Only very late that Sunday night, once the household had finally fallen asleep, did the nuns arrive. Quietly, they circled the house, slowing as they passed each room, the ground-floor sitting room, study, kitchen; looking up at the darkened windows of the library, bathrooms, bedrooms. They closed their eyes and felt the dreams rising and mingling; from the sleeping forms in the attic, on the landing, in the airing cupboard outside the bathroom, where Stella had made her bed in the warmth given out by the boiler. They allowed the dreams to flicker through them: the modern Kurdish women’s army, the fifteenth-century BC female pharaoh, the under-acknowledged Sheban queen, the sex dreams in which the gender of the figures was difficult to discern, the domestic scenes of washing up, hoovering, wiping down of surfaces and children’s faces, the elaborate and extravagant finding of beautiful clothes in the local charity shop, the waves of happiness, the peaks of orgasm. Solemnly, they reassembled in the porch. It was cold; the wind was getting up. They joined palms. For a moment there was silence; above the wind, they could barely hear their breath. Then Sister Lucija spoke.

‘It is enough. The hour has come.’

In London, Alice sat bolt upright in bed.

JUDGE: I believe that Eva Harcourt-Vane dreamt of what her death might bring, and tried to prepare you for it.