‘This was outside, Mary,’ I said. ‘You found this outside.’ I gazed at her with wonder. Her expression was too guarded. What had I missed? When understanding came to me it left me breathless. She had known by some strange talent. And I recalled what Miss Gillies had said of Hettie’s ability to find lost things. Perhaps it had never been Hettie’s gift at all but had always been Mary’s. I remembered Mary’s curious skill in reading my thoughts. Mary – it had never been otherwise. I was sure of it. But before I could say anything her feet were thumping up the stairs followed by the distant banging of a door.

40

I stood for a moment, shock pinning me to the tiles, and then I ran after her. It did not take long to find her: she was sitting on her bed, her back to me.

I sat beside her with a sort of horrified awe. ‘It was always you, wasn’t it? It was never Hettie that had the gift?’

She did not reply.

‘Hettie covered for you. Why did she do that? Were you with Hettie the day Greer’s necklace was found? Was it you that found it?’

Her look was half sad, half angry. She opened her mouth, checked around to make sure no one was there to hear. ‘Yes, it was me. William said I should not tell, and Hettie liked what people thought of her. She did not care if they said she was strange.’

We sat for a while with only the sound of the wind and the lap of the tide from beyond the windows. As I scoured her face, it seemed to me to be one of someone many years beyond her age. I had underestimated her. The evening that she had begged me not to leave her – I had been so distracted that I had misunderstood her and replied that I had not been planning to leave Skelthsea – that was not what she had been asking. She had been asking me to stay that night with her, in her room. She knew that something would happen. And then Hettie had taken her to the Fiaclach. Finally, I recalled the time she told me that she was to die.

‘Are they always true?’ I asked. ‘Your predictions?’

Her eyes were as clear as glass: the answer was there.

‘Can things be changed?’

She picked at Bobbity’s hair. ‘I don’t know.’

A sudden squall of rain snapped at the panes and somewhere far off a tile rattled. Her fingers tightened on the doll. Below us, the hall clock chimed the hour and then, as though spent, the house fell again to silence, but some sense of safety and confidence that I had been clinging to slipped a little away.