‘Ooh that looks nasty. What happened, love?’ Her brow furrowed in concern.

I pulled a face. ‘Stupid of me, really. I was trying to look through the hatch into the loft and fell off the stool I’d been standing on. I think I must have blacked out.’

‘Good Lord! You poor thing. And how’s your head?’

I put a hand to the lump. It was tender and bigger than ever.

‘A bit sore. My own silly fault, though. It could’ve been much worse.’

‘Don’t you go trying to do anything like that again, will you? You need to have a restful day. I bet you’re properly shaken up. I’ll be baking later, so I’ll drop a cake round, cheer you up a bit.’

She disappeared back into the house.

It was only afterwards that it dawned on me. I hadn’t mentioned my head. How could she have known? Maybe she had noticed it when I turned round; it was quite swollen, after all.

I tried to dismiss the thought and returned with a heavy heart to my article. Thankfully I’d made copious notes and could remember at least some of the content, but I was so rattled by everything that it was futile. Soon I had to abandon the idea, since even the tiniest creak had me leaping from my chair in anticipation of an uninvited and potentially malevolent guest. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong in my home.

CHAPTER 10

A fortnight passed, and work on the roof was finally complete. There was brief excitement when we thought that there had been a glimpse of Mrs Barley’s mystery man one afternoon a few days earlier by Shaun, when a dark-haired man had appeared on the old woman’s doorstep. When the boy tore down the ladder to demand to know what he wanted, however, the startled man turned out to be from the electricity board and had only come to read the meter. It had now been some weeks since I had seen the intruder and I was beginning to hope we’d seen the last of him. I was even starting to question whether he had actually been a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t sure which explanation was the least appealing: the prospect of someone lurking, or the fact that I could no longer rely on my own judgement.