Mum pours boiling water into the coffee pot. ‘No more secrets, I promise. But I need to know what’s been going on.’ She stirs the coffee and then pours three cups and hands me one. I follow her into the living room to find Stig snoring softly. She places a drink on the floor next to him and shoos me back to the kitchen, as if she knows I could happily stand and watch him sleep.

I sit at the table and wrap my hands around my cup. The coffee is hot and delicious, even better than how Mormor used to make it. Maybe staring death in the face does that to you – makes everything taste better and feel more alive.

Mum raises her eyebrows. ‘Well?’

I take a deep breath. ‘You know how Mormor wanted you to water the tree? Well, no one did and it started to rot.’

Mum looks at me blankly. ‘And?’

‘Beneath its roots is the underworld. A hole formed and the dead escaped.’

Mum’s eyes widen.

‘That thing I killed was a draugr.’

She stares into her cup. ‘Your grandmother showed me a chest of journals once. She said there are mystical beings who live in the tree. She took me out there and told me to listen, but it was all nonsense.’

‘Mormor was telling the truth, Mum – about everything.’

She buries her face in her hands. ‘Oh my God, I didn’t believe her. I thought it was some weird obsession, or maybe she’d been hallucinating and it must run in the family.’

My jaw tenses with resentment. If Mum had done her duty and watered the tree, none of this would have happened. Why couldn’t she just have believed Mormor?

I go to the window and a thought drops into my mind like the last piece of a jigsaw. ‘You read the letters Mormor sent to me before you burned them, didn’t you?’ Mum hangs her head and I continue, ‘You knew I could read clothing. You could have told me it had happened to you too, but you didn’t.’

Mum gives me a pained look. ‘I heard a voice at the tree once, or thought I did. Your dad and I were having problems and I was under a lot of strain. Afterwards, I could sense things when I touched people’s clothes, but the way the doctor explained it, it all made sense. I’d latched onto the idea of being able to read clothing because your grandmother had told me about it so many times.’

She takes a shaky breath. ‘If I had known you would come out here by yourself, I would have told you everything, believe me.’ Mum wipes her eyes, then stands and walks over to me. She speaks slowly, as if it’s hard for her to get the words out. ‘I’m sorry I burned the letters. I’m sorry I kept everything from you.’