The Spider's House

by Sarah Diamond

Genres: Women's Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

When Anna's husband tells her that he's been offered a job in a different part of the country, she's as happy to move as he is. While she enjoys city life, her second career as a novelist is going nowhere, and she hopes that in the small Dorset village inspiration might return.

After the move, however, she finds it's quite a different story. With few ideas for her new novel and little else to do, life in the country isn't quite what Anna had imagined. But all that changes when Anna discovers something unexpected: Rebecca Fisher, the notorious child murderess of the 1960s, was the previous owner of their cottage.

The more she learns about Rebecca Fisher, the more determined Anna becomes to reveal the truth, a truth which has remained unexplored for over thirty years. But someone else has other ideas - and an unseen enemy threatens her marriage, her safety and ultimately her life . . .

Release date: June 11, 2020

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

I find it very hard to look back to the time before it all started. When the name Rebecca Fisher meant no more to me than it did to anyone else. A blurred black-and-white photograph in the public domain, a name from yellowed newspaper cuttings and out-of-print true crime novels, from people’s darker recollections of the late 1960s. The name Rebecca Fisher had a faded notoriety; a name you never heard spoken but somehow recognised.

Imagining it scrubbed clean of resonance is virtually impossible, these days – in the light of what came later, it verges on the surreal. But at a cerebral level I’m well aware that, once upon a time, I’d never given a conscious thought to the Teasford murder. While I was vaguely aware of its place in a long list of anonymous horrors – the nurse who’d killed more than eighty patients, the man who’d left work smiling one evening, gone home and bludgeoned his family to death – it held no special significance to me.

So much for an author’s intuition. For better or worse, however, my memory’s a lot more impressive than my sixth sense. Even now, when I look back to the evening it began, I can remember every detail: the blustery, dispiriting March of 2002, Carl’s preoccupied mood when he got home from work. It’s a scene that comes back to haunt me rather too often. A memory that feels like being trapped in someone else’s body, seeing through someone else’s eyes.

Anna, he says during dinner, laying his cutlery down. I’ve got something to ask you.

Remembering the way I’d felt then is worse than anything – like looking at a photograph of myself laughing at a party, knowing I’d been paralysed for life on the drive home. At last, I say cheerfully. What is it?

He looks awkward. Look, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but anyway …

He keeps talking. In my memory the scene goes to slow motion, and takes on a nightmare quality. I’d give anything to reach back and tell myself what’s going to happen – scream at myself that, if I say what I did before, it’s all going to start unfolding again. It’ll put me on a direct collision course with Rebecca Fisher, and the murder of Eleanor Corbett, and the truth.

And the words I’m dreading at last, in my own offhand, unsuspecting voice. Well, I wouldn’t mind moving. Not if it means that much to you …

Friday afternoon, and the end of an era. Four years and five months that seemed like half a lifetime: melting summer afternoons eating lunch on a bench outside this building, windy autumn mornings travelling in here by bus, winters when I’d have given a week’s wages for another hour’s warmth in bed. An infinity of trips to Boots in the lunch-hour, of phone calls to and from Carl during the day. Ringing telephones and familiar faces and a reception area I knew as well as the flat I lived in. When today was over, I’d almost certainly never be here again. Everything was done. The next few hours were as pointless as the front row of seats in a cinema, as necessarily unoccupied – I couldn’t take any more work on, and I’d finished tying off the loose ends so the new PR officer wouldn’t be stuck picking up after me on Monday morning. But I couldn’t leave before six, when they’d be giving me my card and leaving present and expecting me to make a little speech. All I could do was enjoy the sunshine through the window, and say a last private goodbye to this broom cupboard of an office.

I looked around as if making a final inventory – the personal leaving cards I’d arranged round the monitor in a riot of colour, the desk that was usually buried under sheaves of paperwork. Time passed too slowly and far too fast, as the minutes ticked out on the wall clock. When the knock at the door yanked me abruptly from reverie, I had to make a conscious effort to get my feelings under control. It had been a good job, but it had only been a good job; it was ridiculous that the prospect of leaving it should stir such a complexity of emotion.

‘Come in,’ I called.

My immediate boss entered, present and card under his arm. A dozen or so of my colleagues followed him, crowding into the confined space and plugging the doorway. My little exclamation of gratitude and joy was unfeigned, but still seemed to tell only half the story; behind it was something diffuse and tender and nameless, the feeling of something long-term and well-liked, coming to a formal, inevitable end.

