There was a scruffy, grubby sofa, with stuffing appearing from the seams of its cushions, and a mismatched armchair, the sort with no legs, just one huge cubic base and a soft back. On the far wall, a bookcase had been painted with coloured tomes, no titles, filling the mock shelves. Worse even than that, on the other wall, he had painted a picture of a picture. Meggy closed her eyes for a moment then did another take.

A brown frame surrounded a childlike attempt at setting three sunflowers in a blue vase. It was hideous. There was no other furniture. No coffee table. That would be too easy to hit him with, she decided. There were no loose cushions or throws that could be dumped over a head or pushed in a mouth. She walked to the sofa and gave it a push. The weight made it immovable. Likewise the chair. Swallowing her disappointment, Meggy determined not to give up so easily.

The next room was another bedroom with a single bed. Meggy could see it was bolted to the wall and didn’t bother attempting to pull it. The mattress was bare save for a pile of bedding on the end. No chest of drawers, just another illustrated window, and a magazine on the floor. Meggy picked it up to get a better look. The cover of Cars, Guys, Gadgets showed a shiny red sports car of an unknown make. She flicked through the pages, but there was no hidden letter, no clue as to their destiny. Nothing like the clues she’d have found if she’d been inside a children’s TV drama. She threw it back on the floor.

‘Is this his bedroom when he comes here?’ she asked.

Elspeth shook her head miserably.

‘Oh,’ Meggy said, remembering the double bed in the room where she’d found Elspeth. She stopped asking questions about Fergus. ‘Is there a kitchen?’

This time Elspeth unplugged the lamp, picked it up and held out her hand. They walked together in the dark. Meggy hadn’t held anyone’s hand for years, not even her own mother’s and especially not her step-mother’s. It was strange how you could go from being uncomfortable at a stranger’s touch, to accepting, then grateful for it within the space of just minutes.

‘Kitchen,’ Elspeth announced. ‘Plastic cutlery only. Paper plates. Not even any bin bags. Three plastic bowls for heating up food. A microwave bolted into the cabinet – I’ve already tried and failed to get it out. No oven. No kettle.’

‘What do you eat?’

‘He usually makes food downstairs and brings it up. Sometimes it’s takeaway or stuff like beans or scrambled egg. We eat in the lounge.’

‘What else do you do? I mean, there’s no TV or anything.’

‘He tells me about his day,’ Elspeth said, clutching the towel harder around herself.

‘There’s one more room,’ Meggy realised. ‘What’s in there?’