Maggie stood up and wandered to the steps, leaving me the coat. I watched her pace the carpet of slimy leaves in her cotton dress, while the mist turned to drizzle around her. She kicked the wall and sighed unhappily. I bunched the fleece-lined coat to my chin and let my shoulders curl forward.

“Freya, listen! This whole thing about his mother being ill and in hospital . . . has it ever occurred to you that she might not have gone anywhere? That she might still be at Byrne Hall?”

I frowned.

Maggie went on. “Yesterday, when I was in the bathroom, I thought I heard a noise from upstairs.”

“What kind of noise?”

“I can’t even say.” She splayed her fingers helplessly. “It was so quick and quiet, it could have been anything: a voice or a footstep, or even a trapped bird. I don’t know, but I’m sure I didn’t imagine it. I decided to run up to the third floor while you and Cory were talking in the kitchen. I thought I might hear it more clearly from there—whatever it was.”

“And did you?”

“No, I never got as far as the third floor, because when I came round the bend in the stairs, I nearly walked into a tray.”

She paused, as if I might need time to react.

I shrugged and buried my chin in the coat.

“On the tray,” she said, unfurling a finger for each item, “there was a glass of water with red lipstick prints on the rim; a half-eaten bowl of broth; a china vase with a rose in it; and a packet of tablets with a prescription label made out to Mrs. Diana Byrne.”

I did look up at her then.

I pounded up the stairs, and for the first time in weeks I didn’t care how loud my footsteps were. I wanted Cory to emerge sleepy-eyed onto the landing, so that I could shove him out of the way while my courage was up.

“At least take my phone number,” Maggie had said, when she’d failed to persuade me to leave with her. She told me the number, which I immediately forgot, and her address—16 Christie Street, Bligh—which seemed to have stuck. I don’t remember anything else we said—I don’t even remember saying goodbye—because my mind was full of lipstick stains. With mental effort, I might explain away the other items on the tray, but there was something unanswerably vivid about the lipstick on the glass of water.