There is a darkness building inside her with the realization that she has lost the last of her power. She lacks even a name, now, to test against her pain.

She runs as if there are flames licking at her feet: home, down sun-drenched pavements, past lines of narrow-windowed, residential houses punctuated with baby-blue, grey, baby-pink and pale lime paint-jobs. She runs through estates, cutting across playgrounds and through triangles of green, skirting buggies and slaloming slow-walking toddlers and shoppers. She runs until her legs tingle and lightning bolts drive themselves through her chest cavity each time she stumbles. She runs fast, so fast from the fear that she may have passed the man that travelled into her and stole from her, a thousand times over. She may have passed him on the street striding, pausing, walking, standing still on a corner, glancing up from a phone. He may have been flicking through receipts and notes in a wallet at the corner shop as he held a big carton of milk under his arm like a small dog. All he’d have to do was angle his face a little, allow his hair to fall a little, to peer through its curtain and observe her height, taller than most, her nose, more slanted than most, and her long, long Rapunzel hair.

She is being watched by a face that is bigger and wider than she ever imagined. There is no specific twist or grimace or red-scaled skin. She is being watched by something that holds all skin colours and creeds and religions and there is absolute chaos in the universality, in the possibility of him being anyone. Of his having ebony eyes or snakeskin covering him or a long body or short legs or no hair, a waxy head, an inked head, one of those faces that can look at one moment awful in a photo and at another time beautiful. A son or father or brother or criminal.

He has become everyone.

There will be no more justice deferred to cling to; she has lost that today. The dock is empty. And yet Maisie lives.

Chapter 25

When she returns home, Adam is still in the clothes he slept in, his boxer shorts and a frayed Ramones T-shirt. ‘There you are!’ he says. ‘I thought you’d gone to work.’ He ruffles his hair, still bleary with the morning. ‘I’d have saved you some pancakes if I’d known. Maisie took the rest of them for her lunch. She’s gone in for a revision session thing.’ He pauses. ‘Hey, are you OK?’

She walks a few steps and collapses into him. He pulls her close to him, her ear to his chest. She can hear his heart beating.

‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’