“Thank you.” Heather took the pamphlet and tucked it away in her pocket. “Who owns it, anyway? This spa?”

“Can’t you bloody google that?” The receptionist shook her head slightly, visibly retrieving her customer service skills. “It’s part of a chain of spas, which are partly owned by a private individual and partly by an environmental charity.”

“Oak Leaf,” Heather remembered the acorn logo on the welcome sign.

Nikki frowned. “A green charity? Why would they own a spa?”

“It’s a good way to keep the land from being built on,” said Heather, stepping back from the counter. “Otherwise I imagine it would all get sold up in bits and pieces and made into several shopping centers.” She smiled warmly at the receptionist. “Thank you, we’ll go and have our breakfast now, I promise.”

“Can you believe,” said Heather, around half an hour later, “that they didn’t even have any sausages?”

“They did,” said Nikki, mildly. “They had vegan sausages.”

“That is not a sausage, it is a tube of sadness and regret.”

They were making their way down the hill, having left Nikki’s car in the car park. According to the newly scribbled-on map, some of the private properties were only accessible by foot, or if you had the sort of four-wheel drive vehicle that positively embraces mud.

“What do you want to do?” asked Nikki as they continued to trudge down the hill. It was still a bright morning, but the wind was picking up.

“I just want to have a look around. Get a feel for the place. And it would be interesting to see if we can find some of the places our white witch painted.” Inside her bag were copies of most of Pamela Whittakers’ paintings and photos—the photo that featured her mother, she had hidden deep in her bag. “Or even find the locations of her photographs. It would be interesting to know exactly where this commune was set up.”

“Well if we encounter any “get off my land” types, I will let you deal with them. You were fairly mean to that receptionist, you know.”

Heather gave Nikki a look. “Fair enough.”

They walked on, both lapsing into silence. The quiet was oppressive, so full of the whistle of the wind and the quiet music of birdsong it felt like a physical weight. Heather found herself reluctant to speak, as though to do so would be to expose herself; although to what, she did not know. Eventually they passed over the neatly kept grasses and roads and came to a strip of trees, a single rough path leading through them. Despite the bright morning, the trees were a solid clump of darkness, seeming to hold their own shadows close around their trunks and branches. On the edge of it, Nikki hesitated.

“Are you sure this is the right way?”

“I am,” Heather indicated the map. “See? And this bit doesn’t last for long, there’s a clearing beyond, and the first of the old houses. This is just a small branch of the larger Fiddler’s Wood.”