And except, perhaps, whatever paced that attic in the night.

I heard the words again, in Maddie’s cold little matter-of-fact voice, as if she were beside me, whispering in my ear. After a while he stopped sleeping. He just used to pace backwards and forwards all night long. Then he went mad. People do go mad, you know, if you stop them from sleeping for long enough . . .

Was I going mad? Was that what this was?

Jesus. This was ridiculous. People didn’t go mad from two nights’ lack of sleep. I was being completely melodramatic.

And yet, as the footsteps passed above me again, slow and relentless, I felt a kind of panic rise up inside me, possessing me, and I could not stop my eyes turning towards the locked door, imagining it opening, the slow tread, tread of old feet on the stairs inside, and then that cadaverous, hollow face coming towards me in the darkness, the bony arm outstretched.

Elspeth . . .

It was a sound not coming from above, but in my own mind—a death rattle cry of a grief-stricken father for his lost child. Elspeth . . .

But the door did not open. No one came. And yet still above me, hour after hour, those steps continued. Creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . the ceaseless pacing of someone unable to rest.

I could not bring myself to turn out the light. Not this time. Not with those ceaseless, restless footsteps above me.

Instead, I lay there, on my side, facing the locked door, my phone in my hand, watching, waiting, until the floor beneath the window opposite my bed began to lighten with the coming of dawn, and at last I got up, stiff-limbed and nauseous with tiredness, and made my way down to the warmth of the kitchen to make myself the strongest cup of coffee I could bear to drink, and try to face the day.

Downstairs was empty and echoing, eerily quiet without the snuffling, huffing presence of the dogs. I was surprised to find that a part of me missed the distraction of their questing noses and constant begging for treats.

As I made my way across the hall to the kitchen, I found I was picking up a treasure trail of the girls’ possessions—a scatter of crayons on the hall rug, a My Little Pony abandoned beneath the breakfast bar, and then—oddly—a single purple flower, wilting, in the middle of the kitchen floor. I bent down, puzzled, wondering where it had come from. It was just a single bloom, and it looked as if it had fallen from a bouquet or dropped from a house plant, but there were no flowers in this room. Had one of the girls picked it? But if so, when?

It seemed a shame to let it die, so I filled a coffee mug with water and stuck the stem into it, and then put it on the kitchen table. Perhaps it would revive.

I was quietly nursing my second cup of coffee and watching the sun rise above the hills to the east of the house when the voice came, seemingly from nowhere.

“Rowan . . .”

It was a reedy quaver, barely audible, and yet somehow loud enough to echo around the silent kitchen, and it made me jump so that scalding coffee slopped over my wrist and the sleeve of my dressing gown.

“Shit.” I began mopping up, twisting at the same time to see the source of the voice. There was no one there, at least, no one visible.

“Who’s there?” I called, and this time I heard a creak from the direction of the stairs, a single creak, so eerily like those of the night before that my heart skipped a beat. “Who is it?” I called again, more aggressively than I had intended, and strode angrily out into the hallway.

Above me a small figure hesitated at the top of the stairs. Ellie. Her face was worried, her lip trembling.

“Oh, sweetheart . . .” I felt instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, you scared me. I didn’t mean to snap. Come down.”

“I’m not allowed,” she said. She had a blanket in her hands, twisting the silky trim between her fingers, and with her bottom lip stuck out and wobbling dangerously close to tears, she looked suddenly much younger than her five years.

“Of course you are. Who says you’re not allowed?”

“Mummy. We’re not allowed out of our rooms until the bunny clock’s ears go up.”

Oh. Suddenly I remembered the paragraph in the binder about Ellie’s early rising, and the rule about the Happy bunny clock, which clicked over to the wide-awake bunny at six. I looked back through the arch to the kitchen clock—5:47.

Well, I couldn’t exactly contradict Sandra’s rule . . . but here we were, and there was a large part of me that was relieved to see another human being. Somehow with Ellie around, the ghosts of the night before seemed to retreat back into absurdity.

“Well . . . ,” I said slowly, trying to pick my way between backing up my employer, and compassion to a small child hovering on the verge of crying. “Well, you’re up now. Just this once, I think we can pretend the bunny woke up early.”

“But what will Mummy say?”

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” I said, and then bit my lip. It’s one of the cardinal rules of childcare—don’t ask a child to keep secrets from a parent. That’s the path to all kinds of risky behavior and misunderstandings. But I’d said it now, and hopefully Ellie had read it as a lighthearted remark rather than an invitation to conspire against her mother. I couldn’t help but glance up at the camera in the corner—but surely Sandra wouldn’t be awake at 6:00 a.m. unless she had to be. “Come on down and we’ll have a hot chocolate together and then when the bunny wakes up you can go up and get dressed.”

Down in the kitchen, Ellie sat on one of the high stools, kicking her heels against the legs of the chair, while I heated up milk on the induction burner and stirred in hot chocolate powder. As Ellie drank, and I sipped my now-cooling coffee, we talked, about school, about her best friend Carry, about missing the dogs, and at last I ventured to ask about whether she missed her parents. Her face crumpled a little at that.

“Can we phone Mummy again tonight?”

“Yes, of course. We can try, anyway. She’s been very busy, you know that.”

Ellie nodded. Then, looking out of the window she said, “He’s gone, hasn’t he?”

“Who?” I was confused. Was she talking about her father, or Jack? Or perhaps . . . perhaps someone else? “Who’s gone?”

She didn’t answer, only kicked her legs against the stool.

“I like it better when he’s gone. He makes them do things they don’t want to do.”

I don’t know why, but the words gave me a sharp flashback to something I had barely thought about since my very first night here—that crumpled, unfinished note from Katya. The words sounded inside my head, as though someone had whispered them urgently into my ear. I wanted to tell you to please be—

Suddenly it felt more like a warning than ever.

“Who?” I said, more urgently this time. “Who are you talking about, Ellie?”

But she misunderstood my question, or perhaps deliberately chose to misinterpret it.

“The girls.” Her voice was matter of fact. And then she put down her hot chocolate and slid from the stool. “Can I go and watch some TV?”

“Ellie, wait,” I said, standing too, feeling my heart suddenly pounding in my chest. “Who are you talking about? Who’s gone? Who makes the girls do things?”

But I was too urgent, and as my hand closed on her wrist, she pulled away, suddenly frightened by my intensity.