‘Then what?’ she asked gently.

‘I was the one left to put it out. Neither of them seemed to notice what was going on – they were too busy mouthing off at each other . . . I was dowsing it all down. Luckily nothing else caught.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Sean went upstairs saying he was going to pack all his stuff and he was going, and Olivia went to pieces. She tried to persuade him . . . crying, and she was all over him – horrible – but he said it was too late, he was going. All this time and I never saw it. I thought Sean was just moody, or – I don’t know.’ He shuddered. ‘She’s some kind of pervert. I can’t handle this, Jake.’

‘What about Krish?’ Jake said. ‘Where is he?’

Ben pointed. ‘In there with them.’

With Ben following, Anna and Jake ran into Olivia’s house. The front door was already open and the hall floor stippled with muddy water. In the long room they were met by a sight that Anna would never forget. The acrid smell of burning and of damp ash met them straight away. The front end of the room where the table stood was wrecked. Instead of the warm glow of light through the coloured silks at the windows, daylight poured through bare panes, harsh and white. At either side hung shreds of blackened cloth, and the wall was stained dark by the flames, as were the corners of that end of the room where there had also hung saris, which must have caught fire with the speed of tissue. The table, the floor, the sills were soaking wet and a black sludge of charred material lay at the edges of the room. Overturned on the floor were a yellow plastic bucket and a red washing-up bowl.

Olivia was sitting at the table, her elbows resting on the wet wood, apparently oblivious to the damp. Her face, stilled with shock and exhaustion, was that of an old woman, limp and grey. She still had on the long, pale pink nightdress in which Anna had seen her that night on the landing and her hair was loose round her shoulders.

Sean was standing in the middle of the room, a black Puma bag with red lettering on the floor beside him, stuffed so full of things that it wouldn’t close. A pair of trainers were stuck in on the top. He had evidently just been saying something to Olivia and he was leaning slightly forwards, his body grotesquely angular and aggressive. At the other end of the room, Krish was sitting in one of the easy chairs with his legs drawn up close to him, chin on his knees, his eyes wide and staring.

Anna and Jake stood for a moment in the doorway. Jake stepped forward. ‘What’s the problem, Sean?’

‘She’s the problem,’ Sean snarled. Anna was reminded of something wild: a wolf. Sean pointed a rigid finger at Olivia. ‘She’s sick – up here.’ The finger jabbed against his head. ‘Someone ought to do something about her.’