She looks at him in abject fury. For a blistering instant, Santi feels her fury move into him, become his own. He believes God has given him this purpose: that on some level, he is here to save her. But what does it mean that his purpose depends on Thora’s misery? If love is what she is owed, how can he make up the world-heavy weight of the unpaid balance?

He chooses that moment to retreat to the kitchen. He doesn’t feel like he’s won. He feels like he’s limping away from a skirmish, lucky to escape with his life.

Héloïse comes in, still in her hospital scrubs. She pauses, keys in her hand. “You’re biting your nails again.” Santi looks down at his fingers. A habit he thought he’d beaten thirty years ago, creeping back like a ghost. Héloïse closes the door behind her. “You shouldn’t do that in front of Thora.”

He laughs under his breath. “You really think I can influence anything she does?”

Héloïse shrugs off her coat, opens the fridge on her way to the table, and deposits a beer in front of Santi.

He opens the beer and takes a swig. “How did you know?” he asks.

“Because I know you. You live your whole life like you’re being tested. And you want to pass with flying colors.” She kisses his forehead, smooths his unruly hair. “But this isn’t an exam. There’s no pass mark. All we can do is fail her less badly than she’s been failed before.”

He starts teaching Thora crochet the next day. She’s deliberately clumsy with it; after ten minutes, she refuses to do any more. Santi measures their progress not in the square she’s working on, which grows by slow centimeters and shrinks at almost the same rate as she unpicks wrong stitches. He measures it instead in words hurled, points scored. Even if all they’re building is a war, they’re building it together.

Before she’s even close to being able to fix the blanket, she starts sneaking food from the kitchen. Héloïse and Santi stand in Thora’s room like detectives at a crime scene, looking down at the evidence stashed in a tin under the bed. Biscuits, bags of crisps, a wrinkled apple, a chocolate bar divided into individually wrapped pieces. Santi can’t help seeing them as military rations. Along the windowsill, he counts thirteen glasses of water in various states of half-full. He flicks them in sequence, freeing an eccentric tune.

“She’s living like a hunted animal,” says Héloïse quietly, although they are safe: Thora is out with Lily, the only friend she’s made so far. “Should we take all this away?”