‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth.’ He lay contrite beside her. ‘I’m sorry, my lovely. Stop that now. Stop.’ Then loudly, ‘Stop that fucking noise can’t you, you stupid cow?’

He moved from the bed and I knew he would leave the room. I whisked along to my end of the house taking in tiny shallow breaths.

When I closed my bedroom door behind me the birds grew silent. Lady fluttered up from the bottom of the cage to one of the wooden perches, shifting her claws back and forth along it, her eyes black and cold like pellets in her yellow face. King was clinging to the bars, his bill hooked round one of them, gnawing at it.

I leaned against the door, watching them. King suddenly made a flurried movement as if something had startled him and launched himself, feathers fanning violently, until he landed on the bottom. They had no practice in using their wings properly. There wasn’t the space. I saw then how they’d never move from there. Never do or be anything else.

‘You’re stuck in there, aren’t you?’ I said softly, sliding across the carpet to them. ‘Nothing you can do about it in there all day every day, is there?’

Their dark eyes fixed me with metallic stares. They didn’t care what I was saying.

‘It’s not right, is it?’ I unfastened the door of the little cage and reached inside. King panicked again, wings beating madly, their cool draught against my hand. He flapped round and round, evading me. Lady sat quite still as if frozen.

Carefully I lifted her from her perch and drew her out, one hand cupped round her body, the other underneath, supporting her gnarled feet. Her little life pulsated against my palm. I squeezed her, my fingers pressing tighter and tighter until I was shaking and the effort made me dizzy. Lady struggled for a few seconds but I had her too hard and I kept holding her with all my strength until she was still. Her little head flopped to one side. I laid her in the bottom of the cage. Then I chased King. He didn’t want to come but I was faster than him and I killed him too and left him lying beside Lady. Their beaks were touching. They looked as if they loved one another.

Dawson found them like that. I came in later and found her standing bent over the cage.

She turned her brown eyes on me. ‘Oh, Miss Olivia, what on earth’ve you done?’

Mummy and Daddy said the birds had both caught a chill. They kept telling me so.

I was so happy when they sent me away to school.

* * *

Chapter 4

Birmingham, 1935

Granny Munro was standing quite naked in the drawing room.

‘Kate!’ My mother’s voice from the wooden balcony was shrill with barely concealed rage. Strands of greying hair hung limp on each side of her thin cheeks as she looked down at the upturned faces in the garden, our eyes screwed up against the bright summer sun. ‘Get in here quickly. She’s doing it again!’