Petra could see her jaw grinding, her throat working, and suddenly felt herself fighting back the mortifying tears with Rashida, felt the burn of her eyes and the rip of the skin as she pulled away from him, sending the chair clattering back as she stood. She teetered on unfamiliar heels around the table and past Curtis – who stuck out a nonchalant brogue and sent Rashida flailing, face and stomach grazing across the stone, her ankle twisting wickedly as she fell, turning too far to ever return, twisting and shearing like a bundle of wet sticks, the crackle reverberating across the hall.

The snap was echoed by Olivia’s hand striking Curtis’s face with a resonant, meaty slap, then the grind and clatter of a chair, a scuffle, before silence.

Every face in darkness now, turned towards the single spotlight in the middle of the floor, where Rashida lay sprawled like a crime scene, her foot pointing in completely the wrong direction.

Lights out.

‘So, what do you think?’ Ellis Brown emerged from the wings and spoke to Petra as if they weren’t surrounded by an audience of hundreds watching on.

‘It’s awful,’ she said, deliberately trying to keep her voice low, between her and him, but the sound of it resonated off the tensely silent flagstones. She’d have to go with it, play her role. ‘It’s sad. If that’s what happened, those guys are idiots, bullies. But from what I can tell, this story hardly justifies mass murder.’

‘He shattered Rashida’s ankle.’

‘Yeah, I’m sorry. If that happened, he’s a bastard. They all are. But still… you can’t seriously justify killing people for that?’

‘That’s not all that happened.’

A spot came up in one of the glassed-off alcoves set above the dining hall’s floor, illuminating Rashida performing a silent, broken dance that held the audience rapt until the main floor lights revealed an eighties 3-series BMW cabriolet in the middle of the floor, the top down despite the night-time chill suggested by the wavering slants of green and blue lighting. The two couples in the car wore thick coats and scarves. In the back seat, Olivia was tightly folded around herself, pointed away from the young Curtis Worthing.

Still, Curtis had his hand clasped on her thigh. ‘I’m sure she’ll understand in time, baby. She’ll get over it.’

Olivia tried to shift away from him, but there was nowhere else to go. The car’s engine was growling, the lights flicking past.

‘Slow down, Martin!’ the peach-blond woman was saying in the front seat. Nobody was listening. The wind whipped.

‘She’s in the hospital, Curtis,’ Olivia said finally.

‘I didn’t mean it, baby. But she should show some respect.’