Ten
I didn’t think I had any memories of Simon Mullins’s cottage, but as I stopped the car outside I remembered playing there with his great niece, Debbie – a thin curly-haired little girl who always wore woolly tights and skirts in winter, even out to play, while the rest of us wore jeans or sweatpants. We’d played at house in the tumbledown barns at the side of the cottage. None of the walls were more than a child’s knee height but you could see where the different rooms had been.
The outbuilding was no longer tumbledown, however. Its stone walls had been rebuilt on three sides and the gable end filled in with huge doors. A white van was parked outside and I recognised Nick’s battered car next to it. The cottage was in darkness, but lights shone through a half-open door at the side of
