‘Well, we’ll miss you, Ellen, no doubt about that, but our loss is Mr Stellion’s gain. And your Uncle Tom’s. You’re a good worker and deserve a more formal job, like, after all this time, mebbe with a bit of training.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Beveridge.’

‘And our Edward’ll be sorry not to see you about the place, too, though you’ll always be at the end of the lane.’

Ellen smiled. ‘Of course. We’re all pleased to see Ed whenever he wants to drop by.’

‘Here, take this for your pay, and there’s a bit extra as thanks for your efforts. And I’ve a few cracked eggs here I won’t be able to sell, so you can have those for your mum, if she’d like them.’

‘She would, I’m sure. Thank you, Mrs Beveridge. And thanks for the pay. My regards and thanks to Mr Beveridge … and to Ed, too.’

‘I’ll tell them you said so, love.’

As Ellen walked out across the yard, carefully carrying the tray of eggs, she saw her father glance her way then disappear behind the hay barn. He was avoiding her, seemingly resentful of her new job – or maybe of her working with Uncle Tom. She sighed: nothing to do with her. Dad and Uncle Tom had never got on well. Mum was on good terms with her brother-in-law, though, and of course they saw a lot of each other, both working up at the Hall.

When she’d finished watering the herbs, Gina went back to the field where she and Ellen had lain in the sun earlier. At the gate she stopped to take the little phial from the recess, thinking she couldn’t risk her sister coming back to investigate it. She held it tightly in her clenched fist and wished with all her heart that the spell she had conjured was real and would work. She hoped to feel something happening, experience a sign that powerful forces were at work – she was sure she’d felt the presence of some kind of power when she’d cast the spell in the bedroom she shared with Ellen earlier that afternoon – but the phial just looked like an ordinary tiny glass medicine bottle in which she’d placed a drop of blood from a pricked finger, the stopper bound round with a few strands of hair she’d combed out of her hairbrush. The exact incantation she’d recited – what a word that was: in-can-ta-tion; she said it aloud, liking the sound – was forgotten now, and the shabby little volume she’d filched from a second-hand bookstall and in which she’d discovered the so-called spell was hidden in her clothes drawer and not to hand. She’d moved the phial now, so she was certain the spell had lost its power.

She sat down and leaned against the irregular and uncomfortable wall to brood, still clutching the bottle.