The chills are genuinely spooky in this haunted-house tale about contemporary precarity – a debut that speaks to our times

There are, MR James tells us, five conditions that must be met for a perfect ghost story: the pretence of truth, a “pleasing terror”, no explanation of the machinery, no gratuitous horror, and that the story belong to the writer’s (and reader’s) “own day”. In Lauren Mooney’s sharply observed debut novel, Danielle lives a precarious existence as a PA at a dilettante arts charity called Hodgepodge (strapline: “for ideas”). She types emails, makes tea and increasingly finds herself running personal errands for her monstrous boss Jeannie. Jeannie seems to see no difference between working for the charity, and working for her.

After a horrible breakup, Danielle finds herself unexpectedly homeless. With no savings, no bank of Mum and Dad, and no room left in her overdraft, she winds up staying alone in Jeannie’s ancestral home, a rambling pile in the middle of nowhere. “We could do with somebody to take care of the place,” Jeannie says, as Danielle bursts into uncharacteristic tears. “You’d be doing us a huge favour.”