‘We’re on the site of an old property – you said that yourself.’

He ate some more, thinking. ‘Do you want to find a medium to come here and see what they come up with?’

‘Maybe we should.’ She looked up at the ceiling again.

‘So, where do we start trying to find one?’

‘Louise is very into all of that. I can ask her.’

‘Of course.’ He liked Louise, despite being sceptical about the ‘gift’ she claimed to have. ‘Sure, why not?’

‘She’s coming over again tomorrow to help me finish setting everything up. I’ll ask her then.’

‘Good plan.’

He finished the rest of his meal and his glass of wine, then made himself a strong coffee and carried it out of the room.

‘Say hi to our lodger,’ Emily said.

He turned and grinned. ‘Any other message for her?’

‘Yes, tell her to sod off and go and bother the P-Ws instead.’

The hallway felt as if an icy draught was belting in from an open door. Jason looked at the thermostat on the wall. Twenty-three degrees. He tried to work out how to turn it up higher still, but there was no evident manual override. The draught was even stronger now.

Irritated, he went back into the kitchen and plugged the command box back in.

‘Why are you doing that?’ Emily asked, turning from stacking the plates in the dishwasher.

‘I need to turn the heating in the hall up and I can’t see any way of doing it manually. I’m going to call that agent in the morning, and find out how to permanently override this command box.’

‘It’s got to be in the instruction manual,’ Emily said.

‘Yep, and I either spend the night reading it or painting. I’ve got two bloody pictures to deliver by tomorrow night, OK,’ he said, walking out, angrily.

The hall felt even colder still. He looked up the stairs and saw the landing light was off. He was sure he had left it on when he came back down just a short while ago. He called out, feeling a bit ridiculous, ‘Command, upstairs landing light on!’

Instantly it came on. He glanced at the thermostat, which was now reading twenty-five, and began climbing the stairs. As he reached the first-floor landing and looked up into the darkness above, a cold draught blasted down at him.

Feeling apprehensive, he said, ‘Command, top floor light on!’

It came on, instantly. But a split second later, there was a loud pop and the tinkle of breaking glass, and the spiral staircase was plunged back into darkness.

Great.

He looked up the steep steps, his apprehension deepening. Shit. He was feeling scared of going any further. Scared to go up to his studio.

This was their new home! Come on, man, don’t be ridiculous. Pathetic scaredy cat!

He put a foot on the first tread and felt another cold blast of air coming down from the darkness above. Had he left a window open in his studio?