‘I know. I can talk to you at the same time.’ The artist didn’t look enamoured with this idea.

‘You ask him about a chin shape and I’ll nip in while you work. Easy,’ Kelly said. They all looked at her. She ploughed on.

‘Tell me about the Moon Goddess,’ asked Kelly.

‘What colour eyes did he have?’ asked the artist.

Fred looked frantically between them. It wasn’t going to work. Kelly looked at her watch and then at the artist.

‘Look, give me ten minutes and I’ll leave. I’m the DI who sent for you, could you just work on what he’s told you so far and then he’s all yours?’ she asked. The artist nodded and sighed, turning to his pad.

‘Tell me about the Moon Goddess.’ Kelly heard the door close and realised that Sandra was back in the room. She hoped she’d done as Kelly asked and made sure no one downstairs left the premises.

‘Come here, love,’ Fred said to his wife. Sandra went and sat next to him on the bed. Kelly remained standing, waiting.

Fred told her, in his own words, the importance of the Moon Goddess for Pagans. The fact that the deity symbolised the warmth, fertility and vitality of the earth, and that she emerged resplendent in spring and disappeared again for the winter.

‘So, when exactly does she sleep off the winter?’

‘Mabon. The autumn equinox. It’s September twenty-second this year.’

‘Soon then? Next week in fact. What exactly is an equinox?’ Kelly remembered The Teacher’s letter again. It left an unwelcome knot under her ribs. But hurry, because time is running out. When the day meets the night…

‘It’s when the day is equal to night. It happens twice a year: once in the spring and once in the autumn. It signals the tipping of the balance of the seasons. It’s one of the eight important festivals of the year.’

Kelly pictured John Porter standing in the middle of Castlerigg stone circle pointing to Threlkeld Knotts, telling her about the alignment. That was it, she remembered now. It was the autumn equinox, when sunrise appeared directly over the peak.

‘What are the others?’

Fred explained all eight to her. Including the two solstices and two equinoxes, there were also four ancient celebratory dates in between, and all marked by solar or lunar events.

‘Why is an alignment so important to you?’

‘It’s the basis of everything we believe. It’s like Christians believing that Jesus was crucified. To us, the seasons are fundamental to connecting to Mother Nature. Civilisations all over the world, for thousands of years, have celebrated alignments.’

‘Such as?’

‘Chichen Itza in Mexico. During spring equinox, the sun makes a shadow that looks like a serpent slithering across the huge pyramid’s steps.’

‘Is that for real?’ Kelly asked. Fred nodded.