Jay, tiring of her ramblings now, hearing nothing and exhausted after acquiescing to her demands to reach Tarabeg by nightfall, pulled the sacking and the old blanket up to his neck and turned onto his side. ‘You’ll be dead by morning if you sit there for much longer,’ he said. His eyes, black, snapping, held no sympathy. He sensed she had almost lost her powers, and his respect, rooted in fear, had all but disappeared as a result.

Shona had a message for him; she could see it, hear it. The white walls, the fire, the money… It was the cottage on Tarabeg Hill, where the Malones lived. The voices were urging her to pass the message on before she left. The money was at the root of it all. It had given Daedio Malone the means to buy the seven acres, the reason they’d been evicted. Revenge burnt like a torch in her heart and she found her voice.

‘The farm on the hill. The money. The fire. I can see it. They have brought it to me, to give to you. The American… Get the money. Avenge us all.’ Each word came out on the end of a gasp.

A smile spread across Jay’s face. ‘You fecking mad witch,’ he said, his grey lips curling in disdain. Within moments, his breathing told her that he slept once more.

She had failed. She had grown weaker as his contempt for her had grown stronger.

Shona and Jay Maughan were no longer as welcome in Tarabeg as they had been not so many years before. Back then, villagers had wanted to buy their pots and pans, have their fortunes told, get their knives sharpened or ailments healed. But the Maughans had been driven out by the Malone store, built on Shona’s land, and by the priest who wrapped a band of prayer around the village as he strode around the periphery with his Bible each night after Mass, chanting as he walked. It was a force she could not break. Father Jerry blamed her for all the ills that had befallen locals, including the death of Sarah Malone in childbirth many years before, and he was right, Sarah had been cursed, but it was not enough. Sarah Malone’s daughter, Mary Kate, must pay the final price.

Dark sins cast long shadows as the memory her ancestors had returned to her played out before her eyes. She watched the ghostly tableau of the eviction: not one villager lifted a finger to help, as with sticks and dogs the Maughans were driven from the seven acres, Daedio and the old man Carter beating from the front. She strained her eyes until she could see her young self, huddled there with her mother, her grandmother wailing, her father cursing, the wind howling. It was those same people, her own loved ones, whose voices were calling her now, their cries piercing the night air, carried on the wind. It was time for her to slip across to the other side and she felt the shame she would take with her. She had let them down and would die an outcast, hovering on the edge of the land she had never reclaimed. She had failed them.