‘It does look old.’ Annabel ran her fingers along the heavy oak casing. ‘Are those pictures of places round here?’

Grace followed Annabel’s gaze towards the clock face. The circle of roman numerals was set into a wider square, and the space in each corner had been filled by pastel paintings of rustic scenes: a bridge, a lake, a barn and a stream.

‘No idea,’ Grace said. It was the first time she’d paid proper attention to the motifs. There was a small figure on the bridge, looking over the side into unseen water, the face indiscernible. She didn’t know why the presence of the clock unnerved her so much, but as she regarded the pictures she shivered. ‘I’ll get it valued and shipped off in the New Year,’ she told Annabel, turning away.

After breakfast, they settled Millie into her high chair on the landing from where she could safely view proceedings. Then, as Annabel looked on, Grace lugged the stepladder through the cottage and up the stairs. She folded it open, squeezing it into the small landing space, then took the steps slowly until she could push up the attic cover.

Another dark space. She shone her torch around, a little wary of what might be revealed. However, as her eyes followed the hazy cylinder of light, her anxiety turned to weary realisation. More boxes. She gave up counting at a dozen, directing the torch beam into each corner, dust motes dancing wildly as she breathed in the stale musty air.

She climbed back down. ‘I think I’ll have to get up there properly.’ She quickly tied her hair back.

‘I’ll hold the ladder steady,’ Annabel said, as Grace began her ascent.

When Grace reached the top, she put her hands on the bare boards, pushed hard, and managed to pull herself into the space. Annabel handed up a large lamp attached to an extension cord, and Grace set it down beside her. ‘Look out for spiders,’ Annabel called.

‘Yeah, thanks for that,’ Grace muttered.

Now she could see the space better, she was pleased to realise that there were fewer boxes than she had feared. More than a dozen, sure, but less than twenty. She crawled over the rough wooden beams to the first one. Sure enough, as she tugged at it, a long-legged creature scuttled away into a murky corner. She gritted her teeth, and hefted the box over to the manhole.

‘Ready?’ she called down.

There was no answer.

‘Annabel?’

Silence.

‘Annabel!’ she yelled. As she listened, she realised she couldn’t hear Millie either.

‘For God’s sake,’ she grumbled, half irritated, half worried. She turned and let her legs dangle down the hole, and was about to put her weight back on the ladder when she felt two hands go tight around her ankles. She let out a cry and clung on to the rim of the manhole.

‘Stop kicking!’ Annabel cried. ‘I’m trying to guide you back to the ladder, you idiot.’

‘Where the hell did you go?’ Grace demanded, heaving herself back into the attic space.

‘There was a strange noise coming from your bedroom. I was having a look, but it stopped.’

‘What kind of noise?’

‘Sounded like scratching.’

‘Bloody hell, don’t tell me I’ve got a mouse to deal with on top of everything else.’ Grace poked her head out of the attic, upside down. ‘Is Millie all right?’

Millie was munching on a biscuit, but stopped, astonished at the sight of her mother’s disembodied face. ‘Boo!’ Grace said, and her heart soared at Millie’s smile, so she did it again, and again, while Annabel looked on, shaking her head. After a few repetitions Millie went back to her snack.

‘You’re such an idiot,’ Annabel said. ‘Are you coming down or what?’

Grace frowned at her. ‘You don’t get off that lightly. I’ve got boxes to pass to you.’

Annabel ran a hand over her forehead. ‘For God’s sake, Grace.’ She looked at her perfectly manicured nails and sighed. ‘Come on then.’ She held her arms out for the first one.

Grace pushed the box to the hole in the ceiling, and had trouble fitting it through the gap.

‘I can’t manage that!’ Annabel shrieked.

Grace tried to keep the exasperation from her voice. ‘Yes you can. Just step onto the ladder and balance it on the steps as you pull it down.’

A moment later she heard Annabel cursing and the box bumping hard down the stepladder. She hoped there wasn’t some priceless antique in there. She got back across to the rest of the containers and began hauling the next one over.

‘How many of these are there?’ she heard Annabel call.

‘Just a few,’ Grace lied, but then Annabel’s head popped up into the attic space. She looked around and her face fell. ‘Oh Jesus,’ she said.

Grace crossed her fingers and hoped her sister wasn’t about to bail on her. Annabel glared at her, eyes narrowed, and muttered, ‘There’d better be lots of wine tonight,’ as her head disappeared again.

Grace smiled and grabbed the box closest to her. The cardboard that formed the lid had been cut into corners and folded down. As she pulled on it by one of the top flaps, it came open and she found herself looking at a handful of loose photos.

She took them out and shone the torch on them, leafing through, stopping at one of a child sitting alone on a lounge-room floor – in the seventies, judging by the garish décor in the background. It was a young boy, his body almost side on to the camera, but his face looking directly at the lens with a surprised smile, as though someone had called his name. He was only about three or four, but there was no mistaking who it was, and Grace felt a painful stab in her chest.

She put the photo to the back of the group she held, and looked at the next one. It was Adam again, in front of a terraced house, his arms around his mother. She wore a long dress and a headscarf, and you could see from the bony sticks of her wrists and the cavernous spaces of her collarbones that she was frail. The cancer must have been advanced by then, Grace thought. Adam would have been around seventeen. His face and frame were thinner than Grace had known, but other than that his outward appearance hadn’t altered much over the next two decades. Her heart went out to the boy in the photograph. Only a year or so after it was taken he had been an orphan to all intents and purposes, living with his grandparents over the summer before he headed off to university.

Her arms felt heavy as she flicked through the rest of the pictures, before she looked back at the photo of Adam and his mother. Rachel had both arms around her son, while Adam had one arm draped casually across his mother’s shoulders, his body towards the camera. What had they been feeling back then? It was impossible to tell from one photo. Or was it? For despite Rachel’s smile, she held Adam tightly, as though he were a ballast in the middle of a raging storm, and if she gripped on long enough she might secure him to her. She appeared to be a woman who knew exactly what the future held. Whereas Adam looked like an uncertain young teenager posing for a picture.

‘Grace, are you still alive up there?’

She snapped out of her daydream and returned the photos to the box. She would set the personal memorabilia to one side, and sort through it all at once. She didn’t want to spend too many days sifting through painful reminders of things that were irrevocably gone.

Grace’s fingers were stiff with cold as she steered Millie’s pushchair down the hill, with Annabel trudging beside her. At the bottom, they crossed the small stone bridge and headed for the next incline. ‘This is the pub,’ Grace said as they passed a two-storey whitewashed building, its chimney puffing grey smoke into the frigid air. ‘Those are old workers’ cottages, back when they had a brickworks here.’ She pointed towards the tumbledown buildings in a row some distance away, and then indicated the hill ahead of them. ‘Meredith lives in the house up there.’