Rowena is the beautiful, harassed mother of five young children who has been chivvied by her husband into moving away from London to this sweet little village, a convenient half-hour drive from the capital. I myself was brought up there, and Briscoe brings a brilliant, Instagrammed intensity to the leafy lanes, pub and village green, which did indeed look faintly sinister once you'd seen the film I felt about it the way I imagine inhabitants of Portmeirion felt after The Prisoner appeared on TV. The book is set in the early 1960s in the picture-perfect Hertfordshire village of Letchmore Heath – here renamed Crowsley Beck – which was used for filming by nearby Elstree studios, and became known as the 'village of the damned' when it was the location for a 1960 sci-fi movie of that name, based on John Wyndham's novel The Midwich Cuckoos, about alien blond children appearing in a cosy rural community. There's a woozy atmosphere of menace, a satirical stab at Britain's postwar commuter-belt aspirations, and an elegant, postmodern, cine-literate twist. Touched is a gripping novella, a waking nightmare in the home counties that is both erotic and claustrophobic. The object is to bring out new tales of the eerie and macabre from literary authors, and the latest is by Joanna Briscoe. H ammer is the new imprint from Random House, working in association with the recently revived British film company, adored and deplored for its lurid 60s horror movies.

Touched joanna briscoe