But he just looked up briefly from the screen. ‘OK. Take care.’ It was as if he was so wrapped up in his work that he’d forgotten about Eleanor’s death altogether and seemed to have no sense of danger.

It was the first time Marcus had made her angry. Previously he’d always been so solicitous and she couldn’t see what could be so important on the screen. There was a brief flash of jealousy as she even wondered if there was an email from another woman that was holding his attention; perhaps that was why he seemed so engrossed, the reason for the self-satisfied smile. She picked up her jacket and went outside. There was a chill that she hadn’t been expecting and she was tempted to return immediately into the warm. But she could be stubborn too and instead she walked back down the track towards the old croft house. The garden was overgrown, but the grass on the way to the front door had been trampled. There was no other sign of life. No smoke from the chimney this time. No face at the window. She knocked. The paint on the door was peeling and came off in blue specks on her fist. No answer. The door wasn’t locked – there might have been a bolt inside, but there wasn’t a hole for the key. She pushed it and was surprised at how easily it opened.

‘Hello!’ But she knew nobody could be living here. From the faint light coming from the open door she saw that the place wasn’t habitable. Ahead of her was what had once been a tiny scullery. A bench with an enamel bowl standing on it. To the right the room where she’d imagined having seen the girl dancing in the candlelight. A beaten-earth floor. In one corner a small stove. She opened it and saw that there were blocks of peat inside, but the stove was cold and she couldn’t decide if any of it had been burned. She walked to the window and thought that perhaps the dust had been disturbed on the sill and there was a drop of candle wax.

Looking in at her was a face. Pale and blurred by the dirt on the glass and the gloom of the fog. She screamed. The face disappeared, there were footsteps on the scullery floor and a man appeared in the doorway.

‘What are you doing here?’ He was middle-aged and his grey hair was too long and stuck up at the front, giving him a faintly clownish appearance. Something about the silhouette he presented, the angular body and that ridiculous hair were familiar.

‘I was just looking,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought the house was derelict.’ Apology and politeness had always been her default positions.