‘Like a child’s,’ Meggy finished anyway. ‘There’s lots more down there I couldn’t reach. There’s definitely another skull – I touched the round bit. And loads of—’

‘Would you stop?’ Elspeth screeched. ‘Just stop talking. I don’t want to hear this. This can’t happen to us.’ She punctuated each word with a stamp of her foot. ‘Do you hear me, Meggy? Whatever happened to these poor people, it can’t happen to us. It can’t.’

Meggy started to sway, arms wrapped around her knees on the floor, staring blankly through the fake window on the wall.

‘Got to clear up now,’ Elspeth chanted to herself as she swept the bones back into the hole. ‘Got to clear up.’

She replaced the single floorboard that was in one piece, pulled Meggy up and deposited her in the armchair at the end of the room, then began pulling the carpet to cover the bare boards.

‘Better,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Come on, Elspeth, you can do this.’

She pushed and heaved the sofa so that it pinned the loose carpet to the floor. Picking up the scattered shards of wood and carpet tacks, she surveyed the sitting room. The same but entirely different.

‘Meggy.’ She pulled the girl up to a standing position. ‘Honey, we have to wash our hands and faces, and get clean clothes on.’

‘No point. We’re going to die here. Like those other people. Do you think their ghosts are in here with us?’

‘No,’ Elspeth said. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts. Those people are dead. They can’t hurt us now, but he can, Meggy, and I don’t want that. So we’re going to sort ourselves out, okay? You can get into bed after that if you like. It might be best, anyway. You’ve had a shock.’

Meggy nodded, holding out a hand for Elspeth to take. In the bathroom they washed off the dust, and the smell of disintegrating bones.

‘Elspeth,’ Meggy whispered, and they went to settle down for the night. ‘I’m so scared.’

‘I know, sweetheart,’ Elspeth said, stroking Meggy’s hair and kissing her forehead. ‘I’m scared too. But we’ve got each other, okay? We’re going to take care of each other now.’

‘Okay,’ Meggy said. ‘We’ll take care of each other. And there are no ghosts. Promise?’

‘No ghosts at all. I swear it.’

But in her imagination, a dead woman was slowly turning her head towards the light, wanting to be seen. Elspeth squeezed her eyes shut tight. It wasn’t her face on that corpse, she told herself. It wouldn’t ever be her face. Same dress didn’t mean the same fate. They would be smarter and more determined. They didn’t have to die like the others before them.

‘No ghosts,’ she said one more time. It wasn’t for Meggy’s benefit.