She made us both tea and, as we sat at my kitchen table, told a story from the Classical Greek – of Metanoia who walked in the wake of the god of opportunity, cloaked and tearful, urging those around her to be sorry for all the moments that they had missed. Cat was at liberty to do this – apply the lives of the pagan gods to ours – even in chapel. She had a degree in theology, obtained on the mainland, making her – academically, at least – closer to God than Father Daniel was, since he had trained at the feet of our previous reverend.

Cat lifted a tin of biscuits from her bag and insisted I take one. I waited for the story’s moral.

‘Maybe you just seized the moment,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Metanoia would be proud.’

I had to believe she was talking about Ben – only Ben.

‘I seized the wrong moments,’ I said, the sweetness of the biscuit making my stomach clench. ‘And now I need to repent.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ said Cat with a kind smile. ‘Let’s work with that.’

I let her visit me each day and talk me into leaving the cottage. We would go and sit in the still midday air of the chapel, sometimes just enjoying the silence; other times, Cat would read to me from the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Revelation – words of contrition are not enough, a person must act, carry out the ‘first works’, or else God cannot support them in their transformation. Sometimes we bowed our heads and prayed: ‘Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, maker of all things, judge of all men: we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness…’

‘And they are manifold,’ I told her in the quiet that followed, ‘my sins.’

Cat took my hand. I admitted my greatest fear: ‘Underneath all of this… niceness, I think that I am wicked.’ I began to cry. ‘Jacob Crane’s letter was for the Eldest Girls and for their mothers and for Margaritte and for Ben, but most of all, it was for me, because … I am the witch.’

I was breathless at the relief of saying it aloud – it was an exorcism. I readied myself for my penance. Cat trembled in the pew beside me, her large chest shaking, then she let go of the sound – laughter, bouncing startlingly from the stone walls. She pulled me in to her, hugged me, the vibrations travelling from her warm body into mine. I didn’t submit, though; I couldn’t, I was rigid.

‘Oh, Leah!’ she sighed. ‘Come with me.’