It was too muted to let me tell its gender. I strained my ears so hard they throbbed, but heard no more until a single set of footsteps crossed the landing to the bedroom. I lay as still as any of my aunt’s paintings while the dawn started to revive colours all around me. Was someone hiding in the studio? I couldn’t bear not knowing. Slipping out of bed, I eased my door open not much less silently than I was holding my breath.

The door to the studio was shut, although I hadn’t heard that happen. Might my hearing have let me down in other ways? Perhaps I’d overheard just my aunt’s voice. I crept across the landing and used both hands to turn the doorknob by fractions of an inch, and then I took as much care over easing the door open.

The dawn had just found the distant treetops, but the studio was light enough to show me that nobody was hidden among the paintings and easels and other items of my aunt’s equipment, let alone behind them. I was about to close the door when a line of objects on the windowsill caught my eye – at least a dozen glass jars, and an open book resting against several. A page was settling into place as if someone had just consulted the book. Perhaps a draught had lifted the page, but the sight gave me an excuse to cross the room.

The jars and the book stood against the dark woods as if they were a secret the depths of the forest were offering. The entry on the page – a place name, I supposed, followed by an obscure annotation – meant nothing to me. Nor did the few inches of earth that were all each jar contained, never mind the initialled labels the jars bore. I picked up a jar in each hand, and the contents whispered as they shifted. They sounded like the start of a surreptitious chorus. I could have fancied that the noise wasn’t in the jars at all, and I seemed to feel the room change at my back.