Victoria started moaning, clutching her hands together in her lap. Robert put his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s OK, Mum, the lady’s going now. We’ll have a nice cup of tea.” He turned to Harper and hissed, “You can let yourself out.”

“I went to see the wise man,” said Victoria, “and he told me I had to trick them first, to make sure. Then, if they speak, throw them in the river.”

“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” said Harper.

Robert appeared to think about it. “It sounds like a story. She’s remembering a story from an old book we had as children, and she’s confusing it with real life. She thinks it happened to her. It happens with TV programmes too, She thinks she’s one of the characters.”

“What book?”

“There was one that she sometimes read to us. Folk tales about twins. It had a whole section on changeling babies. We hated it. Can you imagine? It still haunts me, that book.” He turned to his mother. “It haunts you too, doesn’t it, Mum?”

“Do you remember what it was called?”

“I think it was something like Twin Tales. I don’t have it anymore. Vinny didn’t want it either so I gave it to a charity shop.”

As Harper moved towards the door, Victoria said, “Once she knows for sure, she’ll have to put them in the water, if she wants her own back. That’s what the wise man said. Right under the water.”

“The babies?”

Victoria nodded repeatedly, and rocked back in her chair. “It’s the only way. Tell her. Tell her to do it. Quickly, as quick as she can. Hold ’em down. Faeries’ll come running.”

“But they’ll just drown, won’t they?”

Victoria turned to Harper, looked her straight in the eye, lucid and intense.

“Only if she’s wrong.”

Chapter 36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Fairies, however, when bent upon mischief, are not always baulked so easily. They effect the exchange, sometimes in the house, and sometimes when the parent is at work in the fields and incautiously puts her offspring down the while. In these circumstances, grievous as may be the suspicion arising from the changed conduct of the nursling, it is not always easy to be sure of what has taken place.

Edwin Sidney Hartland

AUGUST 17TH
FIVE WEEKS OLD
1 P.M.