‘Can you describe them?’

‘I could see faces, but not clearly, and I only saw them for a second.’

‘What faces? Male, female?’

She was still staring up, as if transfixed. Her voice sounded remote, almost trance-like. ‘It looked like a male and a female and a child. They were sort of there but not there.’

She continued to stare.

Her words resonated through him, chilling him. He looked up again at the tiny window, higher up than the sash windows on either side of it, right beneath the eaves of the roof, trying to get his bearings on where exactly it was. ‘Which room is that?’ he said. ‘I can’t work it out.’

‘Isn’t it the one next to our bathroom?’

‘No.’ He pointed with his finger, moving from left to right on the first floor. ‘That’s Jade’s room; next is the yellow room and next is the window of its en suite. Then next to that is the blue room.’ They’d named these two spare rooms, as well as Jade’s room, after the colour of their wallpaper. ‘Those two at the end are our bathroom window and then our bedroom.’

She followed his finger, concentrating hard. Then she looked back at the one below the broken guttering, where she had just seen the figures. ‘So what’s that window? Which room is that?’

‘I really don’t know. I’m not sure but—’

He froze in mid-sentence.

Both of them saw them now. It looked like a whole family, parents and a child in silhouette, peering out in turn, one after the other, through the small square of glass, before they disappeared.

‘It could be Jade, darling,’ he said. ‘Trying to spook us again.’

Her voice trembling, Caro said, ‘No, Ollie, I don’t think so. They’re all still in her room.’

‘They’ve rigged something up, the little bastards!’ He ran back to the atrium door, opened it, went inside again and sprinted up the stairs, followed by Caro. He turned left when he reached the landing, then opened the door to the room where he thought they had seen the faces. But there was no sign of anyone having been in here. Just the large, empty spare bedroom, with ancient, peeling, blue and white floral wallpaper, and a sash window. It had an old, stained washbasin, several floorboards missing and clusters of black mould on one wall. An empty light fitting dangled at the end of a brown cord from a ceiling rose. The room felt cold and smelled musty.

He shut the door then opened the next one along and peered in. It was another empty room, with yellow wallpaper curling at the edges in places. The bathroom was in a similar state of neglect, with a large sash window that did not look as if it had been opened in years.

Followed by Caro, he strode down to Jade’s room and opened the door, to be greeted by a blast of music and the sight of Jade, Ruari – with his pop-star hair and big smile – and Phoebe, each swivelling round in turn, holding up a placard on which the word YES! was written on one side, and NO! on the other.

Seeing her father, Jade stepped forward and stopped the music, then looked at him. ‘Dad!’ she said, reproachfully.

‘Were any of you just in the room next to this one?’ he asked.

‘You’re interrupting, Dad, this is really important!’ Jade said.

‘Have you been in either of the empty bedrooms in the past few minutes, Jade, Phoebe, Ruari?’ he asked, ignoring her protest.

‘Dad, this is soooo awkward. We’re busy, OK? We’ve not been anywhere.’ Phoebe and Ruari nodded in concurrence.

Ollie stared hard at the window. As he closed the door he was so preoccupied he barely heard the music start up again. Caro gave him a quizzical look.

‘It’s not them,’ he said. ‘But there’s something I can’t work out. We’ve got Jade’s room, then there’s this spare room.’ He opened the door, entered the yellow room, pointed at the window then went through into the decrepit adjacent bathroom. ‘Here’s the next window.’

Back out on the landing they opened the next door along, and peered into the blue room. ‘OK, there’s this window. Then next door along to the left is our bathroom, and on our right is the yellow bathroom, correct?’

She nodded, doing her own calculations.

‘Which mean’s we’ve got an extra window.’

‘An extra window? That’s not possible,’ she said.

He walked slowly along between the doors to the blue and yellow rooms, tapping the wall all the way, but there was no change in the sound. They both went back outside into the rear garden. Ollie took a photograph with his phone, told Caro to stay where she was, then strode back into the house and upstairs. He went through into the blue room, walked over to the window and tried to open it. But the sash cords were broken on either side and he struggled to lift it more than a few inches. He kneeled and called down to Caro through the gap. ‘OK, darling, I’m in the blue room and I’m now going into the yellow room’s bathroom, which should be the next window along.’

He went into the yellow room and through to the bathroom. It was also a sash window, smaller than the ones in both bedrooms, but equally busted. He struggled hard to lift it six inches. Below him he could see Caro looking baffled.

‘OK, darling?’ he called down. ‘Is this the next window?’

Her eyes widened in shock. She was staring up at the house, a short way to his left.

‘Darling?’ he said again, louder. ‘Darling? Is this the next window?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s not, Ollie. There’s a window in between. And there’s people in there.’

49

Sunday, 20 September

Ollie raced out of the yellow room and back again into the blue room. It was deserted and icy, the temperature seeming to have dropped since he’d last been in it, only a couple of minutes ago. It was like entering a walk-in deep freeze. He went over to the window and called down. ‘Caro, are you sure? This is the next window!’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘No, there’s a small one in between. They’re not there any more. But they were, Ols.’

He struggled as hard as he could to lift the broken window enough to get his head out and look properly, but it would not budge. How the hell could there be an extra window, he wondered? Had there originally been another room, and the window left in place when it was knocked through? He had seen plans of the house a few months ago, before making an offer on the place, when he was discussing work that needed to be done with the surveyor. But he couldn’t remember at this moment where they were.

‘Wait there, Caro!’ he said.

He went downstairs and out of the front door, where several metal ladders belonging to the builders lay on the ground. He selected the longest, lugged it round to the rear of the house, and propped it up against the wall beneath the tiny window with the broken guttering. The ladder didn’t quite reach, but it would at least enable him to see in, he calculated. The base was resting on the mossy flagstones of the rear patio.

‘Be careful, Ols.’

‘If you hold it to stop it slipping, darling.’

She grabbed the vibrating ladder as he began to climb, jamming her feet against both legs, watching him anxiously.

Ollie climbed slowly and carefully. He’d always been scared of heights, and even a short distance above the ground made him uneasy. And as he neared the top he realized he was short of breath again. He stopped for a moment, feeling giddy, his head swimming.

‘Ols, darling, are you all right?’ Caro called out, anxiously.

‘Yes.’ The word came out as a gasp. He carried on until his hands reached the top rung, where he was still not high enough to see in the window. Another couple of feet. Very slowly, still holding the top rung, he raised his feet up one rung, then the next.