I did not want to stay. I knew what this was – a priest hole. Swan House had had one too, but there was something about this particular space that made me feel faintly sick. Even as a child, when I had loved to hide, to have sought a location such as this would not have appealed to me. It was unnatural. I thought of all the secret places that might lie within Iskar, imagined Mary or William crouched in the smothering blackness waiting to be discovered or smuggling themselves away for the sheer stealthy joy of it. Worse, I pictured them together with a hoard of pebbles. I looked down at Mary. Her expression was untroubled. Uncomfortable as I felt, I did not want to think of her as the child who had held the chalk that inscribed the figure on a piece of stone.

I backed out, knocking my heel against something; it skittered across the floor before rolling on to its back. It wobbled and settled. One rusted wheel spun for a further second or two until that too ceased; it was a toy steam engine, its surface patched with red paint. I looked up, catching Mary’s eye. Surely this had belonged to William. Had she been playing with it? I tried to find some answer in her expression – distress or grief or something to mirror what she felt – but there was nothing to see. As I left and dropped the hanging, I thought I heard a scuffle beyond and a tinny echo as if someone had knocked the engine once again.

Later, in bed, my thoughts tangled. I was a rational being. I did not believe in the supernatural and yet I was being presented with things that I could not explain – the sounds, the odd glimpses of something that should not be there. Turning on the sheets, I buried my face in the pillow. I began to doubt my own judgement. I remembered that after Clara’s death what was real and what was not became muddled and I had no longer been able to fully trust my senses. Was that what was happening now? At times, I had heard Clara’s voice or felt the heat of fire on my neck only to realize that it was a false construction of grief and guilt. The world twisted out of shape and into something that no longer made sense. Hadn’t I woken to the scent of smoke and the sound of my father’s pipe tapping against the table? Those things had felt so tangible, more tangible than the polished floor and the daisies on the surface of the MacAllisters’ washstand.