All her grace is gone, in its stead this rigid panic. She is pacing the room now, mumbling something about being unreliable, incapable. Bad luck follows her, she mutters. It wasn’t safe, she knew it wasn’t. Her guard was down, she says, otherwise she would never have agreed –

She stops then, points to the door beneath the stairs, which stands ajar.

‘That door,’ she says, alighting on the word with new hope. ‘Does it lead downstairs?’

‘Yes, but –’

She hurries into the hallway, Anton following. He sees her pause, a moment’s hesitation, before she pulls the door back and plunges down the steps into the darkness. He can hear her down there, banging at the inner door, fiddling with the lock, calling the boy’s name over and over. Slowly now, he comes to stand in the doorway, watching.

He can hear voices in his head.

Mark: ‘You will watch yourself, won’t you, Dad? You won’t do anything … stupid?’

Nigel, when they parted ways at the hotel: ‘Stay out of trouble, Anton. You don’t want to end up back here.’

Jim Buckley, his parole officer: ‘Be good now.’

But there she is, at the bottom of the stairs, dimly lit, frightened. He could close the door now and she would be trapped, like a butterfly in a jar. For a moment he stands there, wavering, horrified by the thoughts that have come to him, that he might become the monster they always claimed him to be.

But then she turns her face up to him, and something inside him falters.

When she comes up the steps towards him, his knuckles whiten, his grip on the door tightening. A split-second decision, and he catches the look in her eye – the brief realization of all the danger he poses. At the last second he stands aside so she can hurry past. Powered by an urgency he can attribute only to fear, she flings wide the door and then she’s outside, down the front steps, lost to him.

His heart is a trapped bird in his chest, fluttering wildly against his ribs. He sinks back against the wall, feeling faint and light-headed. All these years – the caution that has held him in check, abandoned in a fleeting instance.

Through the open front door, sunlight falls on to the carpet, too bright, searing against the headache that has roared to life. There are voices outside, and the sound of a dog barking. Impelled by some confusion inside him, he moves towards the sounds, hears them grow louder.

Outside the sunlight burns his eyeballs. He looks down over the iron railing that flanks the steps, sees the swish of a dog’s tail. Two women are standing in the small clearing by the door, working at the lock. Feeling his shadow cast over them, they look up.

Two faces. Both familiar. His heart kicks with sudden fright.