I shiver, heart thumping. I haven’t ever opened that drawer, so I’ve no idea how long it’s been here, but I do know that despite Kelly’s No one locks their doors around here, I’ve been locking mine. So either it was here before I was, or someone somehow got into the blackhouse. I’m shaking. I look down at my hands as Ravi says Are you having tremors? Anxiety?

I force myself to calm down, to put the bird in the rucksack with the others. But when I slam shut the drawer, get into bed, and switch off the light – despite myself, despite the promise I only just made to myself – I start to think of someone, something, stalking me in fog and in darkness. Something bald and grinning with big, crowded teeth. And claws that could scratch black wounds into tarmac.

*

I realise I’d fallen asleep only when I wake up. For a few seconds, I don’t know why I have, and then I smell it. See it. Just as the curtain next to the mantelpiece lights up the room in a low whoosh of orange flame. I throw myself out of bed and race towards the kitchen, knocking over dishes and jars in the dark and my panic – too alarmed, too terrified, by that guttering roar and heat behind me to remember where the light switch or the fire extinguisher are. When my hand closes around the latter, I wrench it from the wall and run to the curtain, now consumed by fire, the flames licking along its wooden rail and metal rings. I press down on the lever, and the foam covers the curtain in seconds, smothering the fire in only a few more. I bend over to cough. I’m breathing too hard and too fast; the smoke chokes my throat and scratches at my lungs. When I realise that the rug in front of the fireplace is burning too, I abandon the empty extinguisher, run back to the kitchen to turn on the light and grab the fire blanket. I drop it, stamping over the rug and floor probably far longer than I need to, stopping only when the adrenaline wears off enough that my legs forget how to keep holding me up.

I stay on my knees until my need to breathe fresh air outweighs my fear of going outside. I barely bother to get dressed – simply pulling a hoodie over my pyjamas and putting on my mac and wellies at the door. I grab the keys and Kelly’s torch and run out of the blackhouse, stopping only to lock up behind me before sprinting across the grazing grass towards the lights of Ardcraig Farm, flinching from the occasional twin glare of what I hope are sheep’s eyes.

*

‘Well, it was eh … only a wee fire it looks like.’

In the cold light of day, and the colder Atlantic breeze through the kitchen window, it does indeed look nothing at all like the terrifying spectacle of last night. A slightly singed window frame and perhaps a foot of floorboard in front of the fireplace. The rug, tartan curtain, and pole are already in the wheelie bin round the side of the blackhouse.