‘You sure you don’t want to stop off at the pub for a quick one?’ asked Kim. ‘I know we went out for a drink this lunchtime, but still …’

We were walking out of the building together, Naomi and Kim and myself; the kind of amiably casual workplace alliance that didn’t quite extend into personal lives, that limited itself to lunchtime gossip and the occasional drink after hours. Deep down, I knew it wouldn’t survive my leaving, and felt the bittersweet pang return – this was probably the last I’d see of either of them, and they’d soon be filed under Memories.

‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’ It was the truth – sharp regret pricked me as I spoke. ‘I’m meeting someone in fifteen minutes: you know Petra, I must have mentioned her hundreds of times. It’ll be the last we see of each other before the big move.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Naomi. ‘Still, we’ll have to stay in touch. You’ve got our email addresses, we’ve got your home one. It’s going to feel weird without you, to be honest … the place just won’t be the same.’

‘It’ll probably be better organised.’ But, while I spoke flippantly, I couldn’t quite disguise my feelings. ‘I’m going to miss you too, as it happens. Both of you.’

‘What did you think of your leaving card?’ asked Kim unexpectedly. ‘It was our idea to do it like that, you know, looking like the front of your novel and all. I thought the IT bods did a pretty good job on it.’

‘They did a great job,’ I said, ‘I loved it.’ The first part was true, but the second wasn’t, not entirely. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘No worries,’ said Naomi comfortably. ‘Just think, now you’re becoming a lady of leisure, you’ll be free to start another novel. You’re going to, aren’t you?’

‘Well, who knows?’ My voice sounded natural enough – still, I couldn’t help being a little evasive. ‘I’ll just have to wait and see if another idea turns up, I suppose.’

We said our last goodbyes outside the big shopping mall that provided my short-cut into the town centre, all awkward hugs and take cares and vaguely anticlimactic finality. At last, I turned and walked into the near-empty mall. Its dead quiet implied a lot of people in pubs and heading home – empty escalators trundled up to an equally deserted cafe area, a desolate plastic forest of bolted-down seats and tables. The piped music was reedy, echoing.

I stopped by the escalator, where a fountain ran on and on in a place of lush fake greenery, in front of a closed chocolate shop. The music seemed louder here, a tinny instrumental version of ‘Your Song’. I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the square-edged, mirrored pillars nearby – too tall, too skinny, too much curly dark hair. Plus ça change.

Taking my leaving card from under my arm, I extracted it from its envelope and looked at it again. The cover of my first and only published novel, a moody black-and-white shot of a streetlight next to a house. Where the original said A DEEPER DARKNESS, a near-identical font spelt out GOOD LUCK. And, in place of ANNA JEFFREYS, the card spelt out ANNA HOWELL – my married name, the one I worked under. It touched and flattered me that they’d gone to so much trouble to make it look authentic. However, it wasn’t quite what I wanted to be reminded of. Replacing the card carefully in its envelope, I tried to ignore a subtle sense of regret. I’d get another idea sooner or later, I told myself. I was bound to.

Then I was walking on, tucking the envelope under my arm, hurrying on to meet Petra in the Fez and Firkin.

‘So I’m meeting up with him tomorrow, in Murphy’s,’ Petra was saying. ‘Jim and that lot from work are going to be there too, so it should be a good night.’

We were sitting by the window, over our first drink. As always, Petra’s voice was slightly too loud, but not in a jarring, strident way that would make occupants of nearby tables smirk and raise dubious eyebrows at each other. Even in a pub crowded with strangers, she had the air of a well-liked insider – the kind of size fourteen that looked curvy rather than fat, with dark-blonde shoulder-length hair and a sweet, round, snub-nosed face. Petra Mason was the only person I’d ever met who lent immediate physical reality to that tired old cliché, twinkly-eyed. ‘He seems really nice, anyway,’ she continued. ‘Fun. Sexy.’

‘You said that about the last one,’ I reminded her dryly. ‘Right up to the point where you dumped him.’

‘Oh, Rob – he wasn’t right for me. And it was getting too serious. I still feel way too young to settle down.’ Her expression was suddenly and comically horrified. ‘I can’t believe we’re both twenty-seven. And you’re married; you’re going to be a full-time housewife.’

