‘I thought you did not believe.’ I clutched my hands in my lap. ‘Do they speak to you, Miss Swansome? Are you telling me that the dead talk to you?’

I swallowed. What had I come for? Denial? What would denial do now? Would it change what walked at Iskar? Would it stop the visitations to Mary? But I would not tell of that. The gossip did not need more fuel.

My heart hardened and I gazed her full in the eye. ‘Hettie is not in her grave. Some part of her is at Iskar.’

Ailsa took her pipe and twisted tobacco into its bowl. I could feel the strength of her thoughts. ‘Is it only to you she comes?’

So she believed. There was no doubt. I felt then as if my bones must crumble to dust.

Mary. In all of this she was the most vulnerable. I imagined Hettie at Mary’s bedside whispering a lullaby in her ear. Whispering other things – how to scrape the face from a doll, how to dress it up again and paint eyes upon its head. I shuddered. I did not want Ailsa to think that Mary was sullied.

‘I see no sign that others are haunted.’

She smiled. She did not believe me and I looked away. Ailsa knew, as Mrs Brodie knew, as Miss Gillies and the whole island knew – that Mary talked to ghosts.

‘There is something else,’ I said. ‘There are dolls. Ones such as a child might have but they have been disfigured – have been remodelled to look like a specific person.’

Her gaze was intense.

‘They are not natural.’

‘Who do they depict?’

‘Hettie and William.’

The room fell to the breathing rush of the fire and the sea. Air grew tight in my lungs.

‘Remember what I told you of the binding spell? Well, the dolls too; they are made in the image of life for the same purpose. Whoever created these wanted to tether Hettie or William to Iskar.’

But they are dead, I thought. Who could have wanted such a thing? I wanted to be sick.

‘Who do you think made them?’ she asked.

But I could no longer reason and I stood shakily and went to the door.

‘I told you once before,’ she said before I left, ‘and I will tell you again. You must take care.’

Greer was polishing the floor when I returned. She looked up briefly, her dark hair curled in sweat at the nape of her neck, and a frisson of open dislike passed between us. I did not care. It was too late to court her goodwill. Exhausted from the previous night, I slept until lessons finished and found Mary in the kitchen baking a cake with Mrs Lenister. The thought of the night to come was already ticking in my blood, but I sank into the rich, sweet smell of the room and helped Mary to cut fruit and stir the mixture in the bowls.