Mary was quiet during the evening. I wanted to tell her what Ailsa had planned. I wanted to rejoice with her that soon we could send William and Hettie back to their graves, but she was restless. At one point I found her outside William’s wing, standing quite still, her hand upon the door. When she saw me, she started and guilt scurried in her eyes. As we walked back along the corridor, she turned to gaze up at the attics and I felt a wrinkle of disappointment and concern. I wanted to believe that she felt as I did, that she wanted them gone, but I was not certain.

I put Mary to bed and recalled the icy clamp of her skin as she lay white and wet amongst the frozen grasses, and I longed to hold her tight, hold her forever. As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, she reached out and touched my cheek and there was an expression of such sadness on her face, a look that did not belong to a child, almost as if she were the mother and I was the infant in peril.

‘What is it, Mary?’

She got up and went to her paper.

‘The dolphin,’ she wrote.

My heart quickened. ‘What do you mean, Mary?’ I thought of the brooch. ‘Was it you?’ I asked. ‘Did you move it?’

She frowned and wrote again, ‘Don’t go near it. You must stay away.’

‘What about the dolphin? Explain, Mary.’

But she laid the pen down with finality.

I stood, uncertain, then leaned down and kissed her cheek.

Mary’s comment was odd. Why would it be necessary to stay away from such an object, and how had Mary come to have that opinion?

But I did not have time to ponder. Because, on the morrow, Ailsa would rid us of Hettie and William’s ghosts forever.

I stood at my window. Ferns of frost curled against the glass, and behind, the black vault of sky held a moon nearly at full circle. I almost willed Hettie’s soft step outside so that I could rejoice that soon it would be over.

35

The next day I spent in a fluster of nervous excitement. Later, Ailsa and I would venture out to the Fiaclach. For the first time I felt that I held a weapon against my fear.

All day I was like a wild cat held only with a satin thread. When the time came and I found myself in church, I knelt on the floor and was assailed with a hammer blow of doubt. The wooden cross hung above the altar. How much everything had changed, and my beliefs altered. I wondered how my father might have reacted to what I planned to do that night. But those days were so far behind and the memories so in contrast that I could not hold on to the thought.