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After Michelle left, I spent the day playing with Victoria. Her mood was improved. The calm before the storm. I went to bed around ten and I slept fitfully, punishment for a long sleep in the daytime.

Now I am wide awake at 2 a.m. So is Victoria. I bundle her up, put the rain cover on her pram to protect her from the cold air, and we go out. At first I walk, seemingly aimlessly, just to keep warm. But I know where I’m really going.

The past, that summer, the lake itself has a magnetic pull. It’s an unhealed scab demanding to be picked at.

I haven’t walked this way since the day her body was found. There are no sirens in the distance or police cars this time. No TVs burbling through open windows. All the houses are dark. I use the light on my phone to show me the way ahead, praying that the battery doesn’t die. When I get to the narrow path, fields on either side, I run one hand along the dry-stone wall all the way up to the lake. It takes me around forty minutes. It was quicker when I was younger and I didn’t have a pram.

Victoria is sleeping now, of course she is, oblivious to where we are, the dark water of the lake, still and stagnant. I have to keep moving to stay warm, and I begin to walk around the footpath. It’s an automatic reaction to keep looking behind me every few steps.

The moon is low and Christmassy white over the lake. You can see a shallow perimeter, the fields just beyond the lake with grass almost waist height. Beyond that it’s just blackness.

I walk further round, pulled towards the car park. As we get closer, the landscape reveals more of itself. I know I should go back, into the house, into bed, under the covers. But I carry on over the mound. I never could resist following the others.

The hill is steep and bumpy on the other side. I clutch the handle of the pram as tightly as I can, until my fingers ache, the mental vision of it rolling away from me, bouncing over the rough terrain, tipping over.

I walk down slowly, inching bit by bit, feeling my way first with my foot each time for any unseen mounds or holes, grabbing clumps of grass for balance. It still jolts the pram around but Victoria doesn’t stir. Strange to think she will wake in the morning and never know that she has been here; the things that happen while you’re unaware.

The car park looks empty at first, but then I see two cars parked in the corner, their shapes gradually emerging. I should go back, but I’m incapable: the hooks are in, the need to know more about who could have been up here that night, waiting in the darkness. My steps are speeding up involuntarily now. When we reach the bottom of the hill, the momentum thrusts me further into the car park than I intended; I planned to stay at the edges.

I stop and stand still for a minute, letting the night settle again, and my eyes adjust. One of the cars flashes its lights two distinct times, some kind of Morse code. Then it’s black and still once more and I am not sure for a moment whether I imagined it. But there is the flash again. My breath sticks in my chest, my stomach is snakes. A car door opens and closes. I am rooted to the spot just for a second, but then I run and don’t stop until I reach the road. As I try to catch my breath, I close my eyes and spring them open, praying that I will wake up at the house.

I walk home as quickly as possible, body tensed the whole way, my feet burning underneath me.

When I get back, I get straight into bed. Victoria sleeps through. I do, too, until shattered glass pierces my sleep and wakes me; a dream of a mirror cracking and breaking of its own accord. The clock says it’s 4 a.m. I go downstairs to get water. Victoria will probably need feeding soon. Stepping into the living room, something cracks under my sole. A sharp, stabbing pain on my sole. I check with my fingers; the skin isn’t broken. When I flick the light on one of the snow globes is on the floor, broken, bleeding out lilac glitter. The dream must have been caused by the sound of the glass smashing, real life breaking in.

The light in the kitchen is still off and I don’t move for a moment, the realisation that someone could be in there. My first thought is Nathan. Maybe he’s found out where I am, Mum’s address.

‘Nathan? Is that you?’

Silence. I grab one of the snow globes with a heavy ceramic base.

A sudden pop of white light across the kitchen floor makes me almost drop it. The security light outside has come on, the motion sensor activated. The silence is broken by the sound of me rushing through, throwing on the light and wrenching the back door open.

‘Who’s there? Nathan, is it you?’

Surely, he wouldn’t creep around like that.

There’s just the cool quiet of the night, the panic creeping up around my throat. And it hits me, then. The mice… what Michelle said. One of them could have knocked off the snow globe and set off the light sensor. The tension in my limbs falls away. Relief escapes as a laugh, my breath a fog in the air.

Lighter, I float out into the garden, the cool air refreshing under my nightgown, the grass soaking under my feet. The flowers look otherworldly in silhouette.

Something bright red catches my eye amongst the grass and, when I pick it up, I see it’s a red toy car. Next to it are two miniature chocolate bars, one of them squashed and smooshed up. The children who were in the garden must have dropped them.

When I get to the pond, my reprieve is snatched away again. Something is floating in the water. Something flesh-coloured. My mind leaps to the baby, but she’s sleeping upstairs.

When she was born, she didn’t cry at first. The whole room held its breath for a moment or two, then burst into life and they took Victoria away from me. When they brought her back she was crying and wriggling, purple blotches on her skin. They said it was quite common, not to worry, and left it at that, but sometimes that silent space haunts me.

My hands are already in the water and they’re met by something cold and hard. It’s a doll, its plastic face moulded into hard lines, dimples more like scars. I reel back, dropping it into the water again. The back of my nightdress is sodden now, sticking to me.

One of the children I saw playing in the garden must have dropped it there the other day.

A light is on in the upstairs window of Joyce’s house, but I can’t see anyone. Part of me wishes she would appear, insisting on a cup of tea.

I look at the doll again in the water, its marbly eyes staring out, nylon lashes splayed. My reflection is looming over it. When I close my eyes I get a vertiginous feeling and I can just see Victoria dead in the lake.

I yank the doll out quickly, soaking the front of my nightdress, too, and I put it in the outside bin, slamming the lid shut.

After, I lie in bed without getting dry, teeth chattering under the covers.