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Dedication

For Sum

PROLOGUE

John woke with a start and thought, there’s someone in the house. He’d just heard a noise downstairs, something like the parting of dry, windblown lips. Then, the sound of creeping footfalls up the staircase.

He stared into the darkness above his bed and listened, but aside from the gentle whirr of the central heating, the house was silent again. He rolled over and looked at his wife, ghostly in the dull moonlight falling in through the window.

He’d probably had another nightmare, he thought.

Creak.

The sound came from the first-floor landing, a foot stepping down on the loose floorboard at the top of the stairs. He hadn’t imagined it that time. He was sure of it.

He sat up and stared through the layers of darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, the shapes of the bedroom appeared, like a picture shifting slowly into focus. He saw the towering wardrobe silhouetted against a field of black. The dresser cluttered with his wife’s jewellery, glinting dully in the moonlight like dozens of tiny eyes. A pencil-thin sliver of light spilled beneath the closed door, flickering.

He slid out of bed, opened the door and stepped out. There was a Harry Potter night-light in the hallway. His daughter Mia kept it there, so she didn’t get scared on her way to the bathroom at night. A fat brown moth fluttered blindly against it, over and over. John watched it for a moment, transfixed. Had that been what he’d heard?

Then, from out of the shadows at the far end of the hall, stepped a man.

John tried to speak but fear cramped his jaw.

The man took another step forward. He was tall, bulky, and his head was shaved. He wore white canvas tennis shoes and a heavy black coat that John recognised.

‘Hello, John,’ the man whispered. ‘Do you remember me?’

‘… Yes,’ John managed to say, his voice barely audible.

‘Do you know why I’m here?’

‘Yes,’ John said softly. ‘I think I do.’

1

THE WIDOW

Kate Keddie stood in the airport bathroom, practising her smile in the mirror. She hated her mouth. It was several teeth too big for her head, so grinning usually made her look maniacal and deranged. She tried gently curling up the corners of her lips. She was going for confidently demure. She got Shelley Duvall on bath salts.