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nowhere,’ Scott mumbled.
    ‘You were going too fast,’ Rachel said. ‘Claire told you to slow down.’
    ‘Yeah, mate,’ Callum added. ‘She did warn you.’
    I lowered my hand to my side and unclipped my belt. The strap retracted and I fumbled for the door handle and stepped into a deafening hush that made it feel as though the world had been abruptly muted. The tang of burnt rubber hung in the air. Misted wetness settled on my face and hands.
    The road surface felt too hard beneath me and my movements were stiff and ungainly, knees jarring as I stumbled around the front of the SUV and passed through the low, spiralling headlamp beams.
    The sheep had been shunted towards the side of the road where the tarmac fell away into a dewy grass trench. The tall pines teetered overhead, sodden and blurred in the wintry fog.
    The creature drew a halting breath as I approached and then exhaled shallowly, its torso trembling, faint twirls of vapour escaping its nostrils.
    I was about to move closer when I heard a door opening behind me. Scott got out and knelt down at the front of the SUV, inspecting the damage. The bodywork didn’t seem to have crumpled or deformed at all. The bull bar had done the job it was designed for.
    ‘What are you doing, Claire? Leave it. We should go.’
    I crept towards the sheep. Perhaps it would be OK, I was thinking. Perhaps it would scramble up and hobble away. We hadn’t hit it as hard as we might have done. Another few feet and we’d have stopped before the impact. But even supposing the sheep’s injuries weren’t severe, I knew that animals could suffer very badly from shock. I’d heard it was what killed a lot of cats that got clipped by cars.
    I edged closer. The sheep just lay there, its breathing irregular, its thick woolly chest rising and shuddering. One of its hind legs was poking up at a freakish angle.
    ‘Claire. Come back.’
    I dropped to one knee on the cold ground, my arms crossed over my thigh. The sheep watched me, its roving yellow eyes sparkling in the headlamp glare.
    Another door opened behind me. I heard footsteps on the road.
    ‘Claire?’ It was Rachel, speaking softly. ‘Claire, we have to go.’
    The sheep trembled.
    ‘Claire?’ Rachel reached for my arm. She tugged me away.
    I’d like to be able to tell you that I resisted. I’d like to say that I shook her off to offer some comfort to the luckless sheep. But I didn’t. I allowed her to drag me to my feet. I let her turn me and lead me back towards the others.
    But before she ushered me into the SUV, before she pressed down on my head and guided me inside like a suspect being manhandled into a police car, I turned and glanced back over my shoulder. The dark glitter of life still lurked in the sheep’s swollen yellow eyes. The slitted pupils were fixed on me, unflinching and brimming with hostility. And for one heady moment I was taken unawares.
    I’d seen that look before.

Chapter Six
    The black sugar paper was making my scalp itch. Mum had stapled the paper into a tapered cone, then jammed it down on top of my head. Before fitting the cone, she’d fed my head and arms through the holes she’d cut in a black bin bag, bunching the plastic around my waist with a sash cord. I was standing before her now, my glitter wand gripped in one fist, my other hand resting on her shoulder as she knelt on the floor and helped me to step into my black school plimsolls.
    I was eight years old and I thought I made a pretty awesome witch. The bin bag was decorated with silver cardboard stars and moons, my cheek was branded with a rub-on tattoo of a bubbling cauldron, and Mum had blacked out one of my front teeth with an eyeliner pencil. This was my first Hop-tu-naa and I was determined to make an impression.
    Mum was the one who’d got me excited about the whole thing. She and Dad were Manx, but we’d only moved back to the Isle of Man in the summer. I’d been born in Barrow and had spent the first seven years of my