In the pause that followed, she sensed in the poet the same struggle she had for ideas when her mother asked her questions about the way she looked.

‘You’re divine. You could be Venus.’

‘Could be?’

‘Are! Are…’

She worked out that Mother and her visitor had arrived at the top of the stairs because the words stopped and there was a silence punctuated by a sucking noise, and sighing. The kissing game. They all liked to play it.

The ball of sickness in her stomach tightened and swelled.

What was it? she asked herself. What was it with these men, man after man after man visiting her mother?

She heard her mother’s bedroom door close and, behind it, the swish of curtains closing.

Her head hurt. The pain swelled. And it rocketed through her nervous system to the parts of her brain where compulsion ruled.

For the first time in her dark life, without making a decision, she found herself opening her bedroom door.

Walking down the corridor towards her mother’s bedroom, she saw with dread that her baby brother’s bedroom door was open. She looked inside but he was not in his bed. His absence went through her like horrid fire and she felt like her brain was frying in the dreadful heat.

Where are you?

Panic invaded her.

Where are you, baby brother?

Please be anywhere, her voice echoed in her head. But please don’t be in there, behind that closed door of hers. Please.

She crept towards her mother’s bedroom door, drawn by mounting terror for the little one.

Behind the door, she heard the poet’s voice.

‘Er, what’s this?’ he asked.

‘Ignore it,’ replied her mother. ‘If you don’t like it, get out now!’

There was a silence.

‘Don’t you want me?’

‘I’m staying,’ he replied.

She got on to her knees and looked through the keyhole, saw flashes of the poet and her mother as they took their clothes off, lunging at each other as they did so, fumbling with their hands and kissing with their mouths.

‘Tell me again,’ said her mother. ‘Tell me what you said on the telephone. How beautiful am I?’

‘You’re beyond beautiful.’

‘Do you think any man could resist me?’

‘No man could resist you.’

He sucked at her breast like a baby should.

Where are you, my brother?

She could see her mother’s lower legs and feet, lying down on the bed, and then the man’s legs and feet, his toes to her ankles.

A noise came from the space around the bottom of the bed, a sniffling that was drowned out as Mother and her visitor started making noises like animals fighting to the death.

‘What can you see when you look into my eyes?’ asked her mother.

His legs were moving up and down, his toes clamped on to the mattress.