فصل ششم

When I woke, it was to the insistent shrill beep of my alarm, and for a moment I could not think where I was, or why I was so tired. Then I remembered. I was in Scotland. And it was 6:00 a.m.—a full hour and a half earlier than I was accustomed to waking up.

I sat up, smoothing my rumpled hair and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Downstairs I could hear thumps and shrill sounds of excitement. It sounded as though the children were probably up. . . .

The curtains were blackout, but the sunshine was already streaming through the gaps around the edges, and, forcing my legs out of bed, I walked across and tried to pull them open, before remembering the previous night.

“Curtains open,” I said aloud, feeling more than slightly stupid, and they swooshed apart like a magician’s trick. I don’t know what I was expecting, but whatever it was, I was not prepared for the reality.

The beauty of the scene in front of me took my breath away.

The house had been perfectly sited by some long-dead Victorian architect to gaze out across an uninterrupted vista of blue hills, green valleys, and deep-verdant pine forests. On and on it stretched, the rolling foothills punctuated by little dark burns that rambled here and there, and the corrugated roofs of faraway crofts, and a few miles away a loch, reflecting the morning sun so brightly it looked like a patch of snow. In the distance, presiding above it all, were the Cairngorms—Gaelic for the blue mountains, according to Google.

When I had looked up the origin of their name, the translation had seemed faintly absurd. The photos online showed all the colors you might expect—green grass, brown bracken, reddish earth with the occasional purple splotch of heather, and in winter a covering of crisp white. The idea that they were blue seemed fanciful in the extreme.

But here, with the mist rising from their slopes in the morning sun, and the dawn pink still tingeing the sky behind them, they did look blue. Not the brackeny foothills, but the unforgiving granite slopes themselves, all jagged crags and peaks, far above the tree line. The highest peak looked like it was tipped with snow, even in June.

I felt my heart lift, and then I heard a noise in the garden below and looked down.

It was Jack Grant. He was walking across from a huddle of outbuildings tucked just around the corner of the house. His hair was wet, as if he had just showered, and he was holding a bag of tools in his hand. For a minute I watched him, staring down at the top of his dark head, before it began to feel more than a little voyeuristic, and I turned away from the window to head to the bathroom for my own shower.

Inside it was dark, and I automatically felt around for a switch, before I remembered the damn panel. At my touch it leapt into life, presenting me again with that confusing mosaic of squares, sliders, and dots. I pressed one at random, hoping I wasn’t going to get more Miles Davis. I had been aiming for the same one I’d pressed yesterday, but evidently I’d missed my mark, because low blue lights suddenly illuminated the baseboards. Some sort of night setting, for if you wanted to go to the loo while your partner was asleep? Not bright enough to shower by, at all events.

The next button I tried made the blue lights disappear, and two low, golden lamps came on over the bath, suffusing my skin with a warm, flattering glow. It was exactly what I would have wanted if I was soaking in a long bubble bath, but the shower enclosure was still dark, and I needed something brighter and more . . . well, more morningish.

I found it on the fourth or fifth try—a setting that was bright, but not agonizingly so, with an illuminated rim around the mirror perfect for doing my makeup. With a sigh of relief I dropped my robe to the floor and stepped into the shower, only to be faced with a different challenge. There was a dazzling array of nozzles, spouts, and showerheads. The question was, how did you operate them? The answer seemed to be yet another panel, a waterproof one this time, set in among the shower tiles. When I touched it, letters appeared. Good morning, Katya.

The name gave me a funny little jolt, and I remembered again that unfinished note on the child’s drawing, from the night before. There was a smiley face and little down button. Well, I wasn’t Katya. I pressed the down button, and the letters changed. Good morning, Jo. I pressed again. Good morning, Lauren. Good morning, Holly. Good morning, guest.

There were no more options. Guest it was, then. I pressed the smiley face. Nothing happened. Instead, the display changed to those cryptic dots, squares, and sliders. I pressed one at random and screeched when about twenty forceful jets of ice-cold water blasted my stomach and thighs. Hastily I mashed the off switch to the left of the panel and the jets turned off, leaving me panting and shivering, and more than a little annoyed.

