‘Listen to me, Miss Swansome.’ Her eyes seemed to reach so deep inside me that I crossed my arms across my belly. ‘This is not about truth. What is truth after all? What single thing can you pluck from the universe and hold up as reality? For that you would have to trust your eyes, your ears, your senses. People will say that those who believe in magic are mad, but whose judgement do we believe? You are here for one reason only: because you no longer trust your own.’

‘I don’t trust my own,’ I agreed. ‘All the beliefs I have spent my life in certainty of no longer seem to tell me the whole story. I see things, hear things, begin to know things that I never thought possible. Never.’

She was utterly still. ‘Then you have your answer.’

Just before I left, I turned.

‘Thank you, Ailsa. Be well soon.’

The wind was rising, crushing peat smoke low over the roofs and ripping at the sea, and I felt as if I had been hit by some sort of madness.

That night, climbing the stairs, my feet started to drag and I scolded myself. At the top, I paused and anchored myself to the newel post. The passageway stretched ahead, swallowed in unsteady light. At the end, the blackness was solid. Once again, the faintest of whistles came like a blade of wind along the eaves. I thought of Miss Gillies and the servants far away in other wings and tried not to let it cower me. I almost wished Greer was well enough to pass with her lullaby.

Frost coated the window, distorting the moon, and above, the weight of Hettie’s room pressed down upon me. I lit the fire and three candles and then stood by the hearth. It was quiet then but for scratchings and bangings from the room above. Rats and birds, I told myself. I ignored them and sat at the dressing table to brush out my hair, but just as I was ready to climb beneath the covers, steps sounded on the garret staircase. I sat rigid. And there was Greer with her lullaby. But Greer was ill. She had lost her voice. Yet I could hear her – as clear toned and pitch perfect as ever. Had Greer’s illness been another lie? Greer’s or Miss Gillies’?

From some reserve, I summoned the last of my courage. And with the foolish optimism of a gambler placing his final coins on a low hand, I got up from the stool and snatched at the door handle. I did not give myself time to think before stepping out. With crippling dismay, I discovered that the corridor was empty, even though the final note still rang in the half-silence.