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After a while, she’d grown tired of his attitude – she had nothing to be embarrassed of – and they’d spilt up. It was easier to be alone.
    Applying lipstick, a plum shade, only slightly darker than her natural lip colour, Ruby checked her appearance before heading, once again, to Brookbridge. Dressed in boots, smart jeans and a fitted v-necked sage green jumper that leant warmth to her skin tone and hazel eyes, she decided she looked just the right side of ‘smart’ – not office-type ‘smart’ but casual ‘smart’ – a look carefully cultivated over the years to put her clients at ease. She was sure most of them expected some raging ‘New Age’ hippie to turn up, complete with flowing skirts and tie-dye bandana. She could see the relief in their eyes when she arrived and they saw that she was not some nut job after all; that she was, in fact, just like them.
    Grabbing her navy three-quarter length coat off the hook beside her and shrugging it on, she left her ground floor flat, the lower half of a Victorian house in De Montfort Road, set one street back from the main thoroughfare through town. Almost immediately outside was parked her dark blue Ford Focus. Not a glamorous car, by any stretch of the imagination, but a reliable one and, more importantly, cheap to fix when it broke down, which to its credit and her relief, it hardly ever did.
    Brookbridge was thirty minutes from Lewes: a pleasant drive, down a succession of country roads, some narrower than others, flanked either side with green fields and trees, many of them bare, having shed their leaves as autumn deepened into winter. Passing through the tiny village of Cromer, which had given the old asylum its name, Ruby turned left onto another country road, a road that eventually led to Heathfield if she continued along it. Instead, she turned off at the estate, bypassing a billboard which proudly informed anyone interested that highly desirable houses were still available to buy, with 2, 3, 4 or 5 bedrooms to choose from. Highly desirable? It was not how she’d describe them, and not just because of their former residents. The estate looked hastily thrown up, profit being the obvious motive. Windows and doors in cheap white plastic – no character whatsoever, just a series of bland boxes built side by side. What’s more, old asylum buildings still lay dotted around the estate’s fringes. They were boarded up now, except for the odd gap where local kids had torn down the chipboard panels looking for cheap thrills – and no doubt sometimes getting more than they’d bargained for. And there were usually billboards outside these buildings too – this time advertising the site’s development potential. Future work at least, mused Ruby, and it wasn’t the developers she was thinking of. Beside the estate lay extensive woodland, part of what was known as the ancient Forest of Anderida during the Roman occupation of Britain. Cool and leafy, Ruby had been for a walk there once but the atmosphere was oppressive; nothing to do with the Romans, more the pain of the asylum inmates reaching far and wide.
    Turning into Rowan Drive and noting some of the residents had already placed heavily decorated Christmas trees strategically in their windows, Ruby parked neatly in front of No.13. She was standing on the pavement, admiring No.15’s Christmas tree, the lights switched on despite it being daytime, a warm red and green glow reaching tantalisingly outwards, when a woman with dyed-blonde hair scraped mercilessly back into a ponytail came rushing at her, shouting, “At last! At last!”
    Grabbing hold of Ruby’s arm, the woman, her client Ruby presumed, practically dragged her up the garden path and into her house.
    Shivering dramatically as she closed the door, Sarah Atkins spoke hurriedly.
    “I don’t know what’s in this house, but I hate being alone here. Not that I ever am – alone that is – he watches me, everywhere I go. In the shower or when