Okay. Fine. Maybe I should try a preset option, until I had figured out how to work this thing. I touched the panel and Good morning, Katya flashed up again. This time with a feeling of slight trepidation, I pressed the smiley face, and the message We’re preparing your favorite shower. Wash Happy! appeared on the screen. As the message faded away, to my astonishment, one of the showerheads slid smoothly upwards to a preprogrammed height, tilted to an angle, and a jet of warm water began to gush out. I stood for a moment, gaping, and then tested the water with one hand. Whoever Katya was, she had been very tall, and she liked her showers a little bit hotter than I did. I could have put up with the heat, but unfortunately she was so tall that the jet missed the top of my head completely and bounced off the glass screen opposite, which was going to make washing my hair very tricky.

I pressed the off button and tried again. This time I selected Good morning, Holly at random and waited, teeth gritted, for the result.

Bingo. Holly’s setting turned out to be set to a kind of hot drenching rain from the grid overhead, which was . . . well, it was glorious. There was no other word for it. The water gushed out with an almost absurd abundance, soaking me with warmth. I felt the hot water drumming on the top of my skull, driving out the last remnants of my sleepiness and last night’s red wine. Holly, whoever she was, had clearly been a woman after my own heart. I shampooed my hair, conditioned, and then rinsed, and then stood, my eyes closed, simply enjoying the feel of the water on my naked skin.

The temptation to stay there, reveling in the luxury, was very strong, but it had taken me probably ten minutes to even figure out the bathroom. If I wasted any more time, I would render that early alarm pointless. There was no point in forcing myself out of bed at the crack of dawn if I didn’t make an appearance and ram my enthusiasm home to Sandra.

With a sense of resignation, I pressed the off button on the panel, reached out for the fluffy white towel warming on the heated rail, and reminded myself that if I pulled this off, it wouldn’t be the last time I got to enjoy that shower. Very far from it.

Venturing downstairs, the first thing that greeted me was the smell of toast and the sound of children laughing. When I rounded the corner of the bottom of the stairs, I was met by a very small tartan dressing gown abandoned on the bottom step and a single slipper in the middle of the hall. Picking both up, I made my way through to the kitchen, where Sandra was standing in front of a huge gleaming chrome toaster, holding a piece of brown bread and waving it at the two little girls in bright red pajamas sitting at the metal breakfast bar. Their curly heads, one dark, the other white-blond, were tousled with sleep, and they were both giggling helplessly.

“Don’t encourage her! She’ll only do it again.”

“Do what again?” I said, and Sandra turned.

“Oh, Rowan! Gosh, you’re up early. I hope the girls didn’t wake you. We’re still trying to train certain members of the family to stay in bed past six a.m. . . .” She nodded pointedly at the younger of the two girls, the one with white-blond hair.

“It’s fine,” I said truthfully, adding, slightly less accurately, “I’m a naturally early riser.”

“Well, that’s certainly a good talent to have in this house,” Sandra said with a sigh. She was wearing a dressing gown and looked more than a little harassed.

“Petra threw her porridge,” said the girl, with a gurgling laugh, pointing at the pink-cheeked baby sitting in the high chair at the corner, and I saw that she was right. There was a dollop of porridge the size of an egg sliding down the front of the stove to plop onto the concrete floor, and Petra was crowing with delight and scooping up another spoonful, ready to throw it again.

“Peta frow!” she said, and took aim.

“Uh-uh,” I said with a smile, and held out my hand for the spoon. “Petra, give it here, please!”

The baby looked at me uncertainly for a moment, sizing me up, her faint blond brows drawn into an adorable frown, and then her chubby face split in a grin and she repeated, “Peta frow!” and launched the porridge towards me.

I dodged, but not quick enough, and it hit me full in the chest.

At first I just gasped, and then a wave of absolute fury rose up inside me when I realized what she had done. Stupidly I hadn’t brought a spare outfit, and yesterday’s top was crumpled and had a red-wine stain on the top that I didn’t remember making but must have done so.

I had literally no clean clothes left. I was going to be covered in porridge for the rest of the day. The little shit.

It was the younger of the two girls who saved me. She burst out giggling and then clapped her hands over her mouth, as if horrified.

I remembered who I was, where I was, why I was here.

I forced a smile.

“It’s okay,” I said to the little girl. “Ellie, isn’t it? You can laugh. It is pretty funny.”

She took her hands away and gave a cautious grin.

