‘They’re probably digging up a whole load of bodies right now.’

‘Bonnie!’

‘Oh, lighten up, Stella. We haven’t lived there for twenty-five years.’

‘I know, but …’ I murmur without finishing my sentence and sit in silence until Bonnie finally speaks.

‘I like what they’ve done with the house.’

I stiffen at her words. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They painted it, it looks good.’

‘Have they?’ I reply. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’ She must know I’m lying. How could I miss the deep teal paint that makes it look so modern, so unlike ours?

Bonnie lets out a snort before asking, ‘Are you going to call Dad?’

‘I guess.’ I know I should but I don’t relish the thought, not least because I don’t speak about the island with Dad any more.

‘Have you spoken to him lately?’ she says.

‘No.’ The familiar surge of guilt washes over me. ‘I need to go and see him. Maybe I’ll do that instead.’

‘When the witch isn’t there.’

‘Olivia seems to be working a lot at the moment. There’s a good chance she won’t be there if I go during the week. Would you come with me?’ I ask, hoping, but already knowing what the answer will be.

‘No,’ Bonnie replies bluntly.

I sigh. ‘I’ll call him in the morning,’ I say. A familiar tightness has already wrapped itself around me. It always feels like it’s compressing my lungs, forcing me to breathe harder. I want to speak to him but it’s not the same any more. It feels like he’s altogether a different dad than the one I had on Evergreen, but there are times when I temporarily get him back again and I never know which is harder.

‘It makes you think, doesn’t it?’ Bonnie says, bringing me back to the moment.

‘What?’

‘Whether we know whoever did it.’

After I hang up I carry on watching the news, flicking between channels, chasing the story, but there are no new reports and at some point I fall asleep on the sofa. I dream of the island again, as I have been doing lately. I am chasing my friends through the woods. They are laughing and I am too, but then they disappear and now someone is chasing me. When I wake my heart is fluttering and my neck is caught in a crooked position on the cushions.

I’d stopped dreaming about Evergreen a few years after we’d left but had started again straight after those sessions I’d endured during my training as a counsellor. Now I don’t know how to make them go away. Each time I wake from a dream, I hear my counsellor’s voice. See, this is why it’s important to flush out the demons.