‘I had to see your mummy.’

‘Are you coming back down now?’

‘In a minute, darling.’

Rather than leave, Ruth crossed the threshold into the room and went inside the screen to her own area. The bells jangled and Emma jumped.

She looked at Rachaela appealingly.

‘Why not tell her now?’ said Rachaela, shrinking and cruel at once.

‘Do you think—? Oh lord, I suppose I should.’

Emma stood at a loss.

And Ruth came back from behind the screen with a white paper in her hand, brightly painted green and mauve.

‘Here’s my seahorse, Emma. I forgot to show you. Have I done the tail right?’

‘Oh yes. He’s perfect, Ruth. Shall we put him up with the others?’

‘I want to put in some shells and seaweed first.’

‘All right, you do that, and then we’ll pin him up. It’s becoming quite an art gallery. Would you like to go to a real gallery, Ruth, to look at some paintings?’

‘Will you have time?’ said Rachaela.

A hopeless anger, a kind of fear roiled in her. She wanted it to be over. She wished Emma would take the child downstairs, do it there. It would be nicer to behead her with a carving knife. Would Ruth scream? They had said at the school she had had a screaming session. Nobody knew why. Emma suspected some of the other children had harassed her, but even to Emma, Ruth had been close-mouthed.

Emma had picked the school, Rachaela only signed on the relevant line. The first day Emma had escorted Ruth to the gates and come back with a red nose.

But all that was behind them now.

‘Ruth, lovey, I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘What is it?’ Pleased, the child looked up into Emma’s shadowed glow.

Ruth was not pretty, no Queen of the May. Her skin was ice-white and flawless, her eyes large and luminously black, fringed by reed-thick lashes. Her features were well-shaped even so early, and the jaw placed finely on the white neck with its blue flush of springing hair. Ruth’s hair was straight as falling black water. Something of her father after all.

It was hard to be sure why she was such an unattractive child.

Taken piece by piece, the face was lovely, almost ethereal, but taken all in all it was far from beauty. And in a rage—when some painting eluded her, when she was frustrated or puzzled—it was an ugly, bestial little face.

Soon it would be ugly.

‘You see,’ Emma was saying gamely, ‘my own daughter Liz, you remember Liz? Liz is going to have a baby.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth, seriously, interested.

‘And Liz wants me to go and look after her. And Liz lives in Cheltenham, which is a long way away.’

Ruth nodded. She understood.

She said, business-like, ‘When are we going?’

‘Oh darling,’ cried Emma. ‘Oh darling.’ And could not manage any more.

Rachaela said, ‘You won’t be going, Ruth. Emma has to go. Her daughter needs her. You’ll have to stay here.’