Soon the rain began, slipping on the windows and clinking into a pail by the door, keeping myself and Mary in. When the time came for her lessons, although it was too wet to leave, that is what I did, needing to feel the fresh air on my skin. I must think.

My feet slipped constantly on the wet pebbles and soon my face and coat were slick with moisture. In contrast to my usual experience, the further I walked from Iskar, the greater my anxiety grew. I tried to think of all the ways we might escape together, but it seemed like an impossible thing. Droplets stung my eyes and seeped into my cuffs and collar. All the while my heart was tight in my chest. Fear had found again all those places I thought had been closed after the banishing of ghosts.

I had walked nearly as far as Gulls Cry when I heard it – a high, childish scream ringing out over the wind. Terror gripped me. I imagined Mary dragged across the shingle to the water’s edge, imagined her in Greer’s clasp. Even as the scream died on the air, I was racing back across the shingle, a pain in my chest, my legs straining and feet bruised by the pressure of stones. And then I was in Iskar’s hall, panic making me shout Mary’s name.

Miss Gillies came out of the schoolroom. ‘What on earth is this? What’s the matter, Elspeth?’

I could not speak because my breath was trapped in my lungs. Behind her stood Mary, her eyes wide with surprise and alarm as I dripped water on to the tiles. She had not screamed at all, and if she had, I could not have heard her from the beach. It must have been the call of a bird – or something terror had pulled from my imagination.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘sorry, it’s nothing. Forgive me.’ Miss Gillies’ expression grew icy and Greer came into the hall and watched me with a smile.

Without even removing my coat, I ran up to my room. The rest of the afternoon passed with a strange unreality as if I had left my own skin, and my limbs walked and mouth talked but I was no longer their master and I watched myself unpinning and brushing out the tangle of hair, grains of sand falling with a scuttle of sound upon the dressing table.

When lessons came the next day, I made my way along the valley, my steps laboured. I had no desire to visit Bridget but I had promised; what I knew sat too stone-like on my chest.

She beckoned me in and bade me sit in the familiar chair and organized tea.

I answered her questions and all the time the secrets pressed.

Soon, she put down her cup, her face grave.