Draining the last of her mug of tea, she moves stiffly over to her sleeping bag and wriggles inside it. Her hands are dry and rough from working with the clay. Her shoulders ache from hours hunched over her workbench. Her stomach growls from lack of sensible food. Thistle comes, wagging, to snuggle up beside her, and within minutes the pair are drifting into a restless sleep. Just as the sharp edges of wakefulness begin to dull, Tilda is jolted awake. At first she thinks she has heard something, but then she realizes, with a flash of fear that sends adrenalin shooting through her veins, that she has sensed somebody close. Somebody is in the studio with her. Thistle lifts her head and begins to whimper. Nothing could so effectively have increased her mistress’s alarm. In the half-light of the winter’s afternoon, Tilda scans the room, not daring to move even her head as she does so. Slowly a shape in the far corner comes into focus. It is a figure, a woman, judging by the heavy skirts. There is little else to identify her as such, as she wears a hooded cape and her face is obscured, partly by the heavy cloth of the hood, and partly by the shadowy quality of the available light. At her side, Tilda feels Thistle tremble. Cautiously, she inches her way out of her sleeping bag until she is kneeling on the rag rug, never for one second taking her eyes off the motionless, gloomy figure in the corner of the room.

Is it the woman from the boat? Is it her? I can’t tell. I can’t be sure.

Whoever it is, Tilda is certain that her visitor did not enter via the door. She never did anything as ordinary and reassuring as lift the latch and tread the frosty day onto the concrete floor of the studio. There emanates from the figure a vibration. An energy that, whilst it is most definitely human, is not of the real and everyday world. Tilda searches for her voice and her courage. She forces herself to speak.

‘Who are you?’ she asks. ‘What is it you want?’

The figure does not answer, but straightens slightly, seeming to become taller as she does so, and moves forward on silent feet. Tilda wants to flee, to scramble from her vulnerable position on the floor and turn and run faster than she has ever run in her life. But she finds she cannot. It is more than fear that keeps her pinned down. It is as if the approaching apparition has exerted an invisible, vicelike grip upon her, so that she is unable even to stand up. Thistle crouches low on her belly and has ceased her whimpering, her ears flat against her head, her whole body tense, whether for flight or attack Tilda cannot tell. Soon the looming figure is fewer than two strides away.

‘What do you want!?’ Tilda demands again.