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moment the door slammed hard. The sound and movement made me jump. For over a minute, I stood petrified, unable to speak or move. There was no other sound. The house was desperately quiet, as though it was waiting for something. I told myself that a draft had slammed the door, that a window must have been left open, that the rising wind had been to blame, that and nothing else.
    Resisting the temptation to turn and hurry back downstairs, I stepped through the doorway and switched on the light.
    An empty room. No furniture, not even a chair. It had been a bedroom once, it was large enough, and there was an old fireplace to one side, its grate blocked up. A large patch of damp sat on the wall opposite. I noticed right away that the window was firmly closed. Then I caught sight of something lying on the floor.
    It was Sarah's straw hat, or what was left of it. Someone—or something—had ripped it to shreds, leaving it recognizable only by the band that still hung to the tatters of the broken crown. I stood staring rigidly at it, not understanding.
    It was as I stared that I began to comprehend exactly where I was. There was a room, Sarah had said, a particular room in which the horror of the house was concentrated. I do not know how I knew— not at that moment, not then. But I did know, I knew with absolute certainty that the room I stood in was the room she had meant.
Chapter 6
    I passed that night in very little comfort. I told myself that I had seen nothing preternatural, heard only what I had taken, perhaps wrongly, to be footsteps or the slamming of a door, imagined a voice uttering a name that had no meaning for me. Yet I could not rest entirely easy. I was assailed by uncomfortable thoughts.
    Around midnight, I rang the London friends I had been meaning to ring earlier. Tim and Susan always went to bed late, I knew they would not mind. Susan came to the phone.
    "Susie? This is Peter."
    "Peter? What the hell are you ringing at this time for?"
    "It's only midnight, Susie. Or it is down here in Cornwall."
    "Well, it isn't in bloody London. It's after three in the morning here. You've probably woken Rachel. I'll never get her back to sleep."
    Rachel was their daughter, a child of four.
    I looked at my watch. Susie was right. What had made me think it was only midnight?
    "Susie, I’m dreadfully sorry. I was sure it was only twelve. One of the clocks must have stopped or something."
    "Are you all right, Peter? You don't sound yourself."
    I hesitated. Susan often jumped to conclusions. She was a journalist, a professional maker of snap judgments.
    "It's Sarah," I said finally. "I think she's gone back to London. Have you got her there?"
    Silence for what seemed like minutes.
    "Have you two quarreled again?" There was a resigned quality to her voice. "I thought you were getting it together, Peter. I thought all that was over."
    "We were, we are. It's just. . . Listen, Susan, it's difficult to explain. Something frightened her, something stupid. A woman in the local pub . . . The thing is, I think she took a sudden decision to leave. I haven't heard from her since last night, but. . ."
    "Well, she isn't here."
    I could tell from the tone in Susan's voice that I was being blamed. If this had been some years earlier, she might have been right. I had been to blame once. But not this time.
    "Have you heard from her?"
    "No. I’ve been in all day, I would have been here if she'd rung. Have you tried ringing your own number?"
    "Of course I have," I said. "I can't get anything but the answering machine. You couldn't . . ." I paused. "You couldn't pop round in the morning, could you? See if she's all right, needs anything."
    "I can't, Peter. I've got a meeting all morning."
    "Well, what about Tim? Could he go over, do you think?"
    I sensed reluctance. They had been involved so many times in our messy lives, in our fallings-out and makings-up. I think they had looked forward to our holiday as much as we had done. And yet they were our