‘Here’ – I hold out my arms – ‘let me hold him while you drink your tea.’ Rufus feels different in my arms, a solid hefty weight, with rolls at the tops of his chubby thighs in contrast to my baby.

‘I wanted to apologize about Miranda too – well, not apologize as such. Explain, I suppose.’ Tara greedily swigs at her tea, and I recognize that feeling. The urge to drink it all while it’s hot, and you have a free hand, if only for a moment.

‘Miranda? Yes, she’s a bit of a character, isn’t she? She seems nice, though.’

‘Oh, she is. Very nice. She’s just a little … involved, shall we say, with all the witchcraft and paganism thing. She can’t help it.’

‘She told me that she writes those books about the legends of the village. Is she …’ I want to laugh at what I am going to say next. ‘Is she a practising witch?’

Tara snorts, and I let a bubble of laughter leak out. It all seems so ridiculous, until I think about the icy chill at the top of the stairs, the cries from the woods, Mrs Sparks describing the house as active. Then it doesn’t seem so funny after all.

‘No,’ Tara says, ‘she’s not a practising witch, but she definitely believes in all that. She’s Pluckley born and bred. Her mother was a supposed witch, and she reckons she can trace her lineage back to Pendle Hill and to the Scottish witches.’ Tara rolls her eyes. ‘Her mother reckons they’re related to the Gowdie sisters. Hence Miranda’s middle name being Isobel. No proof though.’

‘Yes, she did mention that when I spoke to her about … some of the stories around the village,’ I say. I don’t want to tell Tara that I was asking about Agnes specifically and how she is connected to the house.

‘I hope she didn’t scare you too much?’ Concern crosses Tara’s face. ‘She can be a bit full on with it all. The thing with Miranda is that she’s grown up with it all as a big part of her life, so she can come across as a bit odd when you first meet her, but she is honestly harmless.’

I think of Miranda’s face as I left the baby group earlier today. Good job he wasn’t born at home. Not in that cottage. A shiver runs down my spine and I have to fight the urge to shudder.

‘We’ve all got used to her, and lots of the others don’t think too dissimilarly to her, to be honest.’ Tara sniffs. ‘I’m from North London originally. I don’t hold much stock in all this talk of the supernatural, to be honest, all those bloody ghost hunters clogging up the village just get on my wick.’