I feel the flutter of butterfly wings of fear in my chest, as I think about the bundle of bones wrapped in tissue upstairs in the bedroom. ‘It’s silly, I feel ridiculous,’ I say, but even as I say the words the butterflies take flight, panic lodging in my throat.

‘Don’t feel silly. Whatever it is has clearly got you rattled.’ Naomi leans forward, awkwardly with Mina still in her lap, her eyes on mine. ‘What happened? Tell me everything.’

I take a deep breath. ‘I thought I saw someone, out there in the trees. Rav thought I was imagining it but … I really do think there is someone watching the house.’ I let the words fall out in a steady stream, worried that if I stop talking, I won’t be able to start again. ‘I was sure I saw someone out there, in the woods, and when I looked there was a patch where all the grass had been tamped down, a place where if somebody wanted to, they could watch the house in relative safety. I wouldn’t have been able to see them from the window. And then I started to find things.’

‘What things?’

‘Do you remember when Rav and I got the keys, I found a pearl in the bathroom? Mina found another one in the garden. They look old,’ I say.

‘Oh, Al. It could have been there for years …’ Naomi catches sight of my expression and falls silent.

‘No. Maybe, I don’t know. Miranda told me this whole story about how the Pluckley Witch came here with just a baby in her belly and a string of pearls, but …’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s odd that Agnes Gowdie had a string of pearls when she came here, and now I’m finding them in the house?’

‘Well, it is funny,’ Naomi says, ‘but could it not be a coincidence? I mean, I’ve heard of the Pluckley Witch, but I don’t know the full story. Even so, Al, four hundred years is a long time for some pearls to be knocking about in a house and not be found before now. It’s probably, I don’t know … a bit of old costume jewellery.’

‘They don’t feel like costume jewellery.’ Naomi’s mouth opens but I raise a hand, letting her know I’m not finished yet. ‘I was prepared to try and ignore it, to ignore the pearls and the idea of someone watching the house, to let Rav convince me that I was just overtired, but when I went out into the front garden this morning, I found the bones, hanging in the branches of the yew tree. And that wasn’t a coincidence – someone deliberately put them there.’ I shudder, the idea of there only being an oak door between me and some lurking stranger (witch) making my nerve endings sing.