The front door was wide open, and the rain was coming on wilder than ever, hissing into the gravel and sputtering over the edges of the gutters. I heard footsteps follow me out of the sitting room, and turned to look at him. The hall had been insubstantial before—all stillness and shadow—but it came alive as soon as Cory entered. He seemed larger and freer out here, touched by the stormy daylight, and I noticed how the rain had made his hair frizz and his skin gleam. I felt weedy and chilled in comparison.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. I wasn’t clear what he was apologising for, but I let it pass.

We stood looking out at the rain. I was going to be soaked through before I even reached the trees.

“If you don’t mind waiting,” he said, “I can try and find the picture I made of your sister?”

“It’s OK.”

I should have said yes. Having failed to say yes I ought, in all politeness, to have made my final thank-yous and goodbyes and gone away. Instead of which, I stood and stared at the impossible fall of rain, as if I were waiting for someone to do something about it.

“You could stay here for the night?” Cory suggested. “We’re not exactly short of rooms.”

My hands shook, like they do when I drink too much strong coffee, so I stuck them in the back pockets of my jeans. There were so many sensible, Freya-ish answers ready and waiting on the tip of my tongue:

Thank you, but I’m booked into a guest house and I’ve already paid my deposit.

That’s so kind, but I suspect your mother will have other ideas.

Many thanks, but I was not brought up to accept overnight invitations from strange men.

“I don’t know,” I said, after a decent pause. “Are you sure?”

They think they’re whispering discreetly; they think the rain will disguise what they’re saying out there in the hall. Well, they’re wrong. The house is listening and Diana herself can hear—if not individual words then the tenor of them; the subterranean meanings of which her son and his flame-haired friend are themselves only half aware.

The sofa creaks beneath her as the pain takes another savage bite, but Cory doesn’t sense it the way he normally would. He doesn’t pop his head round the door and say, “Mum?” He is too busy urging the girl to stay. It’s almost—almost—funny.

Once upon a time, Diana herself stood on the chequered floor of the hall, and a man bent over her saying, “Stay.”

The house was beautiful in those days, brimming with richness and light. It is beautiful now, but only on the outside, like a rosy-faced apple with a maggot inside. The man knew it would sway her, if anything would; he knew it was his only hope.

“This house will belong to you, if you marry me,” said Mr. Byrne. “Just think about that.”