In the closeness of the car sour sweat radiated off her in one, great, disgusting swell. My hands ached with the desire to grab the gun off her lap, but what would I do with it if I actually managed to grab it? I couldn’t shoot her. She had been the closest thing to a mother I had ever known. I could never shoot her. And yet the notion zigzagged across my thoughts like volts of electricity. Returning to the cottage filled me with a kind of dread that was as intense as thoughts of dying. If I did go back to that place, I was as good as dead. I felt sick with panic at the thought. What kind of life was a life behind locked doors where the one person you got to interact with was her? I thought about all of the times I had behaved like her perfect little doll, sat there so quietly and dutifully as she painted my face … I could never go back to being that person. I would rather die.

‘You’ve been very badly behaved recently, Mirabelle,’ her words sliced the stillness in two, jarring my thoughts. ‘You’re usually such a good doll. I don’t know what’s got into you. I’m just relieved you’re alive. The light must not have been strong enough to hurt you.’

‘I’m not allergic to light. I never have been,’ I said, teeth chattering despite my defiant words. I wanted to be brave, to stand up to her, to fight.

Mother fell silent. My stomach cramped. She accelerated up the road faster and I fought the urge to throw up.

‘Slow down. Please,’ I said as we swerved round a bend that sent me crashing into the side door.

‘I can’t. We need to find Clarabelle before something happens to her. Where and when did you last see her?’

Nausea billowed in my throat. ‘I’m going to be sick. You have to stop.’

Mother shook her head. ‘Hold it in. I’m not stopping. Where did you last see her? Tell me or I’ll drive straight back to that house and shoot that woman in the head.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘You’re not a murderer.’ As I said the words, I tried to believe them, and a series of images pirouetted around my mind’s eye like a deadly dance; Mother marching up to the house, opening the door, looking for Dot, standing over her, smiling and pointing the gun at Dot’s face, pulling the trigger, Dot’s face exploding, blood and flesh dripping off the walls. Blood and flesh. Dot’s headless body.

‘You saw what happened to Patrick,’ she said, glancing at me.

I clenched my fists. ‘How is Patrick? Is he …’ I couldn’t finish the sentence as another series of gory images attacked.