‘Full-time writer.’ My affronted dignity gave way to something else almost instantly, something frank, humble, rueful. ‘Well, sort of. It’s like Rebel Without a Cause – Writer Without a Story.’

‘Sort of? Come on, Anna. You’re published, for God’s sake – got good reviews as well, didn’t you?’

‘For all the good it did. I’ve lost count of the number of people from work who told me they couldn’t find my book anywhere, as if they thought I’d really want to know.’ I waged a brief but desperate battle against the black gloom such acknowledgements always dragged along with them – this was a time for laughter and togetherness with my closest friend. ‘Anyway, I won’t be hearing bad news from them any more. Won’t be hearing anything from them. I can’t quite believe I’ve seen the last of Reading Borough Council.’

‘Wish I could say the same for the Evening Post. So much for my dreams of Fleet Street.’ We laughed, but it tailed off uneasily. I saw Petra looking at me closely. ‘You are looking forward to moving, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t know. I know I should, but … I really haven’t got a clue how I feel.’ It was maddening, as ever, a kaleidoscope of feelings and impulses and instincts: I’d love the country, I’d loathe every minute there, it would be a whole new life, it would be the end of everything I’d known. ‘Still, you never know,’ I said, with determined cheerfulness. ‘Dorset might just inspire me.’

‘Worked for Thomas Hardy.’ Petra smiled, rose from the table. ‘Anyway, my round, isn’t it?’

She went off to the bar while I sat and gazed out of the window. Beautiful early evening quietness looked back at me: closed shops, rosy shadows, occasional people passing – too convivial to be suburban, too reassuring to be at the sharp edge of big-city life. Martha and the Muffins were playing on the jukebox. There was something nostalgic about the old song this evening – as if, already, I could feel the world around me turning into a haunting memory. This time tomorrow, I’d be somewhere else completely …

Then Petra was returning to the table with two bottles of Becks, and I dragged my eyes and mind determinedly back to the here and now.

‘So what’s the new house like?’ she asked curiously, as she sat down. ‘You haven’t said a word about it.’

‘It’s— well, sort of a cottage, I suppose. Two bedrooms. Big garden.’ I was amazed by how little I could really remember of it, the all-important details that made a place three-dimensional in the mind. I had no real sense of it at all, and no idea what it might be like to live in. ‘It was a real bargain,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s a lovely house.’

‘You’ll have to invite me down one weekend, when you’ve settled in. Could do with a trip to the country.’ Her voice was amiable and throwaway until, noticing my expression, she spoke more seriously. ‘Don’t worry about it, Anna. You’ll have a great time there. Be right at home in no time.’

We talked about this and that for a little longer, topics that had no real resonance in either of our minds, that had the advantage of distracting my thoughts from tomorrow. Setting her drink down, Petra suddenly glanced at her watch. ‘God, look at the time. I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to run – I’m supposed to be having dinner with the family.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I told Carl I’d be home by eight.’

We finished the last of our drinks, and walked out into cooling sunlight. Words kept assembling themselves in my mind, and I kept forcing them back awkwardly before realising they’d have to be spoken. ‘Listen, I’ll give you a ring when we’ve moved in, okay? I can give you our new number then.’

‘Of course.’ Petra laughed. ‘You don’t have to sound so apologetic about it, Anna. I’d be really pissed off if you didn’t.’

‘Well, great.’ We were approaching my stop now. As we reached it, I turned to her. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘have a great weekend.’

‘You too, and best of luck with the move. I’m going to miss you – we really have got to stay in touch.’

It was Petra who initiated the hug, and I returned it awkwardly – her side of it was fluid and impulsive, my own as stilted as bad stop-motion photography. Over her shoulder, I couldn’t help but be relieved at the sight of the bus drawing in. ‘That’s mine,’ I said, pulling away. ‘Well. Better go.’

By the time the bus set off, she’d vanished from sight. It was perfectly natural that she should have done, but still, her absence intensified an unease that had haunted me for hours. As if my last permanent link with this place had stopped existing. Looking out of the window, I watched the town centre fading around me for the last time, and waited for home and Carl to arrive.

My husband was the only man I’d ever wanted that I’d actually got. Partly, that was to do with him – he was a great guy, and I adored him – but maybe, just maybe, it had more to do with me.

