‘Oh.’ My face flushes hot as I see the last website I pulled up on the screen before I had slammed the lid closed when Rav came back down after kissing Mina good night. ‘I can explain.’

‘I hope so, because this is all a bit fucking weird.’ Rav is wide awake now, his eyes never leaving mine.

‘I was researching the house,’ I say flatly. After Miranda’s revelation about us living in ‘the witch house’, I resisted the itching urgency to investigate until I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I opened the laptop and started googling. It turned out that she was right. Gowdie Cottage was the witch house, known to the villagers by that name. I found a tiny mention in a badly written website, which said that Agnes Gowdie had lived here, way back in the 1600s, and was the sister of Isobel Gowdie, a well-known Scottish witch burned at the stake. Agnes had fled Scotland when her sister was condemned to death, and the locals believed she had brought her witchcraft with her. She gained a reputation in the village as a healer and as a witch, and it wasn’t long before rumours started to circulate about her, although I couldn’t find much more information than that. It seems that Isobel Gowdie is of more interest than Agnes, the article focusing more on her history than on Agnes’. There was a two-sentence paragraph on Gowdie Cottage and how strange things had been happening here for years. The words made my skin crawl, and I had slammed the laptop lid down without shutting the browser. I think now of the borders in the garden, the range of plants and herbs there that could all be used for either healing or harm, none of them, I think, planted just because they look pretty.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ Rav says. ‘Who put all of this in your head?’

‘No one … a woman at the baby group called it “the witch house” so I came home and did some research,’ I whisper angrily, not wanting to wake the baby. A single scratch comes from the chimney. ‘I hardly think you can blame me for wanting to know why she would call it that, and now I know. Rav, the reason this house was such a bargain is because the previous owners just upped and left over fifty years ago. Overnight, they just left, disappeared. And they weren’t the first ones. There have been weird things happening in this cottage for years. You would think the estate agent would have said something to us when we put in an offer.’

Rav says nothing, reaching for a small bottle of water by his feet. He takes a long swallow and stands. ‘Allie, I need to go to bed, and I think you should too.’