‘I do, yes. We moved in a few months ago.’

‘How are you finding it?’ Her eyes fix on mine.

‘Oh, we like it. I mean, the cottage is beautiful … the garden … the garden needs some work, but luckily I’m a florist.’ My mouth feels dry, and I raise my gaze to where my mother has retreated to the doorway, giving the old lady some space. ‘Tell her,’ she mouths. I nod and turn back to Elsie.

‘Is it quiet?’ Elsie asks.

‘Quiet?’

‘At night. Is it quiet? Or are you woken?’

I think of the child’s cries that have woken me almost every night this week. ‘Sometimes.’

My mother shifts impatiently in the doorway and I take a breath. ‘Listen, Elsie, I found something in the cottage, and I wanted to ask you about it. It was a set of two iron keys, tied together with feathers and a stone with a hole through the middle.’

‘The hag stone,’ Elsie says quietly. ‘You found it?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I found it under the floorboards in the attic. There was a mirror, and when I moved the mirror I saw the feather. You don’t know anything about it, do you? I told Miranda and she said you used to live there, that you might have some more information about the house.’

‘Agnes Gowdie’s house,’ Elsie says. ‘She’s still there, they say. What did you do with the keys?’

‘They’re in my bedroom. I’ve hung the mirror on the wall in the hall, it’s like it was supposed to be there.’ I smile at the thought of it. ‘So, you do know about the keys?’

‘I put them there,’ Elsie says, her face growing serious. ‘I hid them under the floorboards. They’re a charm, you see. To protect the house.’ She looks at Mina. ‘Things quietened down after I hid the charm, but by then it was too late.’

Ice water trickles through my veins and I shiver as if someone has just walked over my grave. ‘Quietened down? What do you mean?’

‘My mother had the gift,’ Elsie says. ‘She said I had it too, and I’ve always wondered if that’s the reason why it all happened.’

‘The gift?’ My mother steps back into the beam of sunlight next to Elsie’s chair, one hand outstretched to rest on Elsie’s arm. ‘What do you mean, gift?’

‘The house was always … active,’ Elsie says, ‘but it got worse after my little brother was born. I would hear crying in the night, but he would be sleeping. We would feel as if someone was in the room with us, but there was no one there. Things moved of their own accord. I saw her, you know. Agnes. After the baby was born. That’s why I had to make the charm.’ She waggles her fingers at Mina, but her face is dark. ‘Do you just have this little one?’