I tried hard to stop moving into the Cat House, but it had a strong pull on me. The lead-panelled windows plastered with stickers for animal charities was the first thing that attracted me.

When you move into a squat, you can't help but get to know the people who lived there. The little pieces that made up their life surround you.

On the fourth day, I left the house empty for the first time. When I returned I found a scrawled note that said, "Get out you Bastards. She will haunt you". The note was scary, but I wasn't worried about Mrs Brown haunting me. I knew she was glad that I was there.

I've never got to know a dead person before, but I couldn't help feeling that Mrs Brown had wanted me to move in because she needed someone to do the sorting out and remembering. By the time I got there, she'd been dead for eighteen months. The house had been broken into several times, and clothes and broken crockery were scattered around. Tubs of parma ham, bought to tempt a failing appetite were dried to pot pourri; boxes that had held medals, were empty. I found Christmas cards and animal sanctuary appeals and shopping lists and numerous photographs of pets, but no family addresses and no Will.

I did find some cards reserving grave plots. I guessed that they were for Mrs Brown and her husband and daughter - both of whom had died before her. In the fifth week, on the day after Boxing Day, I decided to go to the cemetery to find the graves. It was a typical post-Christmas limbo day. The cemetery was dilapidated, there was no way of finding out where the graves might be, and no-one to ask. I started walking up and down the rows, looking at all the names and dates. I went past a man and two little girls tending a grave. The older child came up and asked me what I was looking for. I told her that I was looking for the graves of Ivy and Arthur and Sheila Brown. She helped me look, but we couldn't find them. She told me she had come to visit her little sister's grave. Eventually I realised the search was futile and went home. It was a long walk through grey suburban streets. It felt like nothing had changed since the 1950s. I found a cafe that was open and stopped to warm up before going back to the squat. I didn't feel like hurrying home.

When I finally got back, I was just about to pull the door shut when the little girl from the cemetery ran round the corner and said hello to me. Then she said, "I knew the lady who used to live here. She gave us a dog to look after".

I had gone to a graveyard to find a dead person, and found a live person who knew her.