I walk past the police tape, round to the back where they haven’t bothered boarding anything up. The window at the back of the living room is unlocked. It’s swollen with damp and I struggle to push it up. I have a moment where sense comes back and I think it’s a sign—I should go home. But then the window loosens, opens with a creak, and the dust and dead air wafts out.

I climb through into the living room, stepping down onto the dusty floorboards. It looks the same—as though nothing has been touched in ten years. I haven’t thought about this place in ten years, I haven’t let myself think about it. But if I had, wouldn’t I have assumed something would have changed? That Greg would have returned, or the boys would have come and emptied the house, or the house would have been sold earlier, done up as a renovation project?

I can see evidence that the police have been in here; things moved, out of place, flurries of footprints on the floor, already fading as another layer of dust coats them. But it’s like the very air is the same, stale, starved of oxygen, every breath dust-laden. The whole house is a time capsule, undisturbed, waiting to be opened, secrets revealed. But there’s no spinning, laughing Bella, no sign of a party or anyone else here. I frown, and my gaze catches a small suitcase sitting next to the armchair, old and battered, dark blue, worn white at the edges. I take a breath and hold it. I remember this suitcase. I came to garden once and it started raining. Greg wasn’t around and I looked in the window, hoping he’d offer shelter from the stinging rain. He was in here, sitting in that same armchair, the blue suitcase open on his lap. He was crying, lifting things out of the case, putting them back in, crying over them, weeping. I backed away, feeling like a voyeur, spying on his private moment of pain, and walked home in the biting downpour.

He disappeared soon after that and I remembered the case. I remember now thinking I’d seen him packing up his life, getting ready to leave. I imagined him taking this case on his adventures around the world. I chew on my lip. Did the police have the case out, looking for evidence? But why leave it here?

Unless it wasn’t the police. Unless it was whoever sent those texts, messing with me. I should go now, call Detective Levinson. But…if it is someone messing with me, what might they have put in the case?