‘Well, we help women at all sorts of times, not just for birthings. We help people be born and help people when they’re dying, too. We use herbs and food-medicine and hands-on healing.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Seventeen. And you?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Uh. You look younger than that,’ she says.

‘I know.’

‘So, Bethan tried to keep you there, did she?’

‘Yes.’ How does she know it was Bethan, not Deborah? ‘Why did your mum tell me on the phone to guard my energy?’

She shakes her head and says, ‘Mam can tell you if she wants to.’ We drive the rest of the way in silence.

Waiting in the doorway of a stone farmhouse is a woman with long black curls, wearing jeans and a green jumper. ‘Oh, and aren’t you the spitting image of your mam!?’ she says, and pulls me into a tight hug. She smells like roses and woodsmoke. ‘All right, bach,’ she says. ‘Boots off, coat off, come to the fire.’

As she guides me ahead of her into the warm kitchen, I hear a whispered conversation behind me. It’s in Welsh but I catch the word Bethan, and my fingers give a short, sharp sizzle. I’ve realised that whenever I feel a sizzle, something significant is happening. Unfortunately, I still can’t tell between good-significant and bad-significant.

Efa disappears and Carys – for that’s who it must be – gently pushes me down into a chair in front of the woodstove.

It’s definitely the kitchen I saw in my dream. Behind Carys is a wall of shelves, packed tight with jars of dried herbs, preserved fruit, shrivelled-up mushrooms and what I guess are herbal tinctures. Beside the table is a spinning wheel and basket of fleece. The room smells like lemons and herbs and wool.

Carys holds my freezing hands between her warm, strong ones. ‘Your mam will be over the moon to see you,’ she says. Relief floods through me. How could I have ever imagined that Mum would leave me and Dad on purpose? And how dare Meredith suggest it.

Carys looks at me intently, the same way Sylvie looked into me when we first met, and I hear Carys’s voice in my head, clear as anything. Unbelievable, she says.

What’s happening? Is it possible I am actually hearing her thoughts? ‘What’s unbelievable?’ I ask out loud.

She takes a sharp breath and stands. ‘Do you want some hot chocolate?’ she asks, a flustered look on her face.

What if she’s ‘it’? I hear her say, but only in my head.

‘Yes, please.’ What’s ‘it’? I think.

Efa appears. She’s wearing stripy pyjamas and has a long plait down her back.

‘With all the snow about, we haven’t the time to reach your mam by road, so we’ll have to try another way,’ Carys says as she stirs a pot on the woodstove. ‘Can you shapeshift, Tulsi?’