He presses tighter and as I struggle to breathe I’m transported back to that day. I remember now. I heard footsteps on the stairs then a hand on my shoulder. I’d tried to block it out, to erase the image from my mind: the man with the piercing blue eyes who had appeared from nowhere, like a monster in a dream.

‘You ran away,’ he hisses. ‘When all I wanted to do was talk to you. I thought you were different, Iris, I thought you cared.’

37. Now

His face crumples and his grip on my throat loosens. Seizing the opportunity, I push him in the chest, fumble with the door and run out of the room.

‘Iris, what are you doing?’ he cries, appearing in front of me in the corridor. ‘Surely you remember that Angus’s room has two exits?’

I step backwards, my heart hammering madly.

‘Please,’ I say, trying to keep my voice calm though my whole body is trembling. ‘Please just let me go home. I won’t tell anyone what happened here, I promise you.’

‘But you are home,’ he says, frowning. ‘You know that as well as I do. When I heard you say your name was Iris when you arrived for the viewing I knew you were giving me a sign, that you remembered me, that you wanted us to be together, that what we have is special. This is why I brought you here – now that Geoffrey has gone, we can live here together. You were in shock last time, that’s why you ran away. This is your second chance. Oh, Iris, we can be so happy. It would be the fairy tale you’ve always dreamed about. It’s what you’ve always wanted. I know that. I know everything about you.’

He grabs my arms and pulls me down to the floor. His grip is more forceful this time and I have no chance of breaking free. I need to keep him talking, stall for my chance.

‘How do you know everything about me?’ I say breathlessly, his arms tightening round my chest.

‘It wasn’t hard,’ he says, fixing me with those strange eyes. ‘After all, in this modern world, everyone puts their lives on display for all to see, don’t they? I eventually found you on one of those fan pages for the book. “The Holly Mazers”, I think it was called.’

I feel sick as I recall joining that group on Facebook one drunken, idle evening years earlier. I hadn’t given it a second thought, hadn’t imagined that by doing so I was making myself visible, vulnerable.

‘It took no time to find you on there, as there weren’t very many members,’ he says. ‘Once Harry Potter came along, people forgot all about poor old Geoffrey and his ghostly friends.’