“They said you didn’t want to see me,” I tell Mum in the morning as we sit at our wooden kitchen table and sip black tea. She has no milk in the house, no bread or butter for toast. “Mayor Longsight told me. It was my fault, Mum – I’m so sorry I left you to pick up all the broken pieces I left behind.”

“Oh, Leora, when will you learn not to believe a word that man tells you?” This, from Mum, shocks me – she has always been the good one, the one who knew the rules and obeyed. She’s never spoken about the town’s leader like that.

“When you left, people were wonderful – I was so cared for and supported. My true friends knew there was more to it than the story that was being told.” A small smile crinkles the corners of Mum’s eyes.

“So, what changed?” I ask tentatively. I look around the kitchen. It is bare and shabby. This is not the house of someone who is being cared for.

“Mayor Longsight hated what he saw: his people showing greater loyalty to the ties of friendship than to him.” Mum’s usually clear voice is gravelled and croaky. She sips her tea. “So, he took charge of the situation.” She swallows, shifting in the seat.

“Your mark?” I ask, and she nods.

“Sometimes I think the man is just a fool and then he goes and does something so calculated…” She sighs. “I was made an example of at one of his public markings. He announced it like it was a game. There was a new type of mark, he told the people, a tattoo that was called the mark of loyalty. The people were excited, but he told them he hoped that it would be a rare mark – made only on those who truly deserved it. They dragged me up to the stage.” She tries to keep her voice light, but as she pushes her hair out of her eyes, I see her hand shake. “He announced that thus far, only I had earned the loyalty mark. That it was a mark used to alert others – a warning for the truly loyal. He told them my sins: that I had married a man who fraternized with blanks, that I had raised a blank child, that I had lived an entire life in scorn of the purity of Saintstone. He said that I had tricked them all: deceived them. Led people astray without their knowing. My friends, my clients, my fellow readers, those who sold me food and clothes – all this time, they had been shoulder to shoulder with a criminal. It was not their fault, he said; they weren’t to know.