‘They probably didn’t season it enough here, that’s all – just economizing on getting the place built fast. Now the house is occupied, and we have the central heating on, it’s probably drying out and shrinking or distorting a bit – that’s what’s causing that noise.’

‘Really? How?’

‘I don’t know, I’m not a carpenter. Maybe one plank moves, and it causes a chain reaction, or something.’

‘Or something else?’

They sat down again at the kitchen table. Emily glanced up, warily. ‘So, oak shrinking makes a sound like footsteps? What’s going on, Jace? Is someone having a laugh with us? Playing a prank?’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said distantly.

He ate a mouthful of the cold casserole, thinking. Wanting to calm Emily down, and wanting to calm his own troubled mind. ‘Look, let’s go for a rational explanation. Maybe she is just someone I saw somewhere but didn’t instantly register and she just got logged in my subconscious. One of the many characters I see and bank daily – it’s what I do all the time. I see characters and memorize them for future sketches or paintings. In my heightened emotions from moving – according to Dr Dixon – she suddenly popped up. Like I said, couples who are close do sometimes have a kind of telepathic communication. So, you were picking her up, too, from my mind.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe?’

‘Maybe Dr Dixon gave you the wrong pills,’ she replied, coldly. ‘What you said sounds total bollocks.’

‘Yep, well, I…’ He fell silent for some moments. ‘I don’t think ghosts walk across floors in hobnail boots.’

Emily picked up his plate, put it in the new microwave, shut the door a tad too loudly and switched it on.

‘Aren’t you going to heat yours up too?’ he asked.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Come on, you need to eat something.’ When the microwave pinged he took out his plate and put hers in.

Five minutes later they sat back down at the table.

‘Eat!’ he encouraged.

Emily gave him a wan smile. She forked a minuscule amount into her mouth, then took another gulp of her wine. As she put the glass down, she said, ‘You’ll never leave. No one ever has. That’s what that old git said to you in the pub, didn’t you say?’

‘Yes. Well, that’s fine. We’ve only just arrived, why would we want to leave?’

‘You know what I’m saying and what I’m feeling, Jason. And that other thing he said. No one in the big house ever lived beyond forty.’

‘So, we should sell up and leave before my fortieth birthday? Is that what you want us to do?’

‘I don’t know what I want.’ She paused. ‘Actually, I do. I know what I want. I want to not feel scared in my home, and I’m feeling very scared.’

‘I don’t want either of us to feel scared, my darling. You think we’ve both seen a ghost. But this is a new house. Ghosts – if they exist at all – haunt old properties.’