When Will comes back, I’m sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. I flinch from the sudden glare of the ceiling light.

‘Maggie?’

‘Where have you been?’

He shuts the door, comes towards me. ‘The statements took hours and then I decided to walk back instead of getting a lift with Mum and Euan. Get some fresh air. Check on the sheep. Why are you sitting in the dark?’

‘There’s someone in the blackhouse.’ I know I don’t sound right. I know I need to at least try to sound right, but I can’t. And I certainly can’t tell him that I’m sitting in the dark so that I don’t have to see faces of dead people in the windows.

‘Stay here,’ Will says, running back out through the door, leaving it open to swing wildly in the wind.

I don’t get up. I don’t look out the window. I don’t close the door. I close my eyes instead, tighten my fingers around the cool planes and sharp edges of my pendant, knuckles digging into my breastbone. And when Will finally comes back, I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

‘There’s no one there. Nothing looks disturbed.’ He closes the door against the wind, puts his torch and my laptop down on the kitchen table. ‘Except I found these on the floor.’

‘There was someone there. There were people there.’ There’s a dangerous lump inside my throat. I think of the dead crow in the middle of the room, bloodied and slick with rain. There’s no way he couldn’t have seen it. Which can only mean that it’s gone.

Will crouches down next to my chair, takes my hand in his. ‘Baby, it’s okay,’ he says, in a new and careful voice. ‘It’s been a hard few days. Anyone would be jumpy. Maybe—’

I wrench my hand back. ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’

‘Okay. I’m sorry.’ He stays on his knees looking up at me. His gaze direct and very clear. ‘I believe you.’

And I think of looking down at that thin, white face eaten by shadows; the purple moon-shaped welts her nails left in my skin. I believe you, Mum.

I feel all the fight go out of me, and when Will pulls me towards him, I slump against his shoulder, try to let go of the tears that the dark kept at bay. They won’t come. I feel cold and empty.

‘It’s all right,’ Will says, and his arms are around me again, absorbing my shudders. ‘It’s all right.’

But it isn’t.

I think of Dr Abebe the last time I saw him: shiny suit, too-big glasses, sharp cologne. ‘You’ve had bipolar since puberty, Maggie. You know how to manage it better than anyone. There’s no reason to believe that you will have another psychotic episode ever again.’ That always solemn smile. ‘Not if you’re careful.’

‘They were there,’ I say against Will’s skin. ‘I didn’t imagine it.’

But you might have, a spiteful whisper in my head says. Because maybe you got too happy. Maybe you stopped being careful. Maybe in letting go of Robert and your mum, you forgot to hold on quite so tight to your own flying lines.