Like reading a book backwards, her actions explained themselves after the event. It had been her presence keeping Fagus from full recovery, from the health he deserved, that was his, that was coming to him. She hadn’t given up on him, she’d just forgotten, and leaving made everyone safe. Ian would be safe. The meaning of the moment in the kitchen when he’d run into the rabbit fence and Fagus had held onto the bench became clear. The devil had whipped about in that late summer air, but she had taken the evil with her; she, stronger than them, who knew where to go, who could commit the act of sacrifice to save her family and in turn be saved by the great presence of Christ, shored up in a red brick mansion in Norfolk. The devil couldn’t pass through the gates and they were all free.

That word kept coming back to her. They were free of the curse of her and she was free of duty, of blood, of all the ties that bound. That explained the strange lightness in her limbs, the sense of something missing. All of this – the unravelling of the bandage in her head, the piercing of her brain with light, the enormity of knowledge – everything made sense. A vast expanse of nothing stretched from morning till night and this, she tried to live with.

But without the bandage her brain was seeping, and as the weeks then months passed, the picture became confused. She’d walked out on her family. That’s what she’d done, hadn’t she? Was she remembering right? They were all there, had all been there – the kitchen and Everett, the sunlight and garden, and Mary with Finetta, and Fagus on the bench, and Ian, running. Was that her who had left? She saw the suitcase on the bed, and Douglas pulling on his driving gloves. She saw Gould walking like an undertaker, and the car turning left. What had they done? Were they still all there, going round in circles, repeating that scene over and over? Was she there too, or had she stopped all those lives, the existence of them; had they vanished with her? And what of the night – if they did still exist, if they were all there – what of the night when she hadn’t come back, when Douglas returned, or supper was made, or the phone rang and she wasn’t there? What had they done? How long had they waited before they did something? She couldn’t imagine them beyond that moment of her leaving, she couldn’t picture it at all, and as the weeks, then months, passed, the freedom in her limbs became the lack of something; a weight she was used to gone. Ruby encouraged her on energising walks with increasing regularity, but everything in her resisted. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.