But the steps had not been kind—nor had they been quick. And by the time I opened that final door to the final room I had largely succumbed to the inevitable; by which I mean I hardly gave the space a glance—seeing only a jumble of blankets on a four-poster bed and a rickety nightstand crowded with half-emptied bottles of water—before quickly turning to leave.
At which, before I’d even gained the stairs, I froze. Dead in my tracks.
The bottles of water. The plastic containers labelled Aquafina and Dasani—all of them half-full.
My heart thumped against my chest.
“Honey?” I said, in the near perfect silence, “Are you there?”
And then I waited; feeling that even an apparition; even a ghost, a chimera, would be welcome. But there was nothing. Not so much as a creak in the floor. Not so mu
