He remembered where each of them was so clearly that often he felt like he could almost see them. Women sitting on the edge of the stream with their feet in the water, or women up in the trees, their souls taken up in the roots and spreading through the leaves. He could almost hear them sighing as he walked through the woods, and the gentle thrum of their hearts was ever present. Their bodies were far away, arranged with precision and care in distant green places, but they were here really, with him, in Fiddler’s Wood. They all wore red coats.

It was raining on the day he lost Colleen, and although it was only around six in the evening the woods were rushing eagerly towards darkness. Michael was moving through the shadows contentedly, listening to the graves and the patter of raindrops against leaves and mud, when he heard a sudden, piercing scream. He stopped and held himself very still, the hair rising on the backs of his arms. Screaming held no terrors for him – how could it? – and he was by now used to the noise generated by the commune, but this was a noise out of place, a noise that shouldn’t have been there. A few seconds passed, and there was another scream, somehow more desperate and then abruptly cut off.

He left the woods, stepping into the downpour that the trees had been sheltering him from, and ran towards the big house. On the way there, he saw two figures hurrying away down the hill, and he headed towards them. It was the Bickerstaff sisters, looking oddly similar to how they had on the first day he had seen them, their heads touching, walking with their sides pressed together, although now one of them held a shawl over their heads, and the other was clasping a small bundle to her chest. When they saw it was him, she gathered the little shape closer to her chest so he could not see it. One of them – Lizbet, he thought – levelled her cold grey gaze at him, but did not speak. The rain picked up, and Michael realized that the path beneath their feet was pinkish with watery blood, blood that was washing off them.

‘What’s happening?’

They drew closer together. Beyond them, the fields and hedgerows looked hazy and indistinct as the rain blurred their edges.

‘He wanted to see it,’ said Beryl, as if that explained anything. ‘When it came into the world.’

‘What is it?’

Michael took a step forward to catch sight of the thing they were carrying, but the two sisters exchanged a look of disgust between them, as though he was a dirty child at their feet.

‘You’ll see it again soon enough,’ said Lizbet.

‘Who was screaming?’

‘Anna isn’t feeling herself. Go on up and have a look, if you’re so worried.’

‘Where’s Colleen?’