‘You’d better hide it before she comes home. If the old girl adored him as much as you say, when she sees that, it’ll be enough to give her a relapse.’

But who could have done it – and why? My mind darted to all sorts of explanations but none seemed plausible. The possibility of there being an unwanted and very solid house guest in Rose Cottage seemed, increasingly, a more likely explanation. I could have been in that house alone with a psychopath.

‘Should we call the police?’

‘And say what?’

‘I don’t know – isn’t that criminal damage or something?’

‘Maybe, but there’s no sign of forced entry or anything. I mean, if you hadn’t taken the thing out to look at it, we’d have been none the wiser. And technically we’re trespassing.’

He had a point. Jack went to look in every room before we left the house, but there was no obvious sign of recent habitation.

‘Maybe we should install a security camera at the back, point it at Mrs Barley’s gate,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the thought of you here alone when I’m at work. I’d say this is down to someone completely unhinged.’

‘Not a ghost, then.’ The realisation made me shudder. This was almost certainly stamped with the hallmark of somebody with an axe to grind, not a phantom. And as the saying goes, we have far more to fear from the living than the dead. I was angry with myself for having been so blinkered, so swept along by the fanciful notion of the man being Frank Barley’s ghost, that I hadn’t been prepared to consider the more rational – and likely – alternative, in spite of the fact that I would never previously have entertained the idea of there being a supernatural explanation for his appearance. It all seemed obvious now. How could I have been so foolish?

‘Definitely not a ghost.’

We locked up and took the album home. I felt suddenly frighteningly vulnerable and was massively relieved when Jack, now on a mission, managed to find someone to fit a security camera and floodlight that same afternoon. And I tried to convince myself that, even if Jack wasn’t home all the time, I always had Jobie …

*

Over the next few days, we were extra vigilant, checking the footage from the security camera and watching the house next door like hawks. But there had been no sign of anyone. It was baffling. I almost wished the man would put in an appearance; when Jack was home, at least. It was the fear of the unknown. At least if we could confront him, we might discover his identity and hopefully gain some understanding of his motives. He was proving frustratingly elusive.