I knew a lot of people, perfectly normal people with no apparent forcefield of wealth or glamour or brilliance to protect them, who could extend an invitation to lunch or bed or the beginning of a friendship or relationship as casually as offering a packet of crisps. The idea of doing that terrified me. I found it too easy to imagine the face falling behind the bright social smile; at best the quick scramble for a convenient excuse, at worst the cruel and stinging rejection that would haunt me for weeks. It wasn’t natural to me as dark eyes and long fingers were; I knew enough about psychology to understand that, to realise my shyness had been etched into me like a scar. Still, understanding why and how it had been created didn’t stop it existing – from early childhood, I’d only ever been confident from a distance.

I suppose it was no real surprise that, throughout my life, every single one of my close friends had been built along the Petra lines, the sort of people who meet someone new and quite like them, and – sensing a potential friend or boyfriend – have absolutely no trouble asking them if they’d like to come and see that new film some time, if they’d like to meet up for a drink over the weekend, whatever. If I met someone like me, we’d both be too scared of rejection to do any such thing, and would inevitably drift straight back out of each other’s lives. And, now I come to think of it, that had probably happened quite a few times.

With friends, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, it was like getting something for Christmas you hadn’t asked for, and realising it was exactly what you’d wanted. But when it came to boyfriends, different story. I’d been told I could seem difficult to approach, and it meant I got the kind of men who approached the kind of girls who seemed difficult to approach. This type of man came in all shapes and sizes – intelligent, dull, handsome, ugly – but they invariably had two things in common: the Teflon hide of the truly inspired double-glazing salesman, and an honest belief that they were God’s gift to womankind.

The first time I met Carl with Petra’s brother, I knew straight away he wasn’t going to ask me out. It had happened to me too often before – a lively conversation with an attractive male friend-of-a-friend, a smiling goodbye, a backward glance. A lingering sense of regret. He was tall, blond and blue-eyed, with a nice smile and straight-forward good looks that seemed to imply other qualities: intelligence without pomposity, confidence without egomania, sense of humour, but serious about important things. I’d never understood women who complained such-and-such was too nice or too conventional. It was all I’d ever wanted in my perfect man – from an early age, my subconscious probably figured I had enough hang-ups for both of us.

It wasn’t going to happen, he wasn’t going to ask me – but he did. As the evening progressed, we got chatting in earnest. Eventually, he asked me if I’d like to meet up for lunch some time. That was how it started.

Maybe I loved him slightly too much. I could get a bit obsessive about the things that really mattered to me, sometimes.

But that didn’t matter now. Sitting at the back of the bus, things flashed hard and fast behind my eyes – a house I couldn’t really remember, a village I didn’t know at all – the entire course of my life so far trembling on the brink of the unknown.

We had a takeaway that night. The stripped, impersonal look of the kitchen seemed to demand it. We ate pizza out of grease-speckled cardboard boxes and drank beer straight from the can, in a living room that seemed bigger and chillier than usual; all its personal touches had been carefully packed away, leaving nothing but the sofa we sat on and the widescreen TV that flickered unwatched in the corner.

‘This is so weird,’ I said. ‘I feel like a bloody squatter.’

Carl laughed. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I don’t know. It just seems …’ But I couldn’t quite define the taste of incipient upheaval, even to myself, and I laughed as he did, cuddling up to him. ‘Want some garlic bread?’

We ate for a while in companionable near-silence. Beside me, he looked carefree and five years younger, a clean-cut student relaxing after a hard day’s lectures – his responsible, slightly earnest work-face was nowhere in evidence. It was the way he looked on holiday sometimes, in a hotel room, on a beach; as if day-to-day concerns had been packed away like the furniture, temporarily but completely out of sight.

‘You’re really looking forward to moving, aren’t you?’ I asked quietly.

‘Of course.’ Looking at me, he frowned slightly. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I think so.’ But, while it was true, it still seemed to require further clarification. ‘I’m going to miss things here, though. Work. Friends. The town centre. This flat, even …’

‘Don’t forget the traffic. And the crime.’ His broad face creased into a grin. ‘And that wonderful kebab shop over the road. You’re going to lie awake at night dreaming we could have that place back.’

I couldn’t help smiling myself – the kebab shop was the kind of domestic annoyance that could quickly develop into a mordant private joke, and it had done. ‘It’s not going to be the same without the three a.m. drunks every weekend,’ I agreed. ‘There’s nothing like waking up to the sound of top-volume swearing.’

