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"OK, can I please have your attention?" Isla says, on Julia's return. The kitchen is shadowy now, losing light more quickly than the rest of the house, despite the huge glass wall that looks out on the back garden. As Julia moves toward the island, something brushes against her ankle and she jumps, forgetting yet again about Basil, Luca's new pet rabbit. The result of more bribes, Basil is cute and fluffy and exactly what you'd want from a rabbit, except for the whole unexpected-encounters-with-small-live-animal moments that Julia is still getting used to.

Isla holds up her phone. On-screen, Julia can see what looks like a plain white ceiling and an attic hatch. As she watches, the hatch drops open, and a black-clad figure lowers himself through the opening, then drops the last few feet to the floor. The person's face is covered in a balaclava, with two barely visible slits for eyes, and Julia finds herself instinctively stepping back as the masked face looms close. The figure reaches forward and seems to remove the camera, because the next thing she can see is the stairs carpet, as the man—or woman?—descends. "See—that's 'our' stairs!"

"Isla, it's a beige carpet. We viewed four houses here in Brentwood before choosing this one, all with the exact same carpet. Every other house in Ireland has beige carpet."

"Wait, you'll see."

As she watches, the camera sweeps across a white-and-gold marble hallway, taking in a front door with glass panels, a Louis Poulsen lamp, and a narrow side table beneath a sunburst mirror. 'Her' sunburst mirror, shipped all the way from San Diego.

"What is this, Isla?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you—someone's made a video inside our house. It looks like it's part of this viral video thing for 'The Loft'."

"'The Loft?"'

An exasperated sigh at Julia's lack of cultural knowledge. "The TV series. They have this, like, PR campaign? Where they put up a creepy video of a guy hiding in an attic in someone's house. He lets himself out when the people aren't there and creeps around their home. At first people thought it was real, and it went totally viral."

"Right..." Julia is still staring at the phone, where the video is playing on a loop.

"And then they revealed that it was all staged to promote this TV show, 'The Loft'. And they put up more videos, and other people started to copy them, and somehow, we've ended up there. I'm guessing you didn't let someone in to film?"

"No..."

They turn toward Luca, who's eating a slice of pizza, his face lit by his Nintendo Switch. He looks up.

"What?"

"Do you know anything about this video?"

"I'm not even allowed on TikTok. How would I know anything?"

A fair point, Julia acknowledges. Luca is also only nine and never in the house without an adult. Even at thirteen, Isla is rarely home alone. So how on earth did someone get into their house?

Luca puts on his headset, cutting his mother and sister out of his world. Julia wants to ask him to take it off while he's eating but finds she doesn't have the energy. Instead, she watches the video again.

"Could we ask the people who look after the account? The 'Loft' TV people?"

"This one isn't on their account. It's a repost." "Wait, so it has nothing to do with the TV show?"

Isla sighs. "I just 'said', people started to make their own videos. Letting themselves out of hiding spaces, pretending there's a stranger living in their attics. The TV people had to put up a disclaimer saying that they weren't responsible for copycats. But people keep doing it."

"So this is a copycat?"

"Yes."

"Only we didn't film it." "Exactly."

Julia tilts her head, looking at the ceiling. The kitchen is silent, her children wholly absorbed in their screens. With timing that would have been comical in other circumstances, there's a sudden creak from above, as though someone has stepped on a floorboard. As though there's someone up there. And of course there's nobody there, she knows that, it's just the noise the house makes when it's quiet, but in spite of herself, a cold chill settles across her skin.