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laugh.”
    She dismissed him with a shake of the head and marched up the path to the door. With her back turned, Silas glanced up at the bedroom window, his heart in his throat.
    The figure, he was relieved to discover, was not there.
    The figure that, with its drawn white face and thin frame, had looked remarkably like the old man from the photograph.

4

    D espite her hatred of the place, Oona was pleased to be back at Cairn Cottage. Her bladder had been full for most of the return journey, and she had chosen to tolerate the discomfort rather than suffer the indignity of relieving herself on the moors. As she entered the bathroom and reeled from the stench, however, she wondered if she’d made the correct decision.  
    She identified the source of the odor immediately: the heavily stained carpet. Never a good idea in any toilet, she thought, least of all one that had a turnover of new occupants every week. It may have only been a drop or two from each male guest, but the collected samples of stale urine had formed a noxious aroma that caused her to gag as she inhaled.
    Oona reached out to lift the lid of the toilet bowl and stopped, noticing the film of yellowed grime that coated the edge. Grimacing, she grabbed a wad of toilet paper and used it to winch open the lid.
    Reluctantly taking a seat (she hated using shared toilets, and only ever used public bathrooms when it was an absolute emergency), she felt a surge of emotion and gritted her teeth to stem the tears.
    They had been in Yorkshire for less than twenty-four hours and already she missed her home comforts and her clean, modern, un-spooky house. She had to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake in coming here. Six more days of this?
    But she couldn’t be fussy and she didn’t want to complain. Sometimes you just have to put up with these things.
    This trip was about Silas, and easing his stress. As much as he had tried to keep from her the details of what had happened, the physical toll on him had been shocking, and she had begged him to let her help. She had extracted some basic information, mostly about him not getting along with his colleagues like he used to, and she understood that. She knew from her own experience that it was rarely the job that got you down but the people you worked with.
    She tried to put a positive spin on her surroundings. Compared to the rest of the cottage, the bathroom wasn’t so bad. Okay, so the bathtub had a ring of grime around it and a rusted plughole, but it didn’t look wholly uninviting. As she finished up she decided that a nice, soothing bath was just the thing to put her in a positive mood for the rest of the day.
    She leaned over the tub and turned the hot faucet. Water pumped out in intermittent bursts before settling into a steady stream. She let the tub fill for a while, then ran her hand under the water and winced.
    It was ice cold.

5

    S ilas warmed his hands over the flames that burned inside the large stone fireplace. The temperature in the cottage had dropped steadily throughout the day, to the point that his toes were now numb and his muscles ached and his breath plumed ahead of him when he exhaled.
    He removed the poker from its rack and stoked the flames. Replacing the poker, he noticed a pair of black cast iron cats atop the andirons, staring grimly ahead with glass eyes.
    He looked around, taking in the room’s exposed beams, its patterned, swirling carpet, the paintings on the walls. The furniture consisted of an old Chinese coffee table, two vintage armchairs and a matching sofa upholstered in a green and red floral fabric. He recalled his long-dead grandparents having identical seats in their warden-controlled apartment when he used to visit as a kid.
    He dropped into an armchair and cracked open his book: Don’t Stress It! The Complete Guide to Mental Health and Wellbeing . Oona had found it while browsing the self-help section of a bookshop and bought it for him.
    She was big on that sort of