Coming out of the back door she almost walked into Marilynne Redfern, who appeared to be wrestling bales of straw from one of the outhouses into the back of the estate car Lucy had seen Gabriel and Persis in at Chastleton. Dressed in green Wellingtons, a tweed skirt Lucy thought would surely be too hot on a summer day and a padded gilet, Marilynne looked somewhat put out to see her.

“Oh it’s you,” she said ungraciously. Her gaze dropped to the book under Lucy’s arm. “What are you reading?”

“Oh...” Lucy felt a strong urge not to tell her. “Just some family history. What are you doing here?”

Marilynne’s lips pinched together. “I store hay for the donkey here,” she said. She turned away, thrusting the final bale viciously into the back of the car. “I wanted to buy this house when it came up for sale,” she said, “but your aunt gazumped me. She offered thousands over the asking price and pushed me out.”

“That was over twenty years ago,” Lucy said, wondering if she was expected to apologize for this historical injustice. Marilynne’s aggrieved attitude suggested she certainly hadn’t moved on. “I thought you said this was an unhappy place,” she added, remembering Marilynne’s comments to her at the heritage center. “Why would you want to live here if you don’t like it?”

Marilynne slammed the boot of the car and stalked around to the driver’s door. “It’s only unhappy for some,” she said pointedly. She closed the door and drove off in a scatter of gravel, almost flattening Johnny, who was just coming in the gate, weighed down with all his excavation gear.

“Blimey,” he said, “who was that?”

“That was Marilynne,” Lucy said. “Persis and Gabriel’s aunt. Apparently she keeps hay for Clarabelle in the outhouse here.”

“Oh yeah, I remember Finn saying something about that,” Johnny said vaguely. “He—” He stopped abruptly, staring across the terrace. Following his gaze, Lucy saw a woman in a long red gown pass through the rose arbor and disappear from view.

“Catherine,” she said. She looked at Johnny. “You saw her too.”

Johnny rubbed one earth-stained hand over his hair, making it stand on end. “I see her every time I see you,” he said.

“I’m sorry I never mentioned it before,” Johnny said, as though he was referring to something as mundane as the bus timetable, rather than a ghost. He added leaf tea to the pot and poured boiling water over it. “No.” His voice changed. “Actually, I’m not sorry. You can’t go around spooking people without good reason and I try really hard not to be too weird in my day-to-day life.”

They were in the kitchen at Gunpowder Cottage, back at the pine table where they’d had breakfast earlier. Johnny grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and Lucy took the milk out of the fridge.

“Persis made some comment about your paranormal abilities the day we first met,” she said, remembering. “What did she mean? Whatever it was, you didn’t seem too pleased about it.”