“Oh my God,” Sandra said with a kind of weary resignation. “Rowan, I am so sorry. They talk about the terrible twos, but I swear, Petra’s been auditioning for them for six months. Is your top okay?” “Sandra, don’t give it a second thought,” I said. The top was not going to be okay, at least not until I could wash it, and possibly not even then. It was a silk blouse, dry-clean only, a stupid choice for a nannying interview, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that I would be interacting with the kids. Maybe I could get a small moral advantage from the situation. “Honestly, these things happen when you have kids, right? It’s only porridge! However—” I leaned over and took the bowl of porridge away from Petra before she realized what was happening and put it out of her reach. “I think you’ve had enough, little Miss Petra, so maybe I’ll take charge of that while I clean up. Where’s your mop, Sandra, and I’ll clean up that blob on the floor before one of the girls slips on it.” “It’s in the utility room, that door there,” Sandra said, with a grateful smile. “Thank you so much, Rowan. I honestly wasn’t expecting you to start pitching in unpaid, this is beyond the call of duty.” “I’m glad to help,” I said firmly. I ruffled Petra’s hair as I passed with an affection I didn’t entirely feel, and gave Ellie a little wink. Maddie was not looking at me; she was staring down at her plate as though the whole thing had passed her by. Maybe she was ashamed at her earlier role, egging Petra on.

The utility room turned out to be in the older part of the house—probably the original scullery judging by the Victorian sink and stone-flagged floor—but I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate architectural details. Instead, I shut the door behind me and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to rid myself of the last of my irritation, and then set to work trying to rescue my top. The worst of the porridge flicked off into the sink, but I was going to have to sponge the rest. After several tries that only succeeded in getting porridgy water onto my skirt, I pushed a mop against the handle of the kitchen door and peeled off my top.

I was standing there in my bra and skirt, dabbing at the porridgy patch under the tap and trying not to get the rest of the shirt wetter than necessary, when I heard a sound from the other side of the utility room and turned to see the door to the yard open and Jack Grant come in, wiping his hands on his overall trousers.

“Mower’s going, San—” he called, and then broke off, his eyes widening in shock. A vivid blush spread across his broad cheekbones.

I gave a yelp of surprise and clutched my wet top to my breasts, trying my best to preserve my modesty.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Jack said. He was covering his eyes, looking at the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but me. His cheeks were flaming. “I’ll—I’ll be—so sorry—” And then he turned and fled, slamming the yard door behind him, leaving me gasping and not sure whether to laugh or cry.

There was not much point in either, so I hastily dried my wet top with a towel hanging over the radiator, filled up the mop bucket, and then made my way back to the kitchen with my cheeks almost as pink as Jack’s.

“Shirt fixed?” Sandra said over her shoulder as I came in. “Let me get you a coffee.”

“Yes.” I was not sure whether to tell her what had just happened. Had she heard my squeak of surprise? Would Jack say something? “Sandra, I—” But then my nerve failed me. I couldn’t think of a way of saying, Sandra, I just boob-flashed your handyman, without sounding hopelessly unprofessional. I felt the blush on my face deepen in shame at the thought of it. I could not bring it up. I would just have to hope that Jack was enough of a gentleman not to refer to it himself.

“Milk and sugar?” Sandra said absently, and I set the conversation aside.

“Milk, thanks,” I said, and put down the mop bucket and began clearing up Petra’s missiles from the stove and floor, feeling my cheeks cool as I worked.

At last, when the coffee had come through and I was seated at the table, eating a piece of excellent toast and marmalade, I was almost able to pretend it had never happened.

“So,” Sandra said, wiping her hands on a cloth. “Girls. I didn’t get a chance to introduce you to Rowan. She’s come to have a look around our house and meet you. Say hello.” “Hi,” Maddie muttered, though she said it more to her plate than me. She looked younger than her eight years, with her dark hair and a sallow little face. Beneath the countertop I could see two skinny knees, covered in scabs.

“Hello, Maddie,” I said, with what I hoped was a winning smile, but she kept her eyes firmly down. Ellie was easier; she was looking at me with frank curiosity from beneath her white-blond fringe. “Hello, Ellie. How old are you?” “I’m five,” Ellie said. Her blue eyes were round as buttons. “Are you going to be our new nanny?”

“I—” I stopped short, not sure what to say. Would I hope so come across as too nakedly pleading?

“Maybe,” Sandra cut in, firmly. “Rowan hasn’t decided yet whether she wants to work here, so we must be very well behaved to impress her!” She gave me a little sideways wink.