‘The Saturday night fights.’

‘Pavement sick on a Sunday morning.’

‘The joys of city life.’ Finishing his last slice of pizza, he put his arm round me, reassuring, expansive. ‘It’s going to be great in the country, Annie. Peace and quiet. A gorgeous house. More money.’

‘I’ll be a kept woman.’ I was only half-joking. ‘It’s great you’ve been offered this promotion, but – I don’t know – it’s going to feel funny, not working. I don’t think I was cut out to be a housewife.’

‘Who says you have to be? You can get a job in the area if you start feeling too bored. Or you can start writing again. Get going on that second novel.’

‘I’ll have to be inspired first.’ My thoughts turned back to that well-designed, well-meant leaving card, on the kitchen counter where I’d left it. ‘I hope I get another idea soon,’ I said. ‘I really miss writing, you know.’

‘I do know. But I’m sure you will.’ I saw him do a small double-take and check his watch, becoming momentarily serious again, the Regional Sales Manager that he’d be in our new life. ‘Oh, yeah, I’d better call Mum and Dad. Remind them we’re off first thing tomorrow.’

‘Give them my love.’

‘Will do. Won’t be long.’

He got up, went out towards the hallway phone. I found myself listening carefully. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’d always been interested in other people’s families and how they differed from each other. Carl’s couldn’t have been further removed from Petra’s, who seemed to see each other as everything from loan companies to lodgers to confidantes as the situation arose. Carl, his younger brother and his parents never seemed to call each other just to chat, but would never have dreamed of ignoring a formal milestone – in this case, our last evening in Reading. Hearing Carl talk to them, I was always obscurely reminded of a Japanese tea ceremony; created and driven by protocol, charming, amiable, but essentially formal.

‘All right, Dad,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll look forward to it. Thanks a lot, I’m sure we will. Give our love to Nick when you see him. Bye.’

I heard him hanging up, his footsteps in the hallway. He came back into the living room and sat down, looking cheerful. ‘Well, that’s that done,’ he said. ‘Dad says they’re going to send us a little moving-in present – probably a set of saucepans, knowing Mum. I spoke to her as well. She sends her love.’

I couldn’t help asking, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. ‘What did she say?’

‘Oh, just the usual. She hopes you don’t get lonely there, you can always give her a ring if you do.’ Seeing my expression, he came up behind me and closed his arms round my shoulders. ‘Come on, Annie, it’s nothing to get upset about. You know she means well.’

‘I know, I know. I’m just being silly.’ I hurried to change the subject. ‘What time did you say the removal van was turning up tomorrow?’

‘Half seven – I rang to double-check with them this afternoon. Better get an early night.’ The comforting pressure of his hands on my forearms became something else, moving downwards, inwards, gradually melting from practical into sensual. ‘It’s our last night here, after all. It would be a shame not to celebrate.’

‘Sounds good to me.’ I turned slightly, he bent down, we kissed. A giddy, weightless holiday feeling came out of nowhere to become an intense aphrodisiac, as if our drive tomorrow would end in some airport concourse; sitting in a cafe that faced out onto walkways and perfume shops, drinking coffee, waiting for our flight, and preparing ourselves for a whole new world.

‘I spy, with my little eye …’

We’d been driving for quite a while, in the separate-isolation-booths silence that tended to fall unexpectedly during long journeys and set amazingly fast. Carl’s ironic voice took me by surprise.

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘It’s something beginning with M.’

He grinned. ‘How did you guess?’

‘There’s nothing to see but motorway. Doesn’t seem as if there has been for hours.’ Beyond the car windows, it extended stark and two-dimensional as an old computer game – black tarmac, blue sky, featureless green stretching out on both sides as far as the eye could see. ‘How much longer?’

‘Next to no time, now. The removal guys are probably there already.’

Silence fell again, the beginnings of a bad headache buzzing in my mind – another key symptom I associated with too-long, too-featureless drives. But yesterday’s uncertainty had vanished without a trace. Now it was blown effortlessly away by spring breezes and sunlight – so clear, so pale, so fresh – like a nightmare that had faded beyond recognition three seconds after you opened your eyes.

We turned off the motorway onto a medium-sized road, then almost instantly onto a narrower one.

‘Well,’ said Carl, ‘here we go.’

