‘The wood,’ said Harry, mildly enough. ‘The villagers got angry, and when he came back to collect more of their children, they chased him into the trees but lost him there. He never came back, and neither did any of their kids.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a creepy story, but you love stuff like that when you’re a kid, don’t you? I was always getting my nanna to tell me that one.’

‘It’s fascinating,’ said Nikki seriously. ‘Like the Pied Piper legend, but a local variety. Harry, I work at a college teaching English. I reckon my students would get a kick out of a proper old piece of folklore like this. I’d love to write about this story, if you wouldn’t mind?’

‘Uh, sure, knock yourself out.’ He looked bemused now. ‘Here, look, take my card.’ He fished a slightly bent business card out of his pocket and handed it over to Nikki. ‘Call me. You know. If you want to know more old stories.’ He grinned. ‘Or you want to buy a giant crow.’

As they walked away, back down the twisting paths, Heather elbowed her friend in the side.

‘So smooth,’ she said. ‘You always were a player, Nikki Appiah.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ But Nikki was laughing while she said it, her eyes bright. For a moment, Heather felt a genuine measure of contentment – it felt good to be teasing her friend, just like she had when they were kids in the school playground. When the rain picked up, however, the pattering of the drops on their umbrellas made her think of the abandoned caravan, and the lost and tiny faces of the children in the photographs, and all feelings of warmth and safety seemed to drain away into the soil.

They spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the countryside, taking photos here and there and sitting on low stone walls. Heather brought out her folder of Pamela Whittaker’s paintings every now and then, trying to match the images with the landscape around them, but she was never quite convinced she had got it right. She realized gradually that she was trying to pin the place down, as though it could be captured on Google Street View, skewered like a butterfly on a board to be better examined, but Fiddler’s Mill and its environs were ever-changing, in a constant state of flux, eroded by the seasons and wildlife and weather. It was an unknowable place – unless, perhaps, you were prepared to live under its bare skies for a while, like the commune had. She tried to picture her mother out here, living with a bunch of long-haired bath-dodgers, but it was difficult. It was difficult, she realized, to even imagine her mother being happy.