‘Somewhere for the pall-bearers to rest their burden on the way to the church. Smooth, flat stone. You can imagine what some of the locals used to use it for after they’d asked their lovers to marry them.’ She twitched a nervous smile. ‘Parker, from farm next to yours – he’d only just moved here when the stone vanished, though at that time there were so much coming and going it were hard to keep track. He and Mrs Parker had already wed but he wanted to do things properly, like. Wanted to be a proper part of the village. Took her to the Popping Stone and turned white as a ghost. Told us all sorts of stories about how those old stones were centuries old and how in his country they were thought of as something to be feared – like they’d soaked up all the dregs of all the bodies who’d rested there over the years. Said the stone were like a cork in a bottle, holding bad spirits in. You can imagine what that did to us.’

‘How do you know this?’ I asked, unable to help.

‘He gave a talk at the school not long after. The headmaster had asked him special.’

‘And he spoke about proposing to his wife?’ I asked, confused.

‘No, that were just gossip, the sort of thing you pick up. But he told us about the coffin stone and what it meant and when it vanished like that we were all scared to sleep for weeks.’

Behind Felicity a tiny shaft of sunlight was trying to find a gap between clouds. A thin line of illumination cast a sudden yellow glow onto my face and the left side of my body and then was just as quickly snatched away.

‘He’s foreign?’ I asked. ‘You said “his country”.’

‘Aye, Swiss. Where the cuckoo clocks come from. You’ve not met him?’

I tried to remember. I think he waved hello shortly after I moved in: a distant stick-man in green. And perhaps I had seen him and his wife in their car once or twice. I’d never paid them any attention. I just knew him as the man who wanted to buy the house and his wife as the mousy, miserable woman who had knocked on my door.

‘I don’t really know anybody,’ I reminded her.

‘Aye, suppose. Nice man. Gave money to the Reading Rooms when it needed a new roof and always sponsors stalls at the wrestling and the cattle market. Turned that farm into a money-spinner. Her faither would have been proud.’

I clicked with my tongue; a sudden, unexpected clucking noise that betrayed my impatience.

‘Her faither?’

‘Dad. Mr Parker.’

‘Same surname?’ I asked, baffled.