I made drinks for Kenny and the boys and, after a glass of squash and a cheese sandwich, felt a little more human. In an attempt to purge my thoughts of dead cats and Mrs Barley’s chanting, I sat at the table and logged on once again, flicking through the book about Avoncote to the chapter about its pagan festivals. I was interested to read about a May Day celebration called ‘Jack o’ the Green’, where a man would head a procession of villagers and musicians, dressed from head to foot in a huge conical wicker frame decorated in flowers and foliage, with only a tiny slit out of which to see. Coming from the city, this sort of thing was alien to me. In truth, I found it vaguely sinister – I had never really understood the appeal of Morris dancing or bizarre customs like rolling enormous cheeses down a hill, either. According to the information in the book, the role of ‘Jack o’ the Green’ had been dropped from Avoncote’s May Day festivities some fifty years earlier. The ‘Jack’ was traditionally played by a chimney sweep, and the last unfortunate man to be cast in the role, a local sweep in his twenties by the name of Leonard Wiseacre, had met with a mysterious and untimely death shortly after his performance. With locals being naturally superstitious, no one was keen to take on the part thereafter. Everyone had concluded that the custom brought with it bad luck, and the following year the May Queen became the main focus of the celebrations.

My own Jack and I had found this year’s event entertaining, aside from my uncomfortable exchange with the aura-reading woman. I hadn’t seen her since and wondered where she actually lived. Maybe she was from another village.

Turning the page, I was slightly disturbed to read that the local pond had once been used to ‘duck’ suspected witches. Worse still was the revelation that on the outskirts of the village was the site of the still-unsolved twentieth-century murder of an elderly local man, suspected by many of witchcraft. He was found at the foot of a hill, pinned to the ground by a pitchfork, a trouncing hook through his neck and a cross carved into his flesh.

The idea that men or women who lived alone, maybe offered herbal remedies and told fortunes, were viewed with such unfounded suspicion and mistrust was abhorrent. Not so very long ago, somebody like the woman I encountered on May Day or even Mrs Barley could quite easily have become the focus of one such campaign, to round up those who were deemed different or a threat. I thought of their fate and it made me shudder. This really wasn’t improving my mood at all.

I flicked forward to some more recent information and peered at the various black-and-white images of past annual festivities, such as the midsummer carnival, which went back as far as the 1920s.