed? Then he’s nowhere to be seen seconds after you reach the room? Yeah, that’s far more likely.’

‘I realise it doesn’t make sense any more than the ghost theory. And if I’m honest, I think I’d rather the haunted option to be the correct one. But maybe it all stems from the open house …’

‘The elusive thirteenth viewer,’ Jo states in a monotone.

‘Yes. I don’t know why, or how, but it’s only after that day that Leo’s nightmares starred this “man in the house”.’

‘But it was also after he overheard you talking to Richard, saying you were concerned someone was inside.’

‘I know. That’s a valid point. God, this is driving me mad.’

‘And you said Nick was over last night. Did he go upstairs and look in on the boys?’