“I just wanted to hurt her.” She leaned towards Douglas.

He put out his hand to touch her, but he was too far away. “You have to promise me you’ll leave him alone.”

“My sin killed my brother, it killed my father and now it’s killing him.”

“What are you talking about, Enid?”

“Us.” She stared at him. Her eyes hurt. Her chest ached. She wanted to sink into the carpet, the floorboards, the stone and earth beneath. “We should never have been together.”

“I’m going to call—” He was half out of his chair.

“Who?” she shouted. “Who will you call? My mother? Your mother?”

The syphon blasted another drink. Douglas took it to the window. He may as well know, she thought, staring at his back. He may as well know everything. Her belly churned as the child turned over. Her back ached, her legs were swollen, her hair fell ragged from the half bun she’d swept it into this morning when Fagus’ secret was still her own. “It’s my fault, Douglas, do you see? It’s my fault, our fault, everything born of us, everything since us was damned.”

“Finetta?” said Douglas – to the window, but she heard him.

“She’s a girl,” said Enid.

Douglas swung round. “You’re just like your mother.”

She wasn’t. He was wrong. He didn’t understand. “It’s the men, don’t you see? The men who suffer – father, Ivar, Fagus. You and I, we married in sin; we didn’t love each other. I did it to spite her.”

“Then what about this one?” He jabbed, loose handed, towards her belly.

Enid gasped and put her palm over the curve, shielding her insides. “That’s why we have to heal Fagus. Do you see? That’s why we have to do what we have to do. Christ is asking the question, Douglas.” The baby kicked again and she felt the terror of the life inside her, the weirdness that was too much, the plain truth that her brain could not accept. A life that could hear every word, a human being that would emerge plunging from her, splitting and tearing, and making her mad. “We mustn’t do it to him.” She shouted back.

“Do what?” Douglas grappled for his cigarette case, “Do what? You haven’t done anything. You didn’t put a bullet in your brother, you didn’t put a cancerous lump in your father’s stomach and you didn’t push Fagus down the stairs. None of this is anything to do with you. Fagus, our son, was born with something wrong with him. Our son. We all knew it, but you never let us say it. And now he’s caught Sleepy Sickness or whatever it is – I’m not a doctor, I don’t know. Maybe he’s susceptible, maybe he’s weak. It’s just another brick on top of a ruined city.”