After giving the nursery workers the same excuse – that Mina has a doctor’s appointment – I decide to walk us home the long way through the village, on the road that takes us along the High Street. Knowing what I know now about the cottage, I am in no rush to head home, Miranda’s words about the witch house tumbling over and over in my mind. There is an itching under my skin when I think about it, the jumble of feathers and keys, weighted by the hag stone springing to mind. Legend, I tell myself, as Mina chatters along beside me, that’s all. I think of the flash of white moving through the trees, moving in a way that seems, the more I think about it, unnatural, not right.

I meander up the road with Mina until we reach the front of The Daisy Chain. Naomi has put buckets of fresh flowers outside, so many that they are crowded together, the flowers jostling against each other as a heady scent rises in the late morning sunshine. Tulips rub up against cabbage roses, freesias snug against the nodding heads of white daisies, while bright sunflowers stand guard over them all. Longing sweeps over me, so fierce I can only describe it as a kind of homesickness, and I manoeuvre the pram through the doorway into the tiny floor space inside. Naomi is serving a customer, but she looks up as I enter and flashes me a quick smile, wiggling her fingers in a wave at Mina. I wait patiently, jiggling the pram to keep the baby sleeping, and gently tapping Mina on the wrist as she tries to stroke the delicate petals of a stargazer lily, while Naomi wraps brown paper and string around the pot of a pink azalea and hands it to her customer.

‘Allie, what are you doing here?’ She comes around from behind the counter and embraces me. I relax into her hug and inhale the earthy, woody scent that comes from her clothes. So familiar, I used to come home smelling the same. ‘Mina, come here to me.’ Naomi lets me go and scoops Mina up onto her hip and we all follow her through into the back room.

I cast my eyes around as Naomi fills the kettle and switches it on, dropping a teabag into two mugs without even asking me if I want one. It’s changed slightly since I left eight weeks ago. It is untidier, more chaotic, with wire clippings littering the floor and rolls of brown paper stacked on the metal work surface, next to a tangled ball of brown garden string. My fingers itch to start tidying, to put things back in their proper place, but it’s not my job at the moment so I accept the mug Naomi hands me and say nothing.