“I tell you what, run upstairs and get dressed, and then we can show Rowan around.”

“What about Petra?” Ellie asked.

“I’ll sort her out. Go on—chop-chop.”

The two girls slid obediently off the tall stools and pattered away across the hallway and up the stairs. Sandra watched them go, fondly.

“Gosh, they’re very good!” I said, genuinely impressed. I had nannied enough children to know that five-year-olds getting dressed on command definitely wasn’t a given. Even eight-year-olds tended to need supervision. Sandra rolled her eyes.

“They know not to play up in front of visitors. But let’s see if they’re actually doing as they’re told . . .” She pressed a button on an iPad lying on the counter, and a picture flickered into view. It was a children’s bedroom, the camera obviously sited up near the ceiling, pointing downwards at two little beds. There was no sound, but the noise of a door slamming was loud enough to filter down the stairs, and a teddy bear on the mantelpiece rocked and fell. As we watched, Maddie stamped angrily into view at the bottom of the screen and sat crossly on the left-hand bed, her arms folded. Sandra pressed something else and the camera zoomed in on Maddie’s face, or rather the top of her head, for she was looking down at her lap. There was a faint crackle coming from the iPad now, as if a microphone had been switched on.

“Maddie,” Sandra said, “what have I told you about slamming doors?”

“I didn’t.” The voice came small and tinny from the iPad speaker.

“You did, and I saw you. You could have hurt Ellie. Now get your clothes on and you can watch some TV. They’re all laid out on your chair, I put them out this morning.” Maddie said nothing, but she got up and pulled off her pajama top, and Sandra shut down the screen.

“Wow,” I said, slightly taken aback. “Impressive!”

It was not the word I was thinking. Stalkerish was closer to the mark, though I wasn’t completely sure why. Plenty of places I’d worked had nanny cams, or baby monitors with built-in speakers and cameras. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn’t known about it until now. I hadn’t noticed any cameras last night, so wherever they were, they must be well hidden. Had Sandra watched me go up to bed last night? Had she seen me look into Petra’s bedroom? The thought made my cheeks flame.

“The whole house is wired up,” Sandra said casually, dropping the iPad back onto the counter. “It’s very handy, especially in a place with several floors. It means I don’t have to always be running up and down to check on the girls.” “Very handy,” I echoed faintly, suppressing my unease. The whole house? What did that mean? The children’s rooms, clearly. But the reception rooms? The bedrooms? The bathrooms? But no, that was beyond possibility. And illegal, surely. I put the remaining bit of toast back on the plate, my appetite suddenly gone.

“Finished?” Sandra said brightly, and when I nodded she swept the bit of toast into a waste-disposal unit and put the plate with the girls’ porridge bowls by the sink. The ones from last night had disappeared, I noticed. Had the mysterious Jean come and gone already?

“Well, if you’ve had enough, let me give you the grand tour while the girls get dressed.” She scooped Petra out of her high chair, scrubbed her face with a damp washcloth, hitched her onto her hip, and together we reentered the old part of the house and crossed the stone-flagged entrance hall to the two doors on each side of the front door.

“Right, so just to give you the layout—the hall is the center of the house—out the back is the kitchen, and leading off that is the utility room, which you’ve already seen, of course. That was part of the old servants’ quarters, the only bit that survived, actually. The rest we had to pull down. At the front of the house we have the grander rooms—that’s the old dining room”—Sandra waved a hand at an opening to the right of the front door—“but we found we were always eating in the kitchen, so we’ve converted it into a study slash library. Have a peek.” I put my head around the door and saw a smallish room with paneled walls painted a beautiful rich teal color. Ranged at one end were bookshelves from floor to ceiling covered in a mix of fiction paperbacks and hardback books on architecture. It could have been a small but perfectly formed library in a National Trust historic property—except that in the middle of the room was an enormous glass desk with a huge double-screen iMac sprawling across it, and a kind of aeronautical ergonomic chair facing the screens.

I blinked. There was something disconcerting about the way the old and new combined in this house. It wasn’t like most homes, where modern additions rubbed up alongside original features and somehow combined into a friendly, eclectic whole. Here there was a strange impression of oil and water—everything was either self-consciously original or glaringly modern, with no attempt to integrate the two.

