Finally, having done a complete and thorough circuit, and finding nothing, he went back inside.

‘Do you really have to work so late?’ Emily asked, following him back up to the studio. ‘I don’t want to go to bed alone. I’m scared.’

‘I’ve got to get this finished, and the sketch of the spaniel, by tomorrow afternoon, somehow. I’ve promised David, otherwise he won’t get the framing done in time. If I don’t deliver these to my clients, I’m not going to get paid – and they’re going to be mightily pissed off. I can’t let them down.’

‘Christmas is still a week away. You give him a lot of business – surely he can still do them if you deliver to him on Tuesday, or even Wednesday?’

‘He’s going on holiday on Wednesday until after the New Year – he’s allocated the time on Tuesday for them both.’

‘So, work through tomorrow night. But not tonight, please, Jason.’

He nodded at the couch on the far side of the room. ‘How about you crash there while I work on? Actually, it would be quite nice if the two of us were up here – just for now.’

She looked at him. ‘Because?’

Because I’m shit scared of working up here alone tonight was the truth. But he didn’t say that. He said, ‘Because you’ll feel safer here.’

To his relief, Emily agreed.

37

Monday 17 December

At eleven the following morning, Emily’s business partner sat at the kitchen table with her eyes shut, while Jason and Emily sat facing her, apprehensively. Jason, bleary from tiredness, sipped a strong coffee. Emily was also exhausted from a largely sleepless night, because Jason had worked through most of it, needing the lights on, brightly. Just when she had finally drifted off, it seemed only moments later she was woken by the roar of machinery on the building site.

Louise, a rotund woman with short, dark hair cut into a fringe, was dressed in a baggy, knee-length, cable-knit jumper over leggings and ankle boots. Usually she had an irrepressibly cheerful demeanour with a foghorn of a laugh, but this morning she looked deadly serious and focused.

‘Oh-oh-oh-oh,’ she said, eyes still shut. ‘So much activity. So much. I’ve got so many spirits all trying to communicate with you, all at once. They’re being very naughty, very rude. I’m trying to get some order here, but they’re not letting me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Emily quizzed.

Louise did not respond. Instead, she shouted, nodding her head, ‘No, you! Back! Wait your turn!’

Jason looked at her, very sceptical.

Still with her eyes tightly shut, Louise said, ‘I’m getting a message for you, Jason. From a woman. She says she’s sorry that she damaged your painting last night. She is telling me she was angry that you put her portrait facing the wall – she says she recognizes she has anger issues ever since she passed into spirit.’

How could she know this, he wondered?