My whole childhood I had felt something wrong in that house, a locked quality to it, a sense of rooms I was not allowed into and questions I was not allowed to ask, and now that my mother lay unconscious and could not stop me, some part of me wanted to walk through it while no one was watching.

The house was exactly as I remembered — immaculate, cold, joyless.

And in the back garden, past the dead vegetable beds, stood the old shed my mother had kept locked my entire life.

Chapter 4 — The Shed

I had asked about that shed as a girl, once, and my mother had slapped me hard enough to split my lip, which was answer enough that I never asked again.

It made noises at night, I used to think — a childish idea I had buried with everything else.