He enlarged the opening carefully. Light spilled over rough timber and a flat surface beyond. “There’s… a platform, maybe,” he said slowly. “And some old fabric.” Lucy leaned closer. The beam picked out the corner of what might once have been a mattress, the curve of rusted metal, and a scrap of something that looked, unnervingly, like a child’s shoe.
For a moment, Lucy could only stare. The shoe lay on its side, leather cracked and shrunken with time, laces stiff with dust. Beside it, the mattress remains were little more than a sagging shape, its ticking split. This was no cupboard. It had been a place someone once lay down to sleep.