It was extraordinary, how quickly our scenery had changed. Through the windows, the relentless brutal ugliness of our surroundings was gone without a trace. I saw fields like brown corduroy, hay stacked in neat bales; the May afternoon suddenly becoming beautiful as it touched on old honey-coloured farmhouses, a grey-dappled pony grazing idly in a field.

‘You know,’ I said quietly, ‘I’d forgotten how lovely it was.’

‘Like something from a postcard, isn’t it?’ He laughed – unexpected elation affected us in different ways, making me dreamy and thoughtful, filling him with a vast, undiscriminating good humour. ‘Almost makes me want to pack in Taylor’s Furniture and start my own farm. Can just see myself milking the cows every morning.’

Down another narrow side road, trees closed in around and above us. Entering the shadowy canopy of dark-green leaves was like diving into an outdoor pool in summer; the chill through the open windows was immediate and welcome. A sign came into view to the left. ABBOTS NEWTON.

‘I’ll get a state-of-the-art company tractor,’ Carl was saying. ‘You’ll just love feeding the chickens and making the jam.’

‘It might just grow on me.’ He was joking, but everything around us sold the picture-postcard idyll in earnest; pretty little cottages, lush greenery, an infinitely seductive advert for placid, constructive, semi-rural pursuits.

‘I might take up gardening here, you know. No, really. I think I might like it.’ Carl turned right, and we entered the village equivalent of a town centre. I saw only three cars, and they were all parked outside a Tudor-looking building I’d have bet on being the real thing. The sign swinging over the door in the breeze read THE BULL INN, three stars. Across the road from it, the smallest shop I’d ever seen announced its identity as ABBOTS NEWTON STORES.

‘For your sake,’ Carl said, ‘I really hope that place sells fags.’

‘If not, I’ll just have to stock up in bulk. Come to think of it, I’m dying for one now … where the hell did I put them?’

But we were almost there, no point in lighting up now. I vaguely recalled our surroundings from our brief house-inspecting trip in March, and recognised the handful of other houses we passed before turning into a driveway.

Our driveway, I had to remind myself, it’s ours, now. I found it impossible to fully take in. What had probably been built as a single house in the late nineteenth century was now knocked into two, and a waist-high privet hedge bisected the front garden. The facade of the house was blinding white, the tiled roof the colour of bitter chocolate, and surrounding trees and bushes were dark or light green depending on where shadow fell. I had an impression of colours squeezed fresh out of the tube, laid thick and unblended on canvas, the world coloured in with the unrealistic precision of a diligent ten-year-old.

‘I can’t believe I never noticed how gorgeous it was,’ I murmured.

‘I know what you mean.’ For a second or two, I saw him drinking in the scene as I did before becoming practical – his gaze moved to the removal van already there, the two men carrying our Reading coffee table through the open front door. Everything in his demeanour changed from reflective to businesslike. ‘Suppose I’d better go and give them a hand,’ he said, then, with a quick backward smile, ‘welcome home, Annie.’

I couldn’t share his no-rest-for-the-wicked urgency, not today. A dreamlike feeling had settled over me, and I moved as if in slow motion. He’d entered the house before I unbuckled my seatbelt, got out, leant against the passenger door. I inhaled the scent of this place as if I could somehow make it part of me, discovering something I’d never expected to find here: a bone-deep hunger to belong.

‘Hello, you must be one of the new neighbours!’

The voice across the hedge startled me, and I glanced round sharply. A woman had come out of the adjacent house, and its front door stood wide open behind her. She could have been anything between forty-five and sixty, plump, pleasant-faced, barely-lined; she wore a short-sleeved shirt, and her forearms were white to the elbows. ‘I’d shake hands,’ she said apologetically as she approached the hedge, ‘but I’d get flour all over you – I’m afraid I’ve been baking. I just saw your car pull up, and thought I’d pop out to say hello.’

‘It’s nice to meet you.’ We smiled at each other, and I noticed more details – the slightly anxious blue eyes, the wisps of mid-brown, probably-dyed hair, escaping from a makeshift bun. ‘I’m Anna Howell. My husband Carl’s off helping the removal men.’

‘I’m Liz. Liz Grey.’ She turned and called towards her open front door, her voice startlingly loud in the near-silence. ‘Helen! Come on out and meet the new people!’ The woman who emerged was easier to put an age to than Liz, around forty-five. She looked even taller