I can’t let this happen. I can’t let this happen. The same thought revolves round and round in my mind as I descend the ladder, and I have to force myself to try and think rationally. It doesn’t have to happen. Rav hasn’t booked the flights yet, as far as I could tell when I searched his account on the laptop; he’s only looked at flights. My mother is right. If I can show him that I am fine, that everything here is fine, I can stop him from taking them. I’ll ask Miranda to help me make a new charm for the attic, I’ll get rid of the mirror, I’ll make sure that Agnes Gowdie is banished forever. I’ll die before I’ll let him take them. I think of myself walking purposefully into the pond, letting my feet sink into the mud until the water closes over my head. The image is as clear as if it is happening on screen in front of me, only it’s not my face. It’s the face of Agnes Gowdie. I blink the image away and let my eyes wander to the cans of paint stacked against the wall. I’ll start the mural, and he’ll see then that I’m trying to make things nice for Mina, that I am a good mother. I push the trapdoor closed and use the hook to lock it, then ferry the cans of paint into Mina’s bedroom.

I had already sketched the artwork lightly onto Mina’s wall in pencil before the baby was born, and now I pull her bed into the middle of the room and stand back to get a good look at it. It’s an underwater scene, inspired by her favourite movie, The Little Mermaid. Fronds of seaweed rise from the skirting boards, as tiny fish swim in between them. At the end of the wall, a mermaid sits on a rock, her long hair drawn over one shoulder. A fishhook dangles from the ceiling, a worm baited on the end as a hungry fish eyes it, a shoal of smaller fish behind him. A shark’s snout peeps out from behind a lobster pot, and I have managed to arrange the coral and sea plants so that when the sun streams in the window it will bring life to them. The air is cold in Mina’s room and I shiver slightly, refusing to acknowledge that whatever usually chills the landing has moved, has followed me into Mina’s room. Swallowing down the fear that bubbles beneath the surface, humming under my breath to break the heavy silence, I begin to paint.

‘Allie? What in God’s name are you doing?’