Hugh began to tell whoever would listen what he deemed to be a humorous anecdote from school, but there was an edge to his voice, slightly elevating it as though he was desperate for everyone to listen. Perhaps he had had a stressful day. Helen was finding it difficult to focus on what he was saying, something about “batting with a straight bat” and “calling a spade a spade”. Hugh tended to talk in clichés at the best of times, letting the old favourites roll off his tongue, to the point where Helen switched off. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from Diana’s fingers, now resting millimetres away from hers on the white tablecloth, the index finger stroking the cotton almost intimately.

When she did drag her eyes away, she noticed Hugh had gone quiet and was watching Diana too.

*

The evenings were getting darker earlier and what Helen wanted to do was get out onto the beach with Clive for a walk to flush out her head, but the idea of the darkness closing in on her as she walked along the coastal path put her off. Instead, she headed into the garden again once she had cleared away the dinner dishes and shovelled another four slices of baguette into her mouth without tasting them. She needed to breathe in fresh, clear air. The automatic lighting system meant the garden was mostly illuminated in what should seem a romantic and ethereal glow, but tonight it felt oppressive and secretive, the shadows taking over and joining together.

There was a stone bench towards the end of the garden by the pool house, a lovely place to sit in summer when it was framed by climbing rosebushes and scented jasmine. Helen clutched a cup of jasmine tea in her hand, at least trying to recreate the fragrance, but it was overwhelmed by the headiness of salty sea spray. Helen sat on the numbing stone bench, facing towards the house, and wrapped her thick cardigan around herself, making herself small against the cold.

She looked up at the house. It was an imposing building, always had been. One of grandeur but eccentricity, with its strange additions and pointy edges. You couldn’t see the eye-shaped windows from this side, but you still got the impression from this angle that the house was looking over its shoulder at you. A house used to keeping secrets. Or maybe that was just the way it made Helen feel, a ghost of a memory of when she had lived here as a child, constantly being evaluated and proving herself below par, then later hiding the truth from everyone, the house the only witness to events that played out in the year before she left.