The girl looked up at her. ‘People thought he’d trapped the devil in a boot,’ she said. ‘Imagine if you could do that.’ She was pale, verging on tears.

‘No. No more.’ Nell wrapped her arms about the girl, and pulled her close. ‘No more of this.’

‘Sorry. It’s OK— Sorry.’ Evie’s voice was muffled. ‘I just think – you shouldn’t stay.’

‘We’ll be fine, sweetheart, I promise,’ said Nell.

*

Evie seemed more like her old self as they talked in the garden, and after an hour or so Nell stood. ‘I should probably be going.’

‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ said Gina. ‘Say goodbye properly, you and Chris and Maude. No – sneaking off.’

‘Of course.’

‘And give Maude my love, when you see her next.’

‘I will.’

‘I’ll come too,’ said Kym, picking up her bag. ‘Mum’s expecting me.’

‘Make sure you close that gate,’ said Gina.

‘You don’t like that gate.’

‘Even so. Please.’

*

Kym led the way, down the narrow garden path, along the side of the cottage, towards Elder House.

They came to the drying ground, and they stopped; Kym looking thoughtfully at the overgrown walls and the long grass. ‘Someone should do something about that,’ she said.

The air here was still chilly, almost damp. ‘I think we’ve done the best we can,’ Nell said, ‘for now.’

‘You put it back then? The shoe? Only, you did seem to take a long time.’

‘I put it back.’

‘I still can’t get my head around it – does the shoe keep everything in place or is it, I dunno, part of the problem? Either way, Carolyn must have realised it belongs in the house. She must have known she couldn’t keep it.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Nell said, thinking of Evie in the kitchen, so pale and serious, and unwilling to cast her mind back to that night, to the shape she thought she might have seen, hidden in the shadows, struggling to get through. ‘Maybe it’s a bit of both? But yes, I think it’s best off where it is.’

*

Nell unlocked the kitchen door. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for – well, you know . . .’

‘I quite enjoyed knocking Carolyn Wilson on her arse, to be perfectly honest. So, you’re welcome.’

‘Did Evie tell you where she found the shoe?’

‘She showed me, once her dad was off the premises, visiting Carolyn. We took it all apart – I wanted to bin the bloody Moses basket, but Evie wouldn’t let me. Carolyn had smashed up some old mirrors – I mean, how do you do that? You’ve got to be organised, right? You’ve got to be – planning ahead.’

‘I suppose so.’

Kym looked up at her. ‘And she’d put the shoe inside the Moses basket, wrapped up in a baby’s blanket. Only she must have cut herself somehow as she did it; there were – stains.’

‘Carolyn is not well.’