The phone landed with a distant crack against the piles of gold and the bones of all those forsaken wives.

I knew what I had to do next. Ask once again for forgiveness.

I cut across the openness of estate land, the moon guiding me, then onwards under the cover of Cable’s Wood, where I came upon a deer and her young, startling them to their feet, meeting the dark blaze of the mother’s eye before she was swallowed by the trees.

The wood thinned. The moon took charge again and I practised my words for when I arrived. Forgive me, forgive me, for I did not know what I was doing. I could hear their voices above the boom and shudder of the waves clashing with the north cliffs below.

I could hear the timbre of a man.

My instinct was to run back to the lodge, to my mother, but I could no longer be that version of myself – the one who looked away. I ran towards those voices, towards my final disappointment, my shins slicing through the ferns, until I caught sight of the Eldest Girls, huddling at the base of the hollow central stone.

Viola was separate from them, shaking, half-naked, standing just outside the boundary that was not to be crossed by men. A figure was stripping her of her clothes – a figure wearing the spiralling horns of a goat.

Friday the 13th – April 2018

FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018

Leah Cedars is always in Viola’s way. She has a skill for it, these untimely appearances. She stands now in the middle of the brick path, her face ugly with tears. She is the troll on the bridge. You shall not pass.

‘How could you?’ Leah wails as she makes her way downhill, as she comes for Viola. ‘How could you do this to me?’

Viola exhales in disgust. This is not the first time she has heard Leah shriek these words. It is the woman’s most nauseating feature, her ability to make everything about her.

Viola backs away, calculating a new course to the Big House. She can’t be wasting time arguing with a hysterical Leah Cedars.

‘It was nothing to do with you,’ Viola says, looking left and right, evaluating her exits. ‘You should have stayed out of it. It wasn’t your battle.’

‘And what made it yours?’ Leah Cedars’ voice gathers its spikes. ‘You’re not from here. This isn’t your problem to solve. You’re nothing but a coycrock, an unlucky one – that piece of superstition proved true, didn’t it? Just look at you, just look at what you’ve done!’

‘I’ve done what all of you should have done a long time ago.’ Viola feels sure in this statement, but Leah Cedars is shaking her head.