‘No,’ I say. My throat feels thick, closing over as fear tickles at the base of my spine. ‘I have a little boy. Leo. He’s four weeks old.’

Elsie looks up at me sharply. ‘You have to put it back,’ she says, a quiver in her voice. ‘The charm, you have to put it back under the floorboards. It’s there to keep you safe. Promise me you’ll put it back.’ Her voice rises and the nurse bustles her way into the room.

‘You’re upsetting her. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

‘I’m sorry, I …’ I get up, squeezing Mina’s hand tightly. ‘I’ll put it back, OK? Just please, tell me what happened in the house. Tell me what Agnes did.’

‘Put it back,’ Elsie says. Her eyes move down to where my mother’s hand still rests lightly on her forearm. ‘You’ve disturbed things. It’s there to keep the children safe.’

‘Allie, what the hell are you doing?’ Rav walks into the bedroom as the light is fading.

‘Looking for the keys,’ I say, pulling out T-shirts and vests from the chest of drawers. I had hurried home from Mrs Sparks’s house, dread lodged like a stone in my stomach. My mother had wanted to come in and talk over what Elsie had said, but she had had to leave, late for a meeting at the university, and I had rushed upstairs only to find the charm missing from where Rav had left it on the dresser. Now, Mina and Leo are in bed, and I am tearing the bedroom apart looking for it, Mrs Sparks’s words reverberating in my mind.

‘What keys? Your keys are in the front door, I just found them there.’ Rav holds up a hand, my house keys swinging from the end of his forefinger. ‘Do you want us to get burgled or something?’

‘Not those keys.’ I stop, my hands on my hips, scanning the room for anywhere else the charm could be. ‘The ones I found in the attic, with the feathers and the stone.’

‘Oh.’ Rav watches me as he lays my keys in the spot on the dresser where the charm was. ‘I threw them out. They were rubbish, Al.’

‘You threw them out? When?’ Already I am pushing past him, down the stairs to the kitchen.

‘I don’t know … last night? The night before?’ Rav follows me, his feet heavy on the stairs. ‘Allie, fucking hell. What are you doing?’

I pull the lid off the bin and yank out the half-full bin bag. Grimacing, I reach in and start to rummage in among the food scraps and tea bags. ‘I need to find it, Rav. You shouldn’t have thrown it away, not without talking to me first.’