‘I know what you’re going to tell me,’ said Tiffany, to help him out, but he took care to ignore this.

‘It’s not that she was a bad girl,’ he said. ‘It’s just that she never really understood what it was all about, and there wasn’t anyone to tell her, and you got all kinds of strangers and travellers passing through all the time. Quite handsome chaps, some of them.’

Tiffany took pity on him, sitting there looking miserable, embarrassed about telling his little girl things his little girl shouldn’t know.

So she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek again. ‘I know, Dad, I really do know. Amber isn’t actually his daughter, right?’

‘Well, I never said that, did I? She might be,’ said her father awkwardly.

And that would be the trick, wouldn’t it, Tiffany thought. Maybe if Seth Petty had known one way or the other, he might have come to terms with the perhaps. Maybe. You never know.

But he didn’t know, either, and there would be some days when he thought he did know and some days when he thought the worst. And for a man like Petty, who was a stranger to thinking, the dark thoughts would roll around in his head until they tangled up his brain. And when the brain stops thinking, the fist steps in.

Her father was watching her very closely. ‘You know about this sort of thing?’ he said.

‘We call it going round the houses. Every witch does it. Please try and understand me, Dad. I have seen horrible things, and some of them all the more horrible because they were, well, normal. All the little secrets behind closed doors, Dad. Good things and nasty things I am not going to tell you about. It’s just part of being a witch! You learn to sense things.’

‘Well, you know, life is not exactly a bed of roses for any of us …’ her father began. ‘There was the time when—’