I find a spare circular two-seater table – it’s shaped like a barrel – and position myself into the rickety wooden chair poised at the side. I go to rest my head in my hands but my elbows stick to the table and I decide against it.

Henry, I learned, still owns the place; his son’s the boss. I think that, too, is what draws me to all this – children assuming the lives of their parents. I understand why Roxy didn’t want that. I understand it intimately. I feel such a particularly misplaced revulsion at the idea, that simply being in this place feels like exposure therapy. Sylvia inheriting the Willowwood. Lenore still living in the house she grew up in. What do you do, if that’s not what you want?

I suppose you become Roxy Raines.

Henry, a stout man with a head full of dark curly hair, emerges from the back, wearing an expression like he’s being inconvenienced. He lowers himself on to the chair opposite me. ‘What’s this about, then?’

‘Hi, my name’s Mona. I – I wanted to ask you about Roxy Raines.’

He leans into me, taps his temple with a forefinger. ‘Well, I’ll have you know, I don’t blab for free.’

I blink. Oh. This is actually happening. I’ve never bribed anyone before. I search through my pocket for a crumpled-up tenner and pass it to him, and wonder, briefly, if it’s tax-deductible.

‘Do I remember that spitfire,’ he says, folding the bill and slipping it into his shirt pocket. ‘Yeesh.’

He tells me the standard fare – talented but difficult, beautiful and mouthy.

‘What about the night she went missing?’ I ask. ‘I’ve talked to someone who said this was the last place she was seen. I’d love to ask you some questions about the night.’

‘Was so damned long ago – and, Christ, I barely remember what I had for breakfast.’

‘Whatever you can think of will probably be more helpful than you realize.’