“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Eve whispers; a small shoe tossed in the corner perhaps, or drops of blood splashed on the shining tiles. They turn to the sitting room opposite. The curtains are pulled over the windows but light filters through the thin cloth onto a brown carpet, a sofa with plumped cushions pushed against the wall, a small television in the corner. The clock on the wall ticks noisily. There are a few books on the shelf in the alcove: a child’s atlas, a dog-eared stack of Reader’s Digests, a paperback edition of The Small Garden. Eve kneels by the fireplace, moving aside logs, examining each one closely. Grace feels a downward lurch of horror; can she actually be searching for the charred remains of her child?

“Shouldn’t we leave that to them?” Grace asks. “That policewoman could come in at any moment. We ought to leave.” She helps Eve up, catching sight, as she does, of a small framed photo on the mantelpiece. A younger, slimmer Igor with his arm around a small blond, the couple encircled by three little girls, a dog at their feet, and a trailer in the background. As she holds it to the window, the photo slips in the frame, revealing the white edge of another behind it. She releases the catch at the back and pulls out the hidden picture, an auburn-haired child the same age as one of the girls in the photo, but it’s not one of them. The gap-toothed smile is unmistakable. Eve takes it from her with trembling fingers. In the silence of that moment, loud footsteps sound on the path outside. Someone is walking up to the front door, someone is fumbling with a key and turning it in the lock.

There’s a horrible smell. Her throat hurts from screaming.

Something is trickling into her eyes and her mouth. It’s warm and tastes like soup.

Mummy will come. Daddy will come. They will. They’ll find her and they will take her away and she’ll be safe.

She can pretend that Charley is holding her hand and that Noah is licking her face. That Poppy is really near, so she can go and get into bed with her if she wants. Poppy always lets her, even if she rolls her eyes.

It’s dark. Not just ordinary dark but thick black, which is getting blacker though there are tiny bright green bits that fizz.

It’s actually difficult to breathe. The panting noises she makes are scary but that’s better than shouting, which is really scary.

It feels like something is inside her chest, bumping around like an animal trying to get out.

She’s done another wee, which is stupid and scary and it smells, but she couldn’t help it.

She can’t straighten out her arm because it hits against something.

She mustn’t shout because it’s way worse when she shouts, but then she does. She starts shouting and her head is full of noise so that she can’t tell whether the noise is inside or outside because the air is screaming and her throat is screaming and the blackness has gotten inside her head. She’s hitting at the roof. A blade of light like a knife cuts into the darkness, it hurts her eyes. The animal inside her chest is banging so hard it’s going to come out through her skin, and something heavy is pressing down at the same time so she can’t shout anymore or whisper or breathe properly and then she knows that the monster is in here with her. It’s sitting on top of her and stopping her from breathing and very soon she’s going to die.