“Okay,” I said, and I nodded. I should have known it was too good to be true.

I have been scared a lot in prison, Mr. Wrexham. The first night as I lay there, listening to the laughs and shouts and shrieks of the other women, trying to get used to the feeling of the narrow concrete walls closing around me, and many, many nights following that. And later, after one of the other girls beat me up in the cafeteria and I was moved to another wing for my own protection, as I lay there trembling in a strange cell, remembering the hate on her face, and the way the guards had waited just that slight instant too long before intervening, counting down the hours until the next day when I’d have to face them all again. And the nights when the dreams come, and I see her face again, and I wake with the stench of blood in my nostrils, shaking and shaking.

Oh, God, I’ve been scared.

But I have never been quite as scared as I was that night in Heatherbrae House.

The girls flaked out early, thankfully, and all three of them were out for the count by half past eight.

And so, at quarter to nine, I climbed the stairs to the bedroom—I could no longer think of it as my bedroom—on the top floor.

I found I was holding my breath as I touched the door handle. I could not help imagining something horrible flying out and ambushing me—a bird, clawing at my face, or perhaps for the writing to have spread like a cancer out from behind the locked door and across the walls of the bedroom. But when at last I forced myself to turn the knob, shoving the door open with a violence that sent it banging against the wall, there was nothing there. The closet door was closed, and the room looked just as it had that first night I had seen it, apart from a few flecks of dust that Jack and I had trodden across the carpet in our haste to get out of the attic.

Still though, I knew I couldn’t possibly sleep here, so I slid my hand under my pillow and grabbed my pajamas, quickly, as if I were expecting to find something nasty there, waiting. I changed into my pajamas in the bathroom, did my teeth, and then I rolled up my duvet and carried it downstairs to the media room.

I knew if I just lay down and waited for sleep I would be waiting a long time, maybe all night, while the images of the attic intruded and the words on the wall whispered themselves again and again in my ears. Drugging myself into oblivion with a familiar film seemed like a better option. At least if I had a loud laugh track ringing in my ears, I would not be wincing at every warped floorboard and sigh from the dogs. I was not sure if I could bear to lie there in silence, waiting for the creak . . . creak . . . to start up again.

Friends seemed about the right level of intensity, and I put it on the huge wide-screen TV, pulled the duvet up to my chin . . . and slept.

* * *

When I woke, it was with a sense of complete disorientation. The TV had gone onto standby in the night, and there was daylight streaming underneath the blackout blinds in the media room.

There was a hot, heavy weight on my legs . . . no . . . two heavy weights, and my chest was tight and wheezing. Hauling myself into a sitting position and pushing my hair out of my eyes I looked down, expecting to see the two dogs, but there was only one black hairy monster sprawled across the foot of the sofa. The other hot little body was Ellie.

“Ellie?” I said huskily, and then felt in the pocket of my dressing gown. My inhaler was in there, as always, but it knocked against something unfamiliar as I drew it out, and with an odd rush I remembered the key, and all the crazy events of yesterday. Then wiped the mouthpiece of the inhaler on my dressing gown, put it to my lips, and took a long hissing puff. The relief was instant, and I took a deeper breath, feeling the release in my chest, and then said again, more loudly, “Ellie. Sweetheart, what are you doing here?”

She woke up, blinking and confused, and then realized where she was and smiled up at me.

“Good morning, Rowan.”

“Good morning to you too, but what are you doing down here?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I had a bad dream.”

“Well, okay, but—”

But . . . what? I wasn’t sure what to say. Her presence had shaken me. How long had she been padding around the house last night by herself without me hearing her? She had evidently been able to get out of bed and come all the way downstairs and tuck herself in beside me without me hearing a thing.

There didn’t seem much I could say at this point though, so I just rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and then pulled my legs out from under the dog and stood up.

As I did, something fell out of the folds of the duvet and hit the floor with a dull ceramic-sounding crack.

The sound made me jump. Had I knocked over a forgotten coffee mug or something? I’d had hot milk last night, but I could have sworn I’d left the cup safely on the coffee table. In fact, yes, there was the mug still sitting on its coaster. So what had made the noise?

It was only when I pulled up the blind and folded the duvet that I saw it. It had rolled halfway under the sofa before coming to a halt, facing me, so that its wicked little eyes and cracked grin seemed to be laughing at me.

It was the doll’s head from the attic.

The feeling that washed over me was—it was like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over my head and shoulders, a drenching, paralyzing deluge of pure fear that left me unable to do anything but stand there, shaking and gasping and shivering.

I heard, as if from a long way away, Ellie’s reedy little voice saying, “Rowan, are you all right? Are you okay, Rowan? You look funny.”

It took a huge effort for me to drag myself back from the brink of panic and realize that she was talking to me, and that I needed to answer.

“Rowan!” There was a frightened whine in her voice now, and she tugged at my nightshirt, her little fingers cold against the skin of my waist. “Rowan!”

“I—I’m okay, honey,” I managed. My voice was strange and croaky in my ears, and I wanted to grope my way to the couch and sit down, but I couldn’t bring myself to go anywhere near that . . . that thing, with its mocking little grin.

But I had to. I couldn’t leave it under there, like an obscene little grenade, waiting to explode.

How? How had it got there? Jack had locked the door, I had seen him do it. And he had preceded me down the stairs. And I had the key in my pocket. I could feel it, warm against my thigh with my own body heat. Had I . . . could I have possibly . . . ?

But no. That was absurd. Impossible.

And yet, there it was.

It was while I was standing there, trying to get a hold of myself, that Ellie bent down to see what I was staring at and gave a little squeal.

“A dolly!”

She crouched, bum jutting in the air like the toddler she still half was, and reached, and I heard a sudden roar in my ears, my own voice shouting, “Ellie, for God’s sake, don’t touch it!” and felt myself snatching her up, almost before I realized what I was going to do.

There was a long moment of silence, Ellie hanging limp and heavy in my arms, my own breath panting in my ears, and then her whole body stiffened and she let out a wail of indignant shock and began to cry, with all the desolate surprise of a child told off for something they had not realized was wrong.

“Ellie,” I began, but she was struggling in my arms, her face red and contorted with upset and anger. “Ellie, wait, I didn’t mean—”