‘My grandmother had gifts.’ Her eyes dared me to challenge her. ‘She told me many things and once she showed me what she kept buried in a box beneath some rocks. She told me what it was for and showed me how to make one. I loved my mother.’ For the first time, there was a crack in her voice. ‘I found the box and took the widows’ whistle. I called my mother back.’ Her pale face whitened further. ‘But a ghost is not a person. They come back as only shadows and they are not happy. Not happy to be called from rest, and so I had her return.’ She stopped talking; the memories pressed into the air. ‘That was the secret that I dared not tell him. And that secret must stay so.’ She looked at me then, her expression opaque.

‘I took the whistle from the doll’s house. Did you make another?’

‘There was bone and skin that I hid in William’s room. It was not hard to fashion a new one.’

I recalled that moment in the graveyard just before I had been pushed, the sound of the footstep in the wet grasses, and knew it had been Bridget who caused me to fall. I remembered the lullaby coming through the mist. Hettie had come not to harm me but to save me.

In my mind’s eye I saw the photograph of them, the one Miss Gillies had sent; the way Hettie’s arm draped across the children’s shoulders. It had not been with possession, I realized now, but love.

‘And William? Did you call him too?’

She shook her head. ‘Perhaps they were bound together. I do not know. There is magic there I do not understand.’

‘I only ever wanted to help Mary,’ I said.

‘We did not need you here. I would have looked after her. I would have kept her safe.’

‘Did you take Mary to the Fiaclach the night before we both fell ill? Was that you?’

‘I had to continue to do Mrs Argylle’s bidding, but no, I would not have done that and she did not ask me. If someone took Mary there, it was her. It would not be the first time that she had gained access. The house is never locked.’

‘But how would she have got Mary away without Mary knowing her?’

She flushed. ‘Mrs Argylle gave me chocolate that I was to leave for Mary – those nights, she would have nightmares and sometimes fell so deeply into sleep that Mrs Argylle could have carried her anywhere without waking.’

I saw again Miss Gillies’ disgust and Mary trapped in the terror of her dreams. The nightmares had been Bridget’s doing too and I was repulsed to the core.