There’s just one good thing about being alone in her twilit room: she can pray. Not like Father taught her, exactly; she doesn’t know much about God other than His name. But she likes the idea of someone hovering beyond her sight, watching over her. Someone she can talk to who will maybe – maybe – talk back.

She sits on the bed, crosses her legs. This time it will work.

She can’t stop the murderer or explain the shivering on her own, but there’s a person on the Other Side who can help her: Mother. If she can contact Mother, they’ll catch the killer together as a team. The idea fills her with a sweet glow. Not only the prospect of finally meeting her parent, but of being of use to the world outside for a change.

If she managed to call up that phantom in the cabinet and make the fishbowl explode, surely she’s strong enough to find Mother now?

She closes her eyes. Waits.

Horseshoes clack distantly outside.

The colour behind Pearl’s eyelids has a brownish tinge, it isn’t as dark as it should be. Frustrated, she takes off her shawl and wraps it around her head. That’s better. Warm, muffled. She can hear her own breath. It dampens the wool that presses to her face.

Where are you, Mother?

She tries to recreate that sensation of falling into an abyss that comes so easily in the parlour. Showers of light and stars usually spill from her, beyond her control, but now she actually wants to reach out and pluck something, there is … emptiness. Just her hot breath and the terrifying blankness.

What would help? She hasn’t anything that belonged to Mother. Doesn’t even know what Mother looked like. But surely she’ll know when she comes, she’ll know instinctively.

Pearl holds out her arms like she’s playing blind man’s buff. She gropes into the darkness, concentrating with all her might.

‘Please, Mother.’

Nothing happens.

‘Where are you?’

Why can’t she feel the ghosts? Normally, they scare her with their whispers and their butterfly touch, but in fact this void is worse. Calling out for help in a pitch-black cave and hearing nothing come back to her but her own voice.

The shawl itches her face.

Reluctantly, she unwinds it and tosses it aside, but keeps her eyes closed.

Maybe she’s been too alert, too desperate? Myrtle says you don’t catch ghosts with stomping feet. Pearl tries, tries so hard, to compose herself.

But still the blankness taunts her.

Slowly, she inches her eyelids open, hoping that by some miracle Mother will be standing before her, covered in a white shroud.

She isn’t. There’s only the wardrobe and the scuffed walls.

For the first time it strikes her that maybe Mother doesn’t appear because she doesn’t want to be seen. Not by Pearl.