Petra walked close to Helena along the pavement across the road from the three men. When she’d first come here, she’d been fearless – she’d grown up in Joburg, for God’s sake, and Leamington drunks and dealers hadn’t frightened her. It had all been a bit like a holiday. At first, the conjoined towns of Leamington and Warwick had felt like a living theme park. Leamington’s Regency World counterpointed by Warwick’s grand Tudor Land and Fun Castle. Down the road, there were pubs older than Shakespeare! So the parts in between – Economically Depressed Midlands Nightlife World – had also seemed a bit unreal, but the gloss eventually wore off. She’d suffered years of overlong nights and humourless, blank-eyed and grimy catcalls and while, thank the Lord, people weren’t allowed to carry guns here, she’d seen enough pictures of the grotesque, crenelated Rambo things used in knife attacks, read enough news stories of women murdered on their way home, to stop being complacent. All in all, it was safer not to be fearless.

So a pop over to the other side of the road it was, until safely past the men, who in the event hadn’t even looked up at them but had laughed in a lively way when the short one had got the blunt lit. Helena had winced again as she’d leaned over to enter her code into the pad at the lobby’s reinforced glass door.

‘We’d better get you upstairs,’ Petra said as they pushed through the door. ‘Will you be able to have a bath? I’ll start up a soup or—’

She stopped talking when she realised they weren’t alone in the lobby. A woman was standing in the dead-end corner among bikes and forgotten boxes under a flickering downlight. Petra had to look twice, but she was sure of what she saw. The woman was young, probably mid-twenties, and had a trim body, somehow elegant in her coat, not dumpy and overquilted like Petra always felt in winter. The mouth and jaw were alright – she would have been pretty, even, Petra thought, if it weren’t for the eyes.

Her jet-black hair was held back in a rose velvet barrette. It might have been elegantly styled in the morning, but by this time in the evening it was lank, looked a little damp or greasy, and strands of it hung loose. Her mouth hung open, as if something forgotten was on her lips. Thoughtful, hesitant, not like Petra’s mouth would look if her eyes were like that.

Because Petra’s stare was drawn back to the woman’s eyes.

They were empty. Not just dull, or tired, or lifeless. The irises were all pupil and the void inside them was sucking the world into them. That’s how it appeared for a moment, before she realised that the woman’s eyes were just red, painfully red; puffy and swollen from sobbing.

‘My God,’ Petra said, hurrying over once she’d got her limbs to work. ‘Are you alright? What happened? Can I…’