The blanket is still on top, the bones and the ladder tucked underneath, but the moment I open the drawer it’s as if I can feel them. The air changes around me, growing thick and heavy and I think I can smell lavender again. I gingerly reach in and scoop up the bundle, making sure my skin doesn’t touch the hair or the feathers. I take it along the landing, without pausing to check on the movement in the woods below, and down the stairs out into the garden. The weather is still unseasonably warm for May, and the rosebush on the edge of the border is looking wilted and brown. Neither Rav nor I have thought to water the garden, and while the rosemary and mint are still going strong, some of the other plants are starting to look as if they are dying off. At the far end of the border, closest to the woods, I stop, laying the bundle on the ground. I will bury it all, I think, bury the bones and hair deep under the earth so that I don’t have to feel it anymore. Capturing the witch’s spirit and preventing her from doing further harm. Surveying the border, trying to ignore the overwhelming feeling of heaviness hanging over me, I look for the right spot to bury the items. I don’t want to bury them under the roses, chamomile or lavender – they are the healing plants of the garden and I don’t want the hair and bones to contaminate their goodness. I choke back a laugh. I sound like Miranda, believing in all this good and evil, witchcraft and superstition, but if I hadn’t felt the suffocating malice coming from the witch’s ladder, I probably wouldn’t have believed in it at all. It’s probably best to bury them at the opposite end of the garden, among the oleander, the foxgloves and the aconite. Rummaging in the tiny, run-down shed at the opposite corner to the border, I find a pair of old gloves, stiff with dirt and age and with a feeling of distaste, I slip them over my hands. I can’t risk touching most of the plants in that area but Rav will be less likely to notice that I’ve dug it up. He doesn’t seem to spend much time on the border, preferring to sit by the pond instead. I skirt my way past the pond, ripples shattering the surface as I disturb something, and then I begin to dig, in a small patch of earth between the foxgloves and the oleander bush. The faint scent from the flowers fills the air and I find myself taking shallow breaths, not wanting to breathe in their perfume. I have dug a small hole, the earth I’ve removed mounded up beside it, when my phone rings. Glancing down, I see Rav’s name. I have to take the call; Rav never calls during the day, he’s always too busy, and after what happened yesterday … I yank the gloves off, glad of the touch of a breeze that runs over my sweaty skin, and sit back on my haunches.