‘It’s dark,’ Alice flutters her hands. ‘Moving, in the shadows and, and – winged, like a bird. And it whispers, I hear it, can you hear it?’ She looks wildly at Robert and Mam. ‘Such things it speaks of, tells me I should do, terrible things.’ She presses her hands to mouth. ‘Hurts, it wants me to cause hurts, to others, to my own self. Whenever I try to sleep it is upon me. I am cursed, yes?’

Mam brings Alice’s hands down and pats them. ‘’Tis just a sprite, they’re known for mischief but no great harm. We shall have you soon free of it.’

Alice grabs Mam’s fingers and presses them to her lips, lies back down. In the other room, Mam shows Robert how to fill a witch jar, cutting a chunk of Alice’s hair and some of her fingernail shavings to put in.

We go down to the sea for water and Mam instructs him to add a handful of sand and some stones. I watch some men haul a boat ashore, heads bowed and hands busy. They show no interest in us, but I’m mithered by their presence. I prefer the solitude on the scrappy part of the shore Annie and I visit when we must. When the jar is done Mam presses it into Robert’s hands.

‘Bury it in the furthest corner of your land,’ she says. ‘I’ll return with a poppy elixir. She will soon be cured.’

He nods. Mam holds out her palm for his coin. ‘The elixir will cost more,’ she says.

We turn back towards the green and the hill. Mam is silent until we reach our door.

‘I called her friend, once,’ she says.

I say nothing, for the loss is scored on to her face. But I try to imagine what friend means, what it looks and feels like. I remember children from before, when my father still lived and we dwelled by the sea. I remember scrambling over wet rocks and peering into the little pools, dipping our hands in to catch the tiny fishes that were trapped there. I don’t think this is what friend means when you are grown, though, when you are a wife, a mother. What it would mean for me now, stranded as I am between child and mother. Perhaps only ever to be one of these.

Mam chats to Dew-Springer in whispers that shiver with malicious intent while I pick up the pot of salve we’re taking, for we have been asked to treat a pox.