Bollocks.

On the other side of the door, behind the glass, the door key stuck out from the keyhole. Emily looked at it and, still grasping the handle, contemplated the long, dark walk along the dirt track. She saw herself reaching the road and waiting with her arm outstretched, her thumb pointed upward. Headlights might appear in the distance. Maybe a car would pull up next to her, the window sliding slowly down to reveal a sallow-faced man with a rotten smile.

No, thanks. Gotta get those keys.

She could see the box on the wall behind the door, tantalizingly close.

Leaning back, she scanned the outside wall. At the end of the house, one of the windows stood open just a crack. Emily tiptoed over. It was the window to Aurelia’s playroom: a large square frame with two outward-swinging panes at either end. The gaps weren’t huge, but they were just wide enough to squeeze through.

Before she knew it, she was reaching inside, knocking the metal arm from its hook and opening the left-side pane as far as it would go. There was a bookcase just inside. She wedged her sandals into what little space remained in her handbag, then put both hands on the ledge and jumped, thrusting her hip sideways. Balancing precariously for a few seconds, she pitched her weight forward, one hand on the frame and the other planted firmly on the bookcase. She inched her bum inside and curved her body into a C shape until she was almost horizontal, then bent her knees and wriggled her legs. Eventually, she half rolled, half fell onto the floor.

She sat up, breathing heavily. She was in.

The playroom looked creepy in the half-light. Long shadows loomed, seemingly without objects to cast them, and the pennant flags, so pretty in the daylight, now dripped eerily like stalactites from the ceiling.

Emily edged toward the door, terrified of disturbing even the air around her. In the hallway the staircase glowed white. There was no sound from upstairs; no lights were on.

She turned left through the kitchen and tiptoed to the patio doors. Reaching the box on the wall, she opened up the front with trembling fingers and studied the contents. Disappointment came like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. The key to the bike shed was there, as were the chunky gold ones to the quads themselves, but there were no car keys.

Right. Quad bike it is, then.

Slowly, carefully, she lifted the keys she needed from their hooks and dropped them into the pocket of her shorts. But she made no move to leave, looking instead toward the butler’s pantry. She couldn’t stop thinking about the car. Also, the quad bikes would be useless if the gates were locked—and they probably were. She needed her keys. Surely they were in that secret room.

But what if Nina is down there? Emily chewed her lip in the semidarkness, wondering how the hell it had come to this: breaking into Nina’s house at night, creeping and stealing and plotting to escape.

Her feet moved of their own accord, padding toward the pantry, carrying her to the place where the shelves did not quite meet. She grabbed one and pulled like she’d done the last time, but the unit didn’t move. With her heart so palpably in her mouth she could almost taste it, she began to run her hands over the edges, feeling for a latch or a button. Finding nothing, she slid her palms across the undersides of the shelves, checking the corners and the spaces behind the crockery, and then she leaned her shoulder against the whole thing and pushed.

There was a slight give. Nudging harder, she felt the unit depress ever so slightly, then shift back toward her with a faint click.

The door was open.

She stepped onto the top step and peered down. The staircase was much darker than last time. Her breath was loud and jarring in the confined space.

Having carried her to this point, her feet no longer seemed willing to move, so she forced them, one after the other, step by step, down into the darkness until she reached the bottom of the stairs. The boxes looked enormous, their shadows tall and monstrous. The smell seemed stronger than ever. What the hell was in those things?

In a moment of blind panic, Emily began scrabbling at the wall, looking for a light switch, her fingers combing through several cobwebs before finally hitting the edge of a panel. Finding a button, she pressed down, and a fluorescent strip above her head flickered on.

The room was even bigger than she’d first thought. Other than a narrow thoroughfare that ran through the center, every inch was crammed with objects: mostly cardboard boxes, but she could see other things, too, stacked at the edges against the damp brickwork. High chairs, bassinets, cots, and changing tables. Cushions, mattresses, and a rocking horse, all covered with a thick dusting of mildew.

The boxes nearest to her looked new, still shiny with packing tape and little squares of plastic still bearing the delivery slips. Some had little pictures on the sides: toys, bikes, craft supplies, and sports gear. Mountains of brand new furniture.

Emily pushed her way in, past the first few items until she couldn’t go any farther. Things were older toward the back. Wooden crates bore the name “Denny” followed by a West London address and the logo of an overseas moving company. Some of the lids were loose. Gingerly, she lifted one and looked inside. Baby clothes, dank and rotten. Inside another, she found old feeding bottles, stained muslin cloths, and a breast pump. Everything was coated in mold.

Emily stared. There was so much stuff; it would take weeks to look through it all, and it was so tightly packed that she’d have to climb up and over the piles. Brown pellets littered the floor. No wonder it reeked down here, she thought, remembering the dead rodent she’d found in the guesthouse. Anything could have crawled in here and died.

Beyond all the junk, the door to the secret room stood slightly ajar, the eerie flat light once again spilling through the gap.

Emily drove her body toward it, despite the many bizarre and horrifying images running through her brain. What would she find in that room? Please, God, let it just be empty except for the keys. Please, please, just let me find the keys.

Reaching the door, she stretched out and pulled it a little way open, noticing its considerable weight and width. A dozen or so cylindrical bolts protruded from the side, ready to slide into matching holes in the jamb. Something cracked nearby, and she jumped back, suddenly convinced that she would find both Nina and Aurelia in there, curled up in a medicated heap or chained to the wall or strapped to laboratory benches or sleeping in coffins or …

Silence. She listened for more noises. The house shuffled and ticked around her. The hot-water system hummed.

Get the keys.

Emily peeked cautiously around the door and saw what looked like a small and rather ordinary-looking studio flat, complete with a sofa, kitchenette, and even a toilet and shower tucked away behind a partition. On a desk in the corner was a phone and an Apple laptop.

A phone.

She reached for it with a trembling hand and nearly cried when she heard the dial tone. But as soon as she pressed the first number, an automated voice asked for a four-digit access code. Shocked by the noise, she jerked back as if the phone had bitten her, silencing it with the “off” button. Carefully, she replaced the handset back in the base unit.

Looking back at the kitchenette and mini-bathroom, two words floated up out of her subconscious: panic room.”

Moving farther inside and around the door, she found that the peculiar gray light came from a wall of small television screens all showing black-and-white images. Surveillance screens.

The cameras. On her first ever day at Querencia, she’d seen them: tiny silver boxes mounted on the outside of the house and in the sitting room, their miniscule lights flashing like a warning. Stop. Do not enter. There were others, too, above the gate and on the guesthouse porch. She’d thought them odd at first, but, she’d reasoned, security was important. You could really freak yourself out living somewhere like this. Since then, she hadn’t given them much thought. They’d just become part of the furniture.

Fixed onto the adjoining wall, perpendicular to the screens, was an iPad. A control system, Emily guessed. She stared at the screens. The pictures kept changing. She saw the gates and the track, the driveway and the lawn. Then the pool, the animal sheds, and every room in the family house, including a lavish bedroom Emily had not seen before. It had a four-poster bed, an enormous doll’s house, and shelves upon shelves of toys. Aurelia’s room.

Then she saw the sunset point. The rooms in the guesthouse. Her own bedroom.