I get up and start to pace, tiredness tugging at my bones. I don’t have time to waste on sleeping, I need to figure out what this means. Laying the bones on the table, I place the pearls next to them, and then fold the blanket alongside. I feel it again as my eyes wander over the small pile of items. That thick, oily draw that comes from the bones, the sensation that I need to lay my hands on them while simultaneously feeling nauseous and faint at the idea of my fingers touching them again. I reach out, picking up a pearl. Naomi was wrong, I think, they aren’t some cheap bit of costume jewellery, they are real. An image flashes into my mind as I let the pearl sit, warm and hard in my palm, of the pearls bursting as a man grabs a woman (Agnes?) by the throat, the pearls scattering across the room. The image is so real that my hand flies to my throat, sure I will feel the beginning of a bruise. Laying the pearl back down my attention goes back to the blanket. Was Tara telling the truth when she said she doesn’t believe in ghosts and spirits? How could I dream of a blanket that I had never seen before? I wrap the bones and pearls back up in the blanket and begin to pace again, the puzzle feeling too big, too complicated to figure out – the only logical answer that I can find is that something is here, something that shouldn’t be. Haunting.

Scratch. Scratch. The noise from the chimney stops me in my pacing and I freeze on the spot. ‘No,’ I whisper, hoping that I will hear Rav’s footsteps on the stairs. Silence for a moment, then, scratch, scratch, scratch.