Dawn Bell must still clean her dead daughter’s room, preserving it as it had been when Andie left it for the final time. She didn’t have her daughter but she still had the place where she’d slept, where she’d woken, where she’d dressed, where she’d screamed and shouted and slammed the door, where her mum whispered goodnight and turned off the light. Or so Pip imagined, reanimating the empty room with the life that might have been lived here. This room, perpetually waiting for someone who was never coming back while the world ticked on outside its closed door.
She looked back at Ravi and, by the look on his face, she knew there was a room just like this in the Singhs’ house.