The woman snorted and Agnes tried not to clench her fist.

– Members of the real Edinburgh Spiritualist Society are warning people like you – that practising as a fraudulent medium is now dangerous. They’ll put you in prison for it.

– Where d’you live? I bet yer no in a slum. You go out on Leith Walk and take a look at ma sons! Only three ay them have shoes. Ye see that washhouse up the street? I cannae get in there without money to pay fir it! We wash with every cunt else in our tenement. I am sleeping with eight, in one room! How many rooms have you got? You got an inside bog? D’ye shite on yer own pan? I bet you dinnae have to go into the fucking outhouse freezing yer tits off every fucking morning!

– There are other ways to get money than conning people in their grief.

– Well my cunt’s broken and my mouth is tired ay being nice tae men and I couldnae conjure up a real fucking spirit if you held a gun tae ma heid, the factory is full and I’ve nae other fucking skills, hen. In fact every single day of ma life I wish ma useless husband was dead – so I dinnae have tae worry about him coming tae ma door at night and battering me up and down in front ay aw the bairns – so what exactly does your Spiritualist Society want me tae do? Conjure money like fucking magic?

– Getting put in jail for a fraudulent medium charge isnae going tae help any of yer kids, is it? Here, take this. And no, don’t think I’m rich. I’m in a housing co-operative and my husband’s sick but I bring spirits to me all day long even without the will to do so – it’s just how it is. You girls are taking our trade and making it unsafe for us tae practise. I dinnae want tae go to jail cos you cannae stop tricking people and then they think I’m as bad as fucking you are.

The woman put Agnes’s coins in her bra and lit a fag.

She’ll be practising again but maybe a bit more canny with it.

Agnes is glad to be home after this morning’s events. She heads down the hall to the kitchen. The ectoplasm has to be disposed of in the exact right way or she is for it this time.

She places it on the bunker, uncertain of what to do next.

– Is that what I think it is?

– Aye, Archie.

– If you block the kitchen sink with ectoplasm one more time, I’m fucking leaving ye!