‘Please,’ I manage to whisper, closing my eyes against the dizziness that washes over me, Rav breathing heavily beside me. ‘Please.’ As quickly as it starts, the pressure eases and there is a lightness on the mattress beside me, as if whoever it is has got up from the bed. I push myself on trembling arms into a sitting position, one hand resting against my chest as if I can still feel the pressure of that unseen hand. There is the scent of rosemary in the air, thick and heavy. The real thing, not a cheap, imitation manufactured smell and I look towards the window, expecting the curtains to sway softly in the breeze as the rosemary is carried in, but the window is closed, the curtains are still. The cries have faded, and the room is filled with a thick silence.

I don’t sleep after that, feeding the baby and standing on the landing, looking out over the trees, waiting to hear the cries from the woods until an hour before Rav’s alarm is due to go off. I managed not to wake Rav up and was back in bed before he woke and caught me roaming the landing, and when his alarm does go off, I feign waking from a deep sleep. Rav has a big meeting apparently, so although he kisses the top of my head and asks me how I am feeling as he gets dressed, I get the distinct impression that he is already miles away before he has even left the house. Before, this might have upset or annoyed me a little, the way he has the ability to leave us while we are still in the same room as him, but today I feel relieved, as though the spotlight has been switched off.

As I walk through the village towards the preschool my phone buzzes with a text, and when I check after dropping Mina off, I see it’s from Naomi, asking how I am. I pause, one hand on the handle of the pram, as I try to decide how to respond. She must have sent it as we walked past The Daisy Chain and my eyes go to the now open door, the buckets of flowers arranged outside. Ten minutes ago, when we walked past, the door was closed and the windows were dark, but she must have been inside.

‘All absolutely fine,’ I type back. ‘Sorry about last night. Was utterly shattered, I didn’t mean to be weird x’ The words are far breezier than I feel, and there is no sense of the weight of suspicion I am currently carrying. I wonder if she’ll report my reply back to Rav. Mere seconds after I send the text, my phone rings.

‘It’s me,’ Naomi says.

‘Hi. I did text you back.’