“Shit,” I said, and watched, horrified, as the little avalanche subsided.

At last all was quiet, except for one single decapitated china head rolling slowly towards the center of the room. It was the way the warped floorboards bowed, I knew, but for a crazy second I had the illusion that it was pursuing me and would chase me down the stairs, its cherubic smile and empty eyes hunting me down.

It was just that, though, an illusion, and a few seconds later it came to a rocking halt, facing the door.

One eye had been punched out, and there was a crack across one pink cheek that gave its smile a curiously mocking appearance.

We hate you, I heard, in the corner of my mind, as if someone had whispered it in my ear.

And then I heard Jack’s voice again, calling me from the bottom of the stairs, and I turned and followed him down the wooden steps.

Stepping out into the warmth and light of the rest of the house felt like returning from another world—after a trip into a particularly dark and nightmarish Narnia perhaps. Jack stood aside to let me out, and then shut the door behind us both and locked it. The key screeched in protest as he did so, then we both turned and made our way down to the bright, homely comfort of the kitchen.

* * *

I found my hands were shaking as I tried to rinse out the teacups and put the kettle on to boil, and at last, after a few minutes of watching me, Jack stood up and walked over to me.

“Sit down and let me make you a cup for a change. Or would you prefer something a wee bit stronger? A dram, maybe?”

“Whiskey, you mean?” I said, slightly startled, and he grinned and nodded. I gave a shaky laugh. “Bloody hell, Jack. It’s barely lunch.”

“All right then, just tea. But you sit there while I make it. You’re always running around after those kids. Have a sit down for a change.”

But I shook my head, stubborn. I would not be that woman. I would not be one of those other four nannies . . .

“No, I’ll make the tea. But it would be great if you could—” I paused, trying to think of a job he could do, to soften the refusal of help. “If you could find some biscuits.”

I remembered myself giving Maddie and Ellie jammie dodgers after the shock of the speakers going off in the middle of the night. Sugar is good for shock, I heard my own voice saying, as if I were a frightened child, able to be jollied back to cheerfulness with a forbidden treat.

I’m not normally like this, I wanted to say, and it was true. I wasn’t superstitious, I wasn’t nervy, I wasn’t the kind of person who saw signs and portents around every corner and crossed themselves when they saw a black cat on Friday the thirteenth. That wasn’t me.

But for three nights now I’d had little or no sleep, and no matter what I tried to tell myself I had heard those noises, loud and clear, and they were not a bird, whatever Jack thought. The senseless, panicked crashing of a trapped bird—that would have been scary enough, but it was nothing like the slow, measured creak . . . creak . . . that had kept me awake, night after night. And besides, that bird was dead—long dead. There was no way it could have been making noises last night, or any night for a while. In fact judging by the smell and the state of decomposition, it had probably been up there for several weeks.

The smell . . .

It had stayed with me, fusty and choking in my nostrils, and as I carried the tea across to the sofa, I found I could still smell it, even though I’d washed my hands. It clung to my clothes, and my hair, and glancing down I saw a long streak of gray on the sleeve of my jumper.

The sun had gone in, and in spite of the underfloor heating, the room was not particularly warm, but I shrugged the sweatshirt off and put it aside. I felt that I’d have frozen rather than put it back on.

“Here you go.” Jack sat beside me, making the springs of the sofa squeak, and handed me a rich tea biscuit. I dipped it automatically into my tea, then took a bite, and shivered, I couldn’t help myself. “Are you cold?”

“A bit. Not really. I mean, I have a jumper, it’s just I didn’t—

I couldn’t—”

I swallowed, then, feeling like a fool, I nodded at the streak of attic dust I’d noticed on the sleeve.

“I can’t get the smell of that place out of my head. I thought maybe it was in my sweater.”

“I understand,” he said quietly, and then, as if reading my thoughts, he stripped off his own jacket, streaked with cobwebs, and laid it aside. He was only wearing a T-shirt underneath, but in contrast to my chill, his arms were warm, so warm that I could feel the heat from his skin as we sat, not quite touching, but uncomfortably close on the small two-seater sofa.

“You’ve goose pimples all up your arms,” he said, and then, slowly, as if giving me time to move away, he put out a hand and rubbed the skin of my upper arm gently. I shivered again, but it was not with cold, and for a long moment I had an almost overwhelming urge to close my eyes and lean into him.

“Jack,” I said, at the same time as he cleared his throat, and the baby monitor on the counter let out a crackling wail.

Petra.

“I’d better go and get her.” I stood, setting the tea down on the counter, and then staggered as a sudden wash of dizziness came over me, from standing up too fast.

“Hey.” Jack stood too, putting a hand on my arm, steadying me. “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” It was true, the moment of faintness had passed. “It’s nothing. I get low blood pressure sometimes. And I’m just—I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Ugh. I had already told him that. He was going to think I was coming apart, adding amnesia to my list of frailties. I was better than this. Stronger than this. I had to be.

I badly wanted a cigarette, but the CV I had handed in to Sandra had said “nonsmoker” and I couldn’t risk unpicking that particular thread. I might discover everything unraveled.

I found myself glancing up, towards the ever-watching egg-shaped eye in the corner of the room.

“Jack, what are we going to tell Sandra?” I asked, and then the baby monitor crackled into life again, this time a more determined cry that I could hear both through the speaker, and coming down the stairs. “Hold that thought,” I said, and sprinted hastily for the stairs.

* * *

Ten minutes later I was back down with a freshly changed Petra, who was grumpy and blinking, and looking as tousled and confused as I felt. She glowered at Jack as I came back into the kitchen, her little hands gripping my top like a small marsupial, but when he chucked her under the chin she gave a little, reluctant smile, and then a proper one as he pulled a funny expression, laughing and then twisting her face away in that funny way children do when they know they’re being charmed into good spirits in spite of themselves.

She let herself be settled in her high chair with some segments of satsuma, and then I turned back to Jack.

“I was just saying—Sandra and Bill. We have to tell them about the attic—right? Or do you think they know?”

“I’m not sure,” Jack said thoughtfully. He rubbed his chin, his fingers rasping over dark auburn stubble. “They’re sort of perfectionists, the way that cupboard was boarded up inside didn’t look like their work. And I can’t imagine they’d leave all that crap up there. Sorry, excuse my French, Petra,” he said formally, giving her a little mock bow. “All that rubbish, is what I meant to say. They cleared the house when they moved in from what I understand—I didn’t start work until a couple of years after they bought it, so I didn’t see the renovations, but Bill’ll bore the hind leg off a donkey if you give him an excuse to talk about the work. I can’t imagine them just ignoring something like that. No, my best bet is that they’d never opened the cupboard and didn’t know the attic was there. The key was pretty stiff, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had the wrong one. It’s only because I’m a stubborn bastard I forced it.”