Robin was excited, naturally: a mysterious wooden box left by a shadowy stranger, a cryptic note… major, major turn-on for him. She knew that within the next hour or so he’d have found the original hiding place of that box, if he had to pull the entire fireplace to pieces. He’d taken off his fleece and his mirrored fez. The warrior on the battlements had been replaced by the big schoolboy innocent.

He flicked on all the kitchen lights — just dangling bulbs, as yet, which made the room look even starker than in daylight. They hadn’t done anything with this room so far. There was a Belfast sink and a cranky old Rayburn and, under the window, their pine dining table and chairs from the flat. The table was much too small for this kitchen; up against the wall, under a window full of the day’s end, it looked like… well, an altar. For which this was not the correct place — and anyway, Betty was not yet sure she wanted an altar in the house. Part of the reason for finding a rural hideaway was to consider her own future, which — soon she’d have to confess to Robin — might not involve the Craft.

‘The paper looks old,’ Robin said. ‘Well… the ink went brown.’

‘Gosh, Rob, that must date it back to… oh, arguably pre-1980.’

He gave her one of those looks which said: Why have you no basic romance in you any more?

Which wasn’t true. She simply felt you should distinguish between true insight and passing impressions, between fleeting sensations and real feelings.

The basic feeling she had — especially since her sense of the praying man in the church — was one of severe unease. She would rather the box had not been delivered. She wished she didn’t have to know what was inside it.

Robin put the paper, still folded, on the table and just looked at it, not touching. Experiencing the moment, the hereness, the nowness.