‘In between places. On the streets, mainly, but sometimes in the Barley poorhouse too.’

‘The same place Morven and Cass escaped from?’

He nodded once. His face was growing paler and his eyes looked even more watery than normal.

‘Did you know them from there?’

He nodded again. ‘They weren’t my friends; they never helped me, never stopped them.’

‘Stopped who?’

‘The others. And the wardens.’

Lily was careful with her word choice. He was opening up to her, but gradually. She didn’t dare push him in case he dived back into his shell. ‘What happened, Glenn?’

‘I-I’d been living on the streets for as long as I could remember. My mother died when I was born, and my father couldn’t bear to look at me. Called me her “bastard”. He left me with a wet nurse in her cramped cottage in a tiny hamlet outside of Ardnaroch and returned to a city; I don’t know its name, but it’s beyond the Shadow Lands. He never came back for me, never wrote.’

‘Oh Glenn, that’s awful.’

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. His face had taken on a glassy expression, as if he was living through the memory, not just recounting it. Lily wondered when he’d last spoken openly about his life.

‘My wet nurse, Pirra, she was nice, but she had nine of her own children. I was at the very bottom of the pile. Then, when I was seven, I think, or eight, she died. Right there in the middle of the kitchen.

‘Well, the next thing we knew, we were in the back of a rickety cart, being taken to Barley poorhouse “for our own good”. They said it would make us strong, so that one day we could work the fields and earn proper money.

‘It was horrible. The work was mostly pointless, designed to make us exhausted and quiet more than it was to teach us anything. Those who cried got beaten. If you cried during a beating, you were taken away and never heard from again.’ He shivered and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

‘Are you all right? You don’t have to carry on, if you don’t want to.’

‘No, you’re nice. You’re kind. I think … if you know where I’ve come from, maybe you’ll understand why I am as I am: rotten, unpleasant, everyone’s least favourite.’

‘I don’t think you are those things though, Glenn. All I know is that you’re sweet, and maybe you’ve got a bit of a temper, but honestly, what young person with such a history wouldn’t? I think you’re far better than you give yourself credit for.’ She reached out to hold his hand, but he flinched away, a tear escaping and rolling down his cheek.

‘I tried to escape once. They caught me just as I made it outside, just as I’d begun to hope that I might be free. They dragged me inside and beat me in front of all the other children. That’s when I first saw Morven. She couldn’t look at me and she was crying. I thought to myself, “What’s she crying for?” I couldn’t understand. But then I saw Cass. He had a black eye and a bruised jaw, and yet he stood there with his arms folded, smirking down at me. Like he was somehow better.