The kitchen door was ajar. She stood stock-still, listening, while her eyes moved from the counter to the table and up toward the podium of the fridge where it had first revealed itself.

She carefully tapped her nails against the door jamb.

Did the squirrel have a name it answered to? It almost must have. Why hadn’t Gudrun told her it? On the other hand, she didn’t think she would have had it in her to call out to an ancient creature hiding inside a squirrel. The mere thought of shouting in the empty house filled her with unease.

She climbed the stairs and opened the door to a room with a sloped ceiling and walls covered in grey fibreglass cloth. There was a bed, which wasn’t made, a small table and a wardrobe. A small black tapestry hung above the bed. ‘Las Palmas de Gran Canaria’. The next room was just as bare. A bed, a couple of chairs. The same depressing fibreglass cloth. The ceiling light had an embroidered skirt; the canopy had slipped down the cord. The sheer curtains were closed.

She couldn’t see any signs of the squirrel. What would a sign even look like, rat poop and half-eaten pine cones? What was weirder was that she couldn’t find anything to suggest that Susso used either of the bedrooms as her own; the more she thought about that, the more the eerie feeling inside her intensified.

She peeked into a wardrobe. It contained a blouse and a shirt on hangers. A few jumpers on the shelf. In a wire bin lay a tangle of socks and three, four, five pairs of pants. She recognised the blouse. A peasant blouse of white crepe with three-quarter-length sleeves and gold embroidery on the yoke. In other words, it was over twenty years old.

So this was the room she slept in. But how was it possible to sleep in a room for so long without leaving your own stamp on it? She hadn’t even bothered to remove the ugly tapestry hanging on the wall.

She continued down to the living room. It was posh. Upholstered hardwood armchairs turned toward a big black TV on a media bench with glass doors. Doilies. A few gold-framed oil painting reproductions, a cross-stitch sampler depicting a red cottage. Long curtains with enormous umbels.