“What a beautiful room,” I said at last, since Sandra seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. “The colors are just . . . they’re fabulous.” Sandra smiled, jiggling Petra on her hip in a pleased sort of way.

“Thank you! Bill does all the technical layout stuff, but the interior design is mostly me. I do love that shade of teal. This particular room is really Bill’s domain, so I reined myself in, but you’ll see I’ve gone a bit to town on it in the living room. I figure, it’s my house, I don’t have to please anyone else! Come through and have a look.” The room she led me into next was the living room she had mentioned, a cluster of deep button-backed sofas arranged in a square around a beautiful tiled fireplace. The ceiling and woodwork were the same shade of teal as the paneling in the study, but the walls themselves were startling—covered in a rich, intricate wallpaper with a design almost too convoluted to make out in deep blues, emeralds, and aquamarines. As I peered closer I saw that it was a mix of brambles and peacocks—both stylized and intertwined to the point of being practically unrecognizable. The brambles were dark green and indigo black, the peacocks iridescent blue and amethyst, their tails curling and spreading and tangling with the brambles into a kind of nightmarish labyrinth—half aviary, half briar thicket.

The design echoed the tiles around the fireplace, which were two peacocks standing tall on each side of the grate, their bodies on the bottommost tile, their tails spreading upwards. The fire itself was dead, but the room was not cold, far from it. Wrought iron Victorian radiators around the walls gave it a cozy warmth, and the sun slanted across another of the artfully faded Persian rugs. More books were strewn across a brass coffee table along with another arrangement of peonies, these ones drooping in a dry vase, but Sandra ignored them and led the way to a door on the left side of the fireplace, leading back in the direction of the kitchen.

Behind it was a much smaller oak-paneled room with a scuffed leather sofa and a TV on the far wall. It was easy to see what this room was used for—the floor was covered with discarded toys, scattered Duplo, decapitated Barbie dolls, and a partly collapsed play tent slumped in one corner. The rather dark paneled walls had been decorated with stickers and children’s drawings, even the odd crayoned scribble on the paneling itself.

“This was the old breakfast room,” Sandra said, “and it was rather gloomy, as it faces north and that pine tree blocks out a lot of the light, so we made it into a media room, but obviously the children ended up completely taking over!” She gave a laugh and picked up a stuffed yellow banana, handing it to Petra.

“And now, to complete the circuit . . .”

She led the way through towards a second door concealed in the paneling—and again I had the feeling of tripping and finding myself in a different house entirely. We were again in the glass vault at the back of the house, but we had entered it from the opposite side. Without the big stove and the cupboards and appliances blocking the view, there was literally nothing in front of us but glass—and beyond that the landscape falling away, patched with forest and the faraway glimmer of lochs and burns. It was like there was nothing between us and the wilderness beyond. I felt that at any moment an osprey could have swooped down into our midst.

In one corner was a playpen, carpeted with jigsaw-shaped rubber mats, and I watched as Sandra plopped Petra inside with her banana and waved her hand around the walls. “This side was the old servants’ hall, back in the day, but it was riddled with dry rot and the views were much too good to be confined to narrow little sash windows, so we made the decision to just”—she made a slitting gesture at her throat, and then laughed—“I think some people are a bit shocked, but trust me, if you’d seen it before, you’d understand.” I thought of my tiny flat in London, the way it could have fitted into even just this one room.

Something inside me seemed to twist and break, just a little, and suddenly I was not sure if I should have come here after all. But I knew one thing. I could not go back. Not now.

You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this, Mr. Wrexham. Because I know you’re busy, and I know that on the surface, at least, it seems as if this is nothing to do with my case. And yet . . . it’s everything. I need you to see Heatherbrae House, to feel the warmth from the heating striking up through the floor, the sun on your face. I need to you to be able to reach out and stroke the soft cat’s-tongue roughness of the velvet sofas and the silky smoothness of the polished concrete surfaces.

I need you to understand why I did what I did.

The rest of the morning seemed to pass in a blur. I spent the time making homemade Play-Doh with the children and then helping them fashion it into a variety of lumpy, lopsided creations, most of which Petra mashed into shapelessness again with crows of laughter and howls of annoyance from Ellie. Maddie was the one who puzzled me most—she was stiff and unyielding, as if determined not to smile for me, but I persisted, finding little ways of praising her, and at last, in spite of herself, she seemed to unbend a little, even going as far as laughing, a little unwillingly, when Petra unwisely shoved a handful of the pink dough into her mouth and spat it out, retching and gagging at the salty taste, with a comical expression of disgust on her chubby little face.

