‘Hand me the loaf and the salt, please.’

Cat did as she was told, wondering all the while if her beloved Granny had finally lost it. She watched as Granny ripped a handful of slices out of the packet and shoved them in between her mam’s potted plants. Then she took the salt cellar and liberally salted the path outside the door. Once satisfied, she stalked through the house and repeated the same exercise at the front door – iron, bread, salt.

‘Stay here a moment,’ she called back in. ‘I need to grab a few things from across the way.’

Cat watched, stunned, as Granny hurried across the street and began pulling leaves and twigs from a sapling growing in the neighbour’s garden. When she was done, she came into the living room, sank heavily into the armchair and sighed, dumping her collection of leaves and twigs all over the coffee table.

‘This’ll have to do for now,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity it’s too late in the year for daisies, but maybe there’s a sprig or two of clover still hanging around. That’d do the trick all right …’

Cat entered the room cautiously. ‘Are you OK? What’s going on?’

Granny didn’t respond. She was too busy picking through the debris, weaving pieces together with surprisingly deft fingers into something Cat didn’t recognise. Her face was locked in concentration and for the first time, Cat noticed the deepness of the wrinkles around Granny’s eyes and how tired she seemed to be. It frightened her. Granny was such a strong woman in every sense of the word. When Granddad had been alive, he used to joke that Granny Mary was the brains and the brawn in their relationship. She was barely five feet tall and her wrists were thin and frail, but Cat knew her looks were deceiving – decades of lifting children and grandchildren as well as helping out around the farm had left her, in her own words, ‘as tough as old boots’. Even now, at almost seventy years old she was spry and quick-witted. When things were going wrong, it was Granny everyone turned to to help sort things out. She walked almost everywhere and would scoff at Cat’s mam whenever she offered to do her shopping. ‘Sure, haven’t I two arms and two legs?’ she would say, and her mam would quickly drop it. She knew better than to get on Granny Mary’s bad side.

‘Granny?’ Cat placed her hand on her grandmother’s arm and finally she seemed to notice her again.

‘Caitriona,’ she said, her voice strained with worry. ‘Tell me, child, did you notice anything unusual today at all? Anything different?’

‘No.’ Cat paused, remembering the magpie and how it seemed to have been waiting for her … but that was silly. It was just a bird. She shook her head. ‘No, nothing at all.’

The old woman visibly relaxed. ‘Good. That’s good. Maybe their attention is elsewhere.’

‘Whose attention? Granny, you’re scaring me!’