I told Tom about Mia. He told me that when Mia turned eighteen I could reach out to her, if I wanted. He had a friend who might be able to help find her. Less than four years away. I had something major to look forward to. And I was in a much better place mentally to approach Mia than I had ever been before.

Today, Gaia, Coco and I are taking Dora outside for our big Fly Away day. It’s spring, so she really ought to be going off now to find her own nest.

‘Do we have to let her go?’ Gaia asks gloomily.

‘I’m afraid so,’ I say. ‘The problem is that if we hold on to her for too long, she’ll never be able to return to the wild. She’ll be too inexperienced, and she won’t be able to build her own nest.’

Gaia looks on the verge of tears. ‘Sophie … I mean, Lexi,’ she says.

‘Yes?’

‘Can we visit Dora?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe she’ll visit us.’

She brightens at that.

We tip Dora’s box carefully by a grove of fir trees, close to where I’d spotted other ravens making their nests.

‘Out you go, Dora,’ I tell her. ‘There’s a good girl.’

Gaia pours a trail of pine nuts away from the box, and instead of immediately pecking them all up, Dora turns and looks from me to Gaia. It’s almost as though she knows what we’re doing.

Then we step back. I’ve prepared Gaia for what might happen next. Dora might follow us all the way back to the house, but we have to be firm for her own good.

Dora takes a few hops towards us. We wait. It takes about twenty minutes, but finally another raven swoops down and stands in front of Dora, ruffling its wings. They seem to have some sort of raven convo, bobbing their heads and walking around each other making little clucks. Then the other bird flies up to a branch, and Dora follows.

She doesn’t fly back down.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my agent, Alice Lutyens, for believing in this book right from the moment I emailed over a very sketchy paragraph, and to my US agent Deborah Schneider, massive thanks for everything. Thank you so much to my editors, Kimberley Young at HarperCollins (UK) and Danielle Perez at Berkley/Penguin Random House (USA), and to Sophie Burks, for superb insights and for making me work as hard as possible on the edits to ensure I made this book the best it could possibly be. Huge thanks also to Felicity Denham, Sarah Harvey, Melissa Pimentel, Sophia MacAskill, Luke Speed, and Charlotte Webb.