The house she has lived in nearly all of her life appears from the darkness, just the same as it always was: with its portico and sleeping magpies, its sightless windows locked secure, and the little whiskers of foliage that grow between the lintels. Nothing has been disturbed.

She breathes a sigh of relief.

Tiredness makes her all fingers and thumbs, but she finally manages to fit her key in the lock and turn it. She opens the door and steals inside.

What strikes her most about the house is not its lack of light but its silence, weighted and profound. She finds herself closing the door behind her with infinite care, so as not to disturb it.

Why does everything seem so airless and strange?

A smoky, charred smell breathes across her face as she passes the parlour door; Mamma must have doused the fire before going to bed. Agnes cocks her head, considers the stillness of the room. That is the anomaly: Papa’s grandfather clock. It has stopped ticking.

She stifles a childish plunge of panic. She liked to hear the clock’s steady rhythm, always in the background, as if dear Papa were there watching over her. Without that wheezing tick, it feels like the heart of her home has ceased to beat.

But there is no real cause for alarm; the clock may not be broken, she may simply have forgotten to wind it. She will investigate further in the morning.

Perhaps it is nearly morning already; she has lost all sense of time. Even her full bladder, hitherto so imperious, no longer complains.

Groping for the bannister, she pulls herself up the staircase. Each tread offers a feeble creak. Beneath this noise, another sound: Mamma’s rumbling snore.

Proof at least that Mamma is safe and fast asleep. The nerves that have fluttered through Agnes like so many moths still their wings. Nothing is wrong, no one is hurt and she is certainly not too late.

Perhaps she has let her imagination run away with her. Seeing Constance’s shadow again at Walcot Street flustered her. Maybe the words said something else entirely? They had looked the same as the handwriting on the notes, but it was dark, and Agnes’s eyes struggle in poor light: there is a chance they were just incidental marks in the dust.

The door to her own chamber stands wide open. Tempting as it is to enter and fall straight upon the bed, she knows her mind will never settle to sleep unless she checks on Cedric first.