I still hadn’t decided what to do about Caernaven. I spoke to Matt about it over dinner one night.

“Difficult,” said Matt. He laid his knife and fork down precisely in the centre of his plate. “It’s your childhood home, Maudie. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, darling. You must have some preference.”

I took a sip of wine and thought. What I wanted was for someone else to tell me what to do and then to do it for me, but I thought I had probably better not say that.

“Not sure,” I said. Matt sighed and I went on quickly. “Maybe – well, rent it out. I mean, once it’s sold, it’s sold forever.”

“If that’s what you think is best.”

“What about the board?” he said.

I shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Has Mr. Fenwick mentioned it again?”

“Not yet. But I’ve got to give him an answer sometime.”

“What do you want to do?”

I put my head into my hands. “I don’t know,” I said.

Matt got up to clear our plates. I could almost hear the forbearance sighing out of him as he went past. I would have to do something, anything; his patience was wearing thin.

“There’s still a lot of stuff to sort out up there,” I said, slowly. “I might need to take another trip.”

This happened sooner than I thought. The next evening we received a phone call from Aunt Effie’s housekeeper, Jane. Aunt Effie had had a fall, broken her collarbone and sprained her ankle, and would be in hospital for the next couple of weeks. She was asking for me to come and see her.

“Why?” I asked Jane. “I mean, is there any reason in particular? Apart from, well, just wanting to see me?”

“I don’t know, Maudie. She’s on quite heavy duty painkillers and she’s sometimes a little – well, confused. She just insists she has to see you. Will you come?”

I promised to drive up the next day or two. After I put the phone down, I went into the kitchen, hungry for a glass of wine. Matt had disappeared into the study and I could see a thin blue ribbon of smoke drifting from its wide open doorway. He was smoking a lot more these days and I knew why; he was stressed about work. He was stressed about me.

Our dinner plates were stacked on the kitchen counter. I rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. It was one of Mrs. Dzinkska’s days tomorrow but I drew the line at leaving her a pile of encrusted dishes. I shut the door and switched on the machine, drawing a little comfort, as always, from the reassuring hum as the washing cycle began. I let my gaze drift across the room, coming to rest on the window. Immediately I thought of Jessica.

I reached for my wristband but I'd taken it off when I'd showered earlier. I pinched the skin of my wrist instead. It didn't work. I kept seeing her face as she turned away from me, outside the pub, and her retreating form disappearing down the road.

Still at the sink, I caught sight of myself in the glass-fronted cupboard above it. At the sight of my rigid face, I suddenly realised how idiotic I was being. How self-pitying. I straightened up properly and took a deep breath.

That night, Matt and I made love for the first time in days. I lay in his arms afterwards, listening to his breathing returning to normal, and thinking, for once, of something different. I wanted to talk to him about what had been happening. No matter what Jessica had asked me, I knew I had to tell him.

"Matt," I said softly. He made a low, inarticulate noise in his throat. Encouraged, I went on.

"I know things have been a bit odd between us, lately," I said, almost whispering. "I know that sometimes - well - I'm a bit odd and I do silly things and I know you find it frustrating."

“You’re okay, silly thing,” he said in a sleep-slurred kind of voice. I laid my head back against his shoulder, listening to the steady pound of his heartbeat in my ear.

"It's just that, strange things have been happening," I said. I could feel my own heartbeat start to speed up as I thought of what I was about to say. “Very strange. Actually, it’s only just really sinking in for me how strange they really are.”

My mouth was drying up. I coughed softly to loosen my throat. “Jessica–” My voice failed and I coughed again. “Jessica – she came back.”

It sounded so ridiculous. I almost blushed, as if it mattered in the dark. For the first time, I confronted the essential strangeness of it – that Jessica, left for dead, back in the distant past, had been resurrected. Just for me. Not for the first time, I felt a flicker of unease.

“She says she’s come back,” I said slowly. I could feel the slow rise and fall of Matt’s ribcage against my cheek. He hadn’t said anything. The darkness sucked at my voice, shredding it down to a whisper. It felt oddly confessional. “But I don’t know, Matt. I don’t know what to think. When you say to me that I’m talking to thin air – and I close my eyes and when I open them, she’s there...” I ran out of breath and took a great rasping gulp of air. I couldn’t quite believe I was going to say it. “Sometimes... sometimes I think I’m just losing my mind.”

I couldn’t say any more for the moment. I looked down at him, trying to make out his face in the darkness. I could see the black fan of his eyelashes lying against the curve of his cheekbone, etched in shadow.

“Matt?” I said, in a more normal voice. He made no answer and I realised he was asleep.

Chapter Twenty Four

Aunt Effie was asleep when I arrived. She lay on the hospital bed, her body almost lost beneath the covers; she barely made a mound under the blankets. Her white hair, usually so carefully set, looked limp and yellowed under the harsh strip lights. Her housekeeper, Jane, was sat by the bed reading Take a Break magazine.

"I thought you said she only broke her collar bone?" I said, when Jane and I were in the corridor with the door pulled closed behind us.

Jane shrugged helplessly.

"She's a very old woman, Maudie. She can't bounce back like you or I could. If you ask me-" she lowered her voice and moved a little closer to me. "If you ask me, she won't recover from this. It's too much of a shock to the system."

I was shocked again, by the jolt that this gave me.

"But-" I said, not even sure of what I wanted to say.

Jane patted my arm. Her eyes were limpid with sympathy.

Aunt Effie hadn't moved position on the bed but her eyes were open. I stood for a moment by the side of the bed, hesitating, and then sat down.

"Maudie," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"Do you want some water or something?" I asked. I couldn't get the tone of my voice right - I sounded too lighthearted, falsely jovial.

"Maudie," she said. "I'm sorry."

“Don’t worry,” I said, thinking she was going to apologise for dragging me up here. I said it automatically, without thought.

"I'm sorry," she said again, in her cracked old voice.

I felt something, a tremor of curiosity. Or was it fear? What was she apologising to me for? "Sorry for what, Auntie?"

She moved her head from side to side on the pillow.

"We were wrong," she said. "I think now we were wrong. You should have been in a hospital, you should have had treatment much earlier. We didn’t realise how bad things were."

I went cold. She'd never spoken about that time, never. It was as if it had been rubbed out of existence. It might not have happened.

I was silent. She cleared her throat. “If I thought you’d ever do what you did, we wouldn’t have hesitated. Maudie, you do understand?" Tears were shining in her eyes, the whites webbed with tiny threads of blood. “You don’t know how bad I feel that we didn’t see what was happening. I should have known what you were going to do.”