At last Sandra tapped me on the shoulder and told me that Jack was waiting to take me to the station, if I was ready, and I stood up and washed my hands and gave Petra a little chuck under the chin.

My bag was beside the door. I had packed before I came downstairs for breakfast, knowing that I might not have much time later, but I had no idea who had brought it down from the spare room. Not the unseen Jean, I fervently hoped, though I did not know why the thought made me uncomfortable.

Jack was waiting outside with the silently idling car, his hands in his pockets, the sunshine finding specks of deep auburn and red in his dark hair.

“Well, it was a total pleasure to meet you,” Sandra said, and there was a genuine warmth in her eyes as she held out her hand. “I’ll need to discuss things with Bill, but I think I can say . . . well, let’s just say, you’ll be hearing from us very soon with a final decision. Very soon. Thank you, Rowan, you were fabulous.” “It was lovely to meet you too, Sandra,” I said. “Your girls are lovely.” Ugh, stop saying lovely. “I hope I get the chance to meet Rhiannon sometime.” I hope I get the job, that meant, in code. “Goodbye, Ellie.” I stuck out my hand, and she shook it gravely, like a five-year-old businesswoman. “Goodbye, Maddie.” But Maddie, to my dismay, did not take my hand. Instead, she turned and buried her face in her mother’s midriff, refusing to meet my eyes. It was a curiously childish gesture, one that made her seem much younger than her age. Over the top of her head, Sandra gave a little shrug as if to say, What can you do?

I shrugged back, ruffled the back of Maddie’s hair, and turned towards the car.

I had stowed my luggage in the back seat, and was just walking around the opposite side of the car to climb into the front passenger seat when something hit me like a small, dark hurricane. Arms wrapped around my waist, a hard little skull digging into my lower ribs.

Wriggling round in the fierce embrace I saw, to my surprise, that it was Maddie. Maybe I had won her over after all?

“Maddie!” I said, but she did not answer. I was unsure of what to do, but in the end I bent down to give her a little hug back. “Thank you for showing me your lovely house. Goodbye.” I hoped that the last word might make her let go, but she only tightened her grip, squeezing me uncomfortably tight, making my breath come short.

“Don’t—” I heard her whimper into my still-damp top, though I couldn’t make out the second word. Don’t go?

“I have to,” I whispered back. “But I hope I’ll be able to come back very soon.”

That was the truth, all right. God, I hoped so.

But Maddie was shaking her head, her dark hair swishing against her knobbly spine. I felt the heat of her breath through my top. There was something strangely intimate and uncomfortable about the whole thing, something I could not put my finger on, and all of a sudden I very much wanted her to let go, but mindful of Sandra’s presence, I did not prize Maddie’s fingers away. Instead, I smiled and tightened my arms around her momentarily, returning her hug. As I did, she made a little sound, almost a whimper.

“Maddie? Is something wrong?”

“Don’t come here,” she whispered, still refusing to look at me. “It’s not safe.”

“It’s not safe?” I gave a little laugh. “Maddie, what do you mean?”

“It’s not safe,” she repeated, with a little angry sob, shaking her head harder so that her words were almost lost. “They wouldn’t like it.” “Who wouldn’t like it?”

But with that, she tore herself away, and then she was running barefoot across the grass, shouting something over her shoulder.

“Maddie!” I called after her. “Maddie, wait!”

“Don’t worry,” Sandra said with a laugh. She came round to my side of the car. It was plain that she had not seen anything apart from Maddie’s sudden hug and her subsequent flight. “That’s Maddie, I’m afraid. Just let her go, she’ll be back for lunch. But she must have liked you—I’m not sure she’s ever voluntarily hugged a stranger before!” “Thank you,” I said, rather unsettled, and I let Sandra see me into the car and slam the door shut.

It was only as we began to wind slowly down the drive, while I kept one eye out for a fleeting child among the trees, that I found myself replaying Maddie’s final remark, wondering if she had really said what I thought I’d heard.

For the thing she had called over her shoulder seemed almost too preposterous to be true—and yet the more I brooded over it, the more I was sure of what I’d heard.

The ghosts, she had sobbed. The ghosts wouldn’t like it.