Next to her, Inga breathed hard and tossed in bed. The child was suddenly back where she really was: in Sweden. In Läggesta. Mummy was in Switzerland, so far away . . . the child felt a flush of heat rising inside. She had written so many imploring letters, well, three, only three really – and then the Limb of Satan had found out that one of the maids had been secretly posting the letters. The maid was sacked, the child had her hair pulled, and now all letters to Switzerland were vetted. Perhaps it had to be like that. Perhaps her mother had no money to keep her at home, and it was cheaper up here. That was how her mother had explained it.

She was so alone here. Quite alone among the other thirty-nine girls, and she was afraid. Her life consisted of nothing but fear. Fear of the Limb of Satan and of the older girls, who would tell on her whenever they could, fear of the next day and of the day before, from which things might come to light. Fear of everything, everything. The child didn’t sleep – her eyes made holes in the dark.

That her mother could have sent her here! They had been here once before, three or four years ago – and her brother Will had died. He was buried in the churchyard at Mariefred. The child could sometimes visit his grave, when the Limb of Satan let her or told her to. Usually she told her to. Then she would stand by the little grave, the fourteenth row on the right hand side, with the little headstone, where the letters still gleamed as new. But she had never cried there. She only cried sometimes at home for Will – fat little Will, who was younger than she was, and wilder at games and a good boy. Now and then Mummy had had to smack him, but it never hurt, and he laughed under his child’s tears and would be a good little fellow again. As if he was made out of rubber. And then he became ill. Flu, people said, and four days later he was dead. The child still remembered the hospital smell. But all that hadn’t happened here, it had happened in Taxinge-Näsby, a name she’d never forget. The sour smell, the ‘Hush!’ as everyone went around very quietly on tiptoe, and then he had died. The child had forgotten how. Will wasn’t there any more.

Not her brother. Nor her mother. Father had gone away – where to? No one was there. The child was alone. She didn’t think the word – it was much worse: she felt loneliness, as only children can feel it.