‘No!’ she moaned, eyes closed, trying to escape in any way she could. ‘Charles, no . . .’

‘Don’t speak,’ he panted. ‘Don’t open your filthy whore’s mouth. You will submit to me.’

There came a mighty cracking sound. Then another. A third. The iron force of Charles’s body went limp and collapsed on her. Margaret opened her eyes. She lay for a second, stunned. She could hardly breathe under his weight and began to try to shove him off. She realized someone was pulling at him, easing her task.

‘Maggie? Oh, Maggs! What has he done?’

Annie flung herself down, pulling Margaret into her arms. Margaret felt her sister’s wiry form panting with fright and exertion, and found herself shaking all over, her teeth beginning to chatter. She clung to Annie, never loving her more, never more grateful for her little sister.

‘I . . .’ Margaret struggled to speak. ‘I don’t know . . . Where is he?’

Both of them looked round in the gloom. Charles was a long, inert shape beside them. Blood ran in a black line down his cheek.

‘Annie – oh, heaven . . .’ Margaret gasped, dragging herself to her feet. ‘What have you done?’ Her voice rose, a different terror filling her now. ‘What did you do?’

Annie pointed at the heavy stool, upturned on the stable floor. One of its legs had come off. ‘I hit him.’ The rage rose in her voice. ‘Hit him and hit him. He’s like an animal – a filthy, rutting animal.’

‘Oh, my . . . He’s . . . He’s not moving . . . Oh, Annie, oh, Blessed Lord – what have you done?’ Margaret’s torn underclothes were bunched about her ankles and she dragged them off her so that she could get up. She managed to make her shaking legs work well enough to creep towards Charles Barber’s prone body. He was so still, so silent.

‘Is he dead?’ Annie, still kneeling, spoke in a calm, flat voice.

Margaret crouched beside him. He seemed so big, lying there, so strange. In her shaken state she could not think. Dead. He was dead. She listened for breath. Confused, she could not decide if she could hear his breath or her own. In a second of insight, she remembered . . . pulse. You had to feel for the heart’s pulse.

Dreading to touch him, she reached for his wrist, her fingertips searching for that beating moth wing of life . . . And there it was, the steady rhythm of it, the blood still moving. He made a slight sound in his throat.

‘Oh, thank God!’ She bent over, sobbing with relief. ‘He’s alive. Oh, God, you could have killed him, Annie. I thought you’d killed him!’

It was Annie now who seemed stunned. She just sat where she was.

‘We must get help,’ Margaret said. ‘Father – we must fetch him.’