This time the gap was narrower, and she thought she might not be able to squeeze through at all, and then not be able to squeeze back. She’d be pinned for ever. Tess would never tell; they’d never find her. She’d be like one of those mummified pigeon corpses the man had fished out from behind the electric fire, just a bundle of bones and leathery skin and imperishable jeggings, a cautionary tale for the house’s next owner …

With a last convulsion she was out, though she felt her sleeve tear. She crawled forward. Blocky heaps against the black were the boxes and cases they had piled in there; and strokes of light outlined the cupboard door ahead, which was held with just a catch on the outside, tiny and fragile, she’d break it easily if she pushed, and she did. Daylight burst in, dazzling her. She turned back towards the junk and shouted, ‘Tessa, it’s all right, I’m through.’

No answer. Little madam. She could wait to be released.

Downstairs there was no sign of Henry. No sign of Richard, either. Joan hoped he hadn’t got a puncture. He did that sometimes, got stranded on the moors, and Henry had to drive out and fetch him. Maybe that was where Henry had gone.

She went out on to the driveway, and saw that Henry’s car was not there. Neither was the couple’s. Neither was Mark’s. Claire had gone – she was always going, but she always came back. Joan had once picked her up from the bus stop at the end of the road, to which she had dragged her Winnie-the-Pooh suitcase on its wobbly single wheel. She had collected her from the bus station, too, when the man she’d got obsessed with, a former guest at the B&B, had failed to make good on his promise to spirit her away to France. That had been a long drive home, the hate radiating off her, as if Joan had arranged the betrayal herself, not been scrubbing bathrooms all morning, oblivious to her daughter’s absconding from home, from school, until she’d phoned for a lift.

Near the pylon, through the hedge, Joan saw the red flash of a car. Not Henry – his was silver – but Federico, arriving exactly as planned, on a normal Sunday night. Joan went inside to put the kettle on. She always made Federico a cup of tea when he arrived; she would sit with him as he drank it, patiently teasing from him whatever would pass for news, before he went to the carvery up the road. Federico was a nervous speaker, his plumpness rather feminine, his fluttering lashes saving him from meeting anyone’s eye, though that didn’t stop Joan trying. She thought if she tried, and succeeded, he’d be grateful.