She pressed her lips together and watched me nervously as if trying to read my thoughts. I took her hands tighter in mine, ‘I have seen them too. You’re not mad.’

Both relief and pain broke over her features.

‘Hettie walks the corridor by my room nearly every night. Do you hear her? We have to talk about this if you want me to help you. You know that, don’t you?’

Her skin, already pallid, whitened further. ‘I know you speak to William. Did he tell you to make the pebbles and the dolls? Was that him, Mary? Did you dress the little dolls and leave them for me?’ Because I believed then that the dolls might hold their own potency; that they, like the pebbles, were wrapped up in the ability to draw ghosts. My voice cracked. This thought was so distasteful that I could hardly bear it.

At last she shook her head. I reached into my bag and brought out paper and pencil. She began to tremble but she unclasped her hand from mine.

‘Tell me about Hettie and William,’ I said. Wind shivered in the trees and the first drops of rain began to patter on the boughs above.

She placed the tip to the paper but pressed too hard, going through the thinness, and it was as if a little wound had opened there.

‘Hettie,’ I urged and she lifted her head, turning to where Iskar lay beyond the rocks.

Hand bunched over the paper, she began to write.

‘Hettie is dead but not dead.’

‘Why does she come back?’

She bent again. ‘I do not know.’

‘And William?’ I whispered.

‘He comes for the truth.’ Her face darkened.

‘What is the truth, Mary? What is it? If you know it, tell me. You can trust me. You know you can trust me, don’t you?’

She looked down again, her arm trembling. ‘I cannot say,’ she wrote, and she closed her lips in a stubborn line.

‘You cannot say or you do not know?’ A gull’s screech ripped the air. ‘It’s too late for secrets. We must face the truth together to make this better.’ But she shook her head so violently and with such distress that I relented.

‘And Hettie?’ I could barely drag the words from my tongue, ‘Does she speak to you?’

Her expression slammed shut. I could not bear the thought that she might visit Mary in the night and whisper in her ear.

‘How can we stop them?’ I said. ‘How do we make them go away?’ And in that moment I was more child than she.

She gave me a fierce, sad look that I could not interpret. ‘How can I help you, Mary?’ But my heart was not seeking help for her but for myself; it was I that could not endure it.

She put her fingers in mine and leaned against me. After a pause, she scribbled again.