‘More likely than anything else. And even if he took that money, who’s to say it isn’t for a school trip or something else. He seemed a clever kid. Bit precocious but that’s no bad thing.’

She clung to my words like they were a rope thrown to a sailor. She wanted things safe. Clean. Wanted the week of the hunter’s moon to draw to a close without any more violence slipping into her world.

‘Don’t think on it just now,’ I said, in the voice I used for bedtime stories. ‘How’ve you done? What have you got?’

She put her hand out to me and I closed my soft palm over her rough fingers. Helped her to her feet. She leaned back against the counter and managed a smile.

‘You got home safe, then? John were worried.’

‘Fine, no problems,’ I said, a little impatiently.

‘You didn’t go by the river, did you? Went the long way, I hope.’

‘I went by the river, yes. It’s quickest.’

‘Don’t know how you dare,’ she said, aghast. ‘I’d shiver meself to death. There’s all sorts in the woods. Caves in the cliff, so they say, but I wouldn’t go looking for them. Me mam would have gone berserk at the very thought.’

‘It was fine,’ I said, gesturing at the papers and indicating we should stop wasting time. ‘Bit cold and muddy but I’m not scared of the dark.’

‘The dark doesn’t know that,’ she said, and I swear I actually saw her shiver. ‘One of the popping stones was taken away after the war. Kissing Bush too.’

I think my face gave me away. I found myself half-laughing, unsure whether to simply let her finish or to push her into some useful answers. It felt like talking to a little old lady: a superstitious crone in a Highland cottage. She wasn’t more than thirty-three but she had the sudden air of somebody who should be wearing candlelight and cobwebs.

‘Used to be an extra stone,’ she said, wavering. Behind her, beyond the glass, the rain had started up again; delicately tapping on the glass like the pecking of countless birds. ‘Nobody knows where it went but it were the biggest. There one day and gone the next. Somebody cut down the bush too. Ancient hawthorn tree, all gnarled and twisted. Dug up and taken away and a great hole in the ground. Ye’d have thought it would tek a giant to shift it. Scared us half to death. It were Mrs Parker’s man who said it were a coffin stone.’

‘A coffin stone?’