Reggie had been athletic and graceful. How could she have fallen for no obvious reason – and sustained such terrible injuries? She had been alone – it wasn’t as if she had been trying to escape Akhmad, or anyone else. As if from nowhere, the memory of the creepy little figure on Mrs Barley’s side table resurged, and the way the old woman had looked at my friend with such animosity.

And then the most awful thought came into my head. The bandana. Something that had a link to Reggie. If that’s what had been inside that book, it would explain why Mrs Barley would have wanted it. Couldn’t a hex be put onto someone using something that belonged to them? I thought then of little Alfie’s upset stomach after eating the cakes; then Sylvia, and the thread that Mrs Barley had cut from her jacket; Wendy Wiseacre’s nephew. And poor baby Georgie’s seizure. Was my elderly neighbour spiteful enough to have been in some way responsible for all these misfortunes?

I could hear the pounding of my blood in my ears and my mind began to race. I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but the wine had loosened my tongue – and fired my imagination.

‘I know this might sound wildly improbable, but do you believe Reggie could have been cursed?’ I blurted out.

She sat back in her seat and stared at me as if I had gone mad. ‘Cursed? You mean, like voodoo or something?’

It all came out in a rush. ‘No. Well, yes, but not voodoo. The old woman next door to us is into all things esoteric – crystals, fortune-telling, that kind of stuff. There have been some really odd things happening since we moved into our cottage and I saw a weird little doll sitting on a table in her front room.’

I paused, wondering if I had already said too much.

‘Go on.’ She nodded encouragingly, studying me with some concern: whether for me or about what I was telling her, I wasn’t sure.

‘Well, I read up about them when I was writing an article about local folklore. They call them poppets – witches used to make them hundreds of years ago to inflict bad luck on someone they didn’t like – or worse. The thing is, I’m sure she had a piece of Reggie’s bandana alongside it – Reggie had messaged to say she lost it when she came to see me. The old woman could have used it – you know, to cast a sort of spell or whatever. It’s just – I know it probably sounds far-fetched, but my neighbour obviously didn’t like Reggie. She’s a peculiar woman and sometimes I wonder what she’s capable of.’