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I handed in my notice to Val that same day. She tried to act pleased for me, but in truth, she looked mostly pissed off, particularly when I informed her that the amount of leave I had stacked up meant that I would be finishing on the sixteenth of June, rather than the first of July, as she had assumed. She tried to tell me that I needed to work my notice and take the leave as pay, but when I more or less invited her to see me in court, she caved.

The next few days passed in a whirl of activity and practicalities. Sandra did all her payroll remotely through a company in Manchester and wanted me to contact them direct with payment details and ID rather than sending all the paperwork up to Scotland. I had expected the process to be a major stumbling block, maybe even requiring me to travel to Manchester for an interview in person, but in the end it was surprisingly, almost disconcertingly simple—I forwarded them Sandra’s email with a reference number, and then when they replied, I sent the passport scan, utility bills, and bank details they requested. It went through without a hitch. Like it was meant to be.

The ghosts wouldn’t like it.

The phrase floated through my head, spoken in Maddie’s reedy little voice, its childlike quaver lending the words an eeriness I would normally have shrugged off.

But that was bollocks. Utter bollocks. I hadn’t seen a whiff of the supernatural the whole time I was in Carn Bridge. More likely it was just a cover story seized on by homesick au pairs, girls barely out of their teens with poor English, unable to cope with the isolation and remote location. I’d seen enough of them working at places in London to know the drill—I’d even picked up some emergency work when they scarpered in the night with the return half of their plane ticket, leaving the parents to pick up the pieces. It wasn’t uncommon.

I was considerably older and wiser than that, and I had very good reasons for wanting to make this work. No amount of alleged “haunting” was going to make me turn this chance down.

I look back, and I want to shake that smug young woman, sitting in her London flat, thinking she knew it all, had seen it all.

I want to slap her face and tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Because I was wrong, Mr. Wrexham. I was very, very wrong.