‘Is Jack all right?’ I say, putting my own concerns aside for a moment. ‘I’ve never seen him like that.’

‘He’s fine,’ she says, displaying her ‘responsible big sister’ demeanour: shoulders back, smile fixed. ‘He just got a bit unsettled by the … by the intruder thing, that’s all.’

I take off my jacket and hang it with my bag on the antique metal coat rack. I haven’t looked at my phone since I deleted the message and blocked the sender at the station. It now sits, switched off, at the bottom of my bag. I feel that if I don’t think about it then the message, the sender, Geoffrey’s dead face, cease to exist. Though I know I’m just fooling myself.

‘Let me cook tonight, Georgie,’ I say, thinking how a few hours’ distraction is just what I need. ‘Give yourself the night off.’

‘Oh, darling, that would be lovely,’ she says, her face brightening. ‘But let me come and sit with you so we can chat. I get so bored when Jack locks himself in the study.’

In the kitchen I take the pan to the sink and fill it with water. Behind me I hear Georgie opening the French doors. I don’t feel safe having them open like that. Though the garden is pretty private, with fencing on both sides, there is a public walkway at the end of it, with only a low hedge between it and the garden. Anyone could climb over that hedge and then …

I try not to imagine that scenario. Instead I take the pan to the hob, add olive oil and salt and turn on the gas flame.

‘So did Mrs Haverleigh’s son say anything else about the intruder?’ I say, watching as Georgie takes a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and places it on the counter. ‘Did they get a description of him?’

‘Only from what Mrs Haverleigh said she saw,’ says Georgie, taking two glass goblets from the pale-green French cabinet. ‘And as Jack says, she’s not the most reliable of witnesses.’

‘What did she see?’ I ask, taking a packet of pasta from the top shelf.

‘She said it was a man, medium build, and wearing some sort of hat,’ says Georgie, visibly shuddering as she pours the wine. ‘It’s a horrible thought, that someone could be prowling around like that. Let’s hope it was just a figment of Mrs Haverleigh’s imagination.’

She takes a long glug of wine and pulls a dining chair over to the open French doors. I can’t help thinking we would all feel safer if she would just close them. As I look at Georgie sitting there, her blue linen skirt billowing slightly in the evening breeze, I get a flashback to Holly Maze House: Geoffrey standing by the open windows, his face almost obscured by the light of the sun.