‘Hang on. Please. Mr Gardner, she’s an old lady. I can’t stand by and let this carry on.’

‘Then you should leave.’

‘I know people have differences—’

‘You haven’t the first clue about her. This is none of your business.’

‘Mr Gardner, I didn’t want to upset you. I’m just very worried about your mum.’

Phillip sucks in his breath. It’s audible on the line. When he finally speaks his voice falters. ‘She was hardly what you could call a mother after my sister died.’

The motion-detecting handset, synchronised to Flo’s necklace, beeps in alarm.

‘What came to her. What she became. You simply have no idea.’

From the rear, from the garden, a din of distant bird cries rises and penetrates the vicarage. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gardner. I don’t follow.’ Jess ferrets the device out of her pocket and winces as she confirms that Flo is on the move.

* * *

Had anyone been observing Flo in the garden, that small figure dressed in a red robe, there could be no mistake that the elderly woman just stood up before her wheelchair, in one smooth and soundless manoeuvre.

* * *

Inside the kitchen, the bird cries grow to the sound of a flock in panic. Jess makes her way to the door, her phone pressed to her ear so she can still hear Phillip Gardner’s voice as it blurts through the cacophony. ‘She’s not to be trusted. And if you’re half as observant as you appear, then you’ll know about the grove.’

* * *

Within the cacophony of enraged birds, Flo turns slowly upon the lawn. Her arms are stretched out from her sides, her palms uppermost. She completes a circle. Her red robe sways.

With her head tilted back, her mouth agape and her eyes rolled up white, she begins a second circle. At its conclusion, her slippered feet leave the ground. And soon, a metre of thin air separates her toes and the grass.

She keeps rising.

* * *

Phone clamped to her ear, Jess steps through the bags of the hall, her frantic eyes peering through the living room door, across the lounge, through the French windows and into the garden where Flo’s wheelchair sits empty on the lawn. ‘She’s wandering. Hang on.’

‘You mustn’t, mustn’t tell her where I am.’

‘She’s just—’ Jess dips her head. Her eyes implore the garden to reveal her client.

‘All of them. Around her. They changed her. My father was never found. They got rid of him. Please don’t call me again.’