‘The donkey – what about it?’

‘You didn’t recognize it?’

‘Should I have done?’

‘Hello! That wedding present your Aunt Minette gave us that you hated so much?’

It was coming back to him now. ‘Yes.’

‘You agreed we should give it away, along with a bunch of other gifts we didn’t like, so I took the stuff to the charity shop. That was it, in her cabinet – the one she thought was worth twenty thousand pounds because she’d seen Antiques Roadshow!’

‘Probably something similar,’ he suggested.

She shook her head. ‘No, I went over and looked at it carefully. Claudette opened the cabinet and let me pick it up. There’s an L-shaped chip out of the base, about a centimetre long, which happened when I dropped it. I remember – I thought the whole thing was going to shatter.’

‘That is so bizarre!’ he said.

‘Feeling bad now about us giving it away?’

‘Not any more. I’m so happy it went to people who get so much pleasure from it.’

‘And you’ll still be happy when you see it on Antiques Roadshow being valued at twenty grand?’ she asked.

‘Along with a flying pig?’

She laughed. ‘Can you believe the coincidence, though?’

‘Nope, very strange. Also, there’s something very interesting – she’s fifty and he’s nearly fifty-five. So much for the bollocks about no one living beyond forty here!’

‘Maybe they’re ghosts.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘Uh-huh!’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Maybe they’re dead and we just didn’t realize.’

‘Could any ghosts be as horrible as them?’

‘True. We have a better class of ghost on this side of the street.’

‘I’ll drink to that!’

As they clinked glasses, a loud report, like a gunshot, startled them.

‘What was that?’ she asked, nervously.

Jason hurried out into the hall. He looked around, then fixed his gaze on the mirror lining the stairs, on the right. There was a crack in it. Like a high-voltage warning sign. A single line, with two jagged spikes.

Emily joined him and saw it too.

‘How – how did – how?’

There was another report and an identical crack appeared in the mirror on the left.

Emily grabbed him in fear. ‘Jason?’ she whispered. ‘Jason, how did—?’ She fell silent as there was another crack right behind them.

An identical split had appeared in the window beside the front door.

She screamed.

There was another crack.

Followed by another.

Then another.

‘Jason!’ she yelled.

Another.

Another.

‘Jason!’

Another.

She gripped his arm, hard.

Another. Above them.

Another.

Crack.

Crack.

‘Call the police,’ she whispered.

Crack.

‘Call them!’

Crack.

Then a long silence.

‘Call the police, darling, call the police!’

‘You saw their reaction when they came last week. They’re not going to turn out for a few cracked panes of glass.’

‘Who’s doing it? Maybe it’s kids, with a catapult or airgun?’ Emily said, clearly having little faith in her own suggestion.

Jason, closely followed by his wife, hurried up to his studio. He went in ahead of her, turning on the lights and looking around.