“Oh, I was,” Lucy said. “No, I mean that I feel as though I missed something that Catherine was trying to tell me. When you first suggested the visit, I felt her presence so strongly. It felt as though she wanted me to go there. But then when I got to the house, it was as though she’d vanished completely. I couldn’t connect to her at all. After days of being haunted by her it was strange to go to a place where she had lived and yet feel nothing.”

Cleo was silent for a moment. “You do realize,” she said, “that you’ve gone from talking about Catherine as though she was a hallucination you wanted to escape to a real person who is trying to communicate with you?” She gave Lucy another quick glance. “How did that happen?”

“I’m not sure,” Lucy admitted. “It obviously helped to talk it through with you today—” she shot her sister a smile “—and I think that when I was reassured that I’m not imagining things, I started to feel less threatened and more curious. I’m sure Catherine connected with me in the first place because of our shared sense of loss, but...” She hesitated. “Well, there has to be more to it than that, doesn’t there?”

“Not necessarily,” Cleo said. “Hauntings can be very specific—I mean they can be specific to a place, person or time. So you might sense Catherine’s presence at Knightstone but not anywhere else, or it might be a particular time of day, or whatever.”

“I suppose so,” Lucy said, sighing. “It’s just an instinct I have though, that Catherine wants to tell me something or that she needs my help. And before I went to Chastleton, I thought...” She stopped. “Well, like I said, I felt strongly that she wanted me to go there for some reason. But when I did, there was nothing.” She shrugged. “So maybe I’ve got it all wrong.”

“Maybe you’ll find the answer in the book about Robert Catesby,” Cleo said.

“Maybe,” Lucy agreed. It felt as though the book was burning a hole in her bag. She’d wanted to dive straight into it as soon as she’d got back to Cleo and Sam’s but although she’d known they wouldn’t have minded, there was so much other news to catch up on and she hadn’t wanted to seem rude. Now though, she couldn’t wait to get back to Gunpowder Barn and do some bedtime reading.

“I’ll give the book to Finn tomorrow and tell him what I found out at Chastleton,” she said now. “Maybe he’ll be able to work out what it was that Charlie wanted it for.”

There was silence for a few moments whilst the dark countryside swept past. They were following the same route as in the morning; Lucy recognized the dip down to the little stream and the low bridge, the field where the horses were sleeping, silver in the moonlight. The road was empty.

“Poor Robert Catesby,” Cleo said suddenly. “No wonder he felt like going round blowing things up. Did you know he lost his father and his son and his wife all in one year? It’s more than one person should have to bear.”