‘Fuck you. Fuck all of you. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t tell me to do anything. So fuck you. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me. Dead in the tunnels and I’d be glad because I wouldn’t have to put up with your fucking nagging. You don’t get it, do you? We’re stuck here. This is it, all right? We are never going home. Fuck.’

She screamed her last word, and if Mama had been any closer, Mary would have been hitting her with her closed fists, anywhere she could but mainly the face because that hurt the most.

The women had drawn together behind Mama, eyes wide, mouths open.

And behind them, just in the open ground, were Stanislav and Dalip. The older man had his arm stretched out across the Sikh boy’s chest, barring his way, holding him back. They weren’t going to interfere. They were going to make their own choices, but what was more, they were free to make their own choices. No one was telling them what they had or hadn’t to do.

‘I’m not one of your fucking babies, so stop talking to me like I was. Fuck off, then, if that’s what you want to do. There’s no door, and you’ll drown looking for it. If you do, at least it’ll be quieter. Go on. Go.’

She was done. Spent. Her throat was raw, and she was shaking with the effort. She turned away, and stumbled into the woods. She couldn’t go far, because her legs wouldn’t take her. She found a tree, slumped with her back to it, and slid down the trunk. She’d deafened herself, and she could hear nothing of what was happening behind her.

She knew though. Everyone else would be shaking their head and saying how disgraceful her behaviour was, how no one could help her. How it’d better for them to simply abandon her, because she was just too difficult. She couldn’t be tamed. She was self-destructive, and better that she destroyed herself, rather than take anyone else down with her.

She sat there, staring at nothing between the brown trunks and the green leaves, while they came to the inevitable conclusion. She waited for what she thought was long enough – it may have been minutes, but it felt like hours – before getting to her feet again.

What would she do? She supposed that she’d start walking, see if she could find this geomancer by herself. It wasn’t like she had anything better to occupy her time.

The moment she came out from behind the tree, she could see Dalip, working away at collecting firewood over to her left. There was no one else around.