As far as Honor and Edward were concerned, the fire that killed her family had been caused by a faulty tumble dryer. Catherine had escaped their tragic fate because she’d been staying the night with a friend. Simple lies. Easier to remember.

Hearing Honor’s distaste at the murders – even at twelve, the curl of her lip made her look as though she’d trodden in something unpleasant – confirmed Catherine’s instinct: she’d been right to shield her husband and daughter from the bloodied truth of her past.

She’d do almost anything to keep it that way.

The cottage was sleeping, the draught of winter blowing through the gaps in its windows with determined breath. The blizzard had stopped. A pause in the darkness.

The street outside was deserted apart from a fox that picked her way across the frozen front gardens, stopping only to sniff the air. Parked cars were covered with a layer of ice. Nimbostratus clouds gathered overhead, laden with snow that would begin to fall again in an hour or so.

The village slumbered on in the way that country villages do.

Honor was lying in bed, one arm flung behind her head, the other wrapped around a cuddly giraffe. A strip of moonlight seeped through the curtains, pooling silver on the carpet. Her face was a pale blur against the night.

She murmured and moved beneath her duvet, restless. Her breathing sharpened. A cloud covered the moon and the bedroom was steeped in shadows. The walls looked black in the thick of the night and seemed to undulate in the darkness, as if they were leaking history – or something more distasteful – through the brickwork. The air was cold.

Honor sat up in bed.

She screamed.

The noise was so sudden it broke open the night-time stillness of the house. It was the scream of a thousand terrors. The sound of fear made real. It was tarry with shame and sorrow and loss, of unexplained secrets, crouching in the darkness.

For Catherine, who was asleep in a room across the landing, it was enough to wake her. Her eyes opened, the thunder of blood in her ears. The house was silent for now, but her body was tensed. She knew what her wakefulness meant and she waited for its reason to reveal itself.

Honor screamed again.

Catherine threw off her duvet and ran to her daughter’s bedroom. She did not stop to pull on her dressing gown or push her feet into slippers, and the chill stung her skin. But she barely noticed, intent on chasing the shadows that stalked her child’s sleep.

At first, she couldn’t see her. But the cloud cleared the moon, and by its gleam, she found her, cowering by the bookcase. Her daughter’s eyes were fixed on the wall.

‘Sweetheart,’ she said, reaching for her. ‘You’re dreaming.’

Honor did not acknowledge her mother. She was looking at something that Catherine could not see.