‘I didn’t know what would happen to Ethan.’ Rory stretched out his hands to her, supplicating. ‘You have to believe me! I would never …’

Belief. She’d asked that of him, days ago when the two of them had whispered together in a cleaning cupboard. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ And he had.

Rory dropped his gaze. ‘I thought we were rescuing you …’

This was Rory.

He rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Please. Delores told me I had to go and get you, keep you safe from Aspire. I had no idea what would happen to Ethan, or what they’d done to the clients. I …’

Thea swayed on her feet, her eyelids getting heavier with every blink.

‘I swear to you I am not lying about Rosie,’ he continued. ‘She’s hidden. I hid her in the Client Bubble, the damaged one, as soon as the chaos started, to keep her safe. I guessed no one would go back there. Thought I’d get her out with me, but before I could do that Delores ordered me up to the lighthouse to fetch you. But Rosie’s there. She’s awake.’

‘Awake?’ Thea snapped back into the room.

‘Yeah. A bit groggy. Can’t move much. But awake. I was getting supplies from the canteen here’ – he showed her the rucksack over his shoulder; it was full of nut bars and fruit – ‘when I came into that room and saw what they’d done … to the clients. I didn’t know before, I swear I didn’t. And then I heard someone running and … there you were.’

Thea glanced at the door at the end of the corridor. ‘In there, they’re all …’

‘I know,’ he said softly and then paused. ‘We were told that the clients had been evacuated – you have to believe me on that. We would never …’

There it was again. Belief. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

Did she?

He trailed off. In the short time since she’d seen him last, it was as if his face had sunken in on itself.

Thea lowered the axe.

Thea had never been much of a hugger, but when she saw Rosie propped up in bed in a client room, her face still a mess of bruising, blood and bandages, but smiling, a wicked glint in her working eye – she was in the hug before she realized. And then she was crying, and Rosie was crying too until they couldn’t even understand each other because all they could make were incoherent sounds, hitching gulps and sobs.

For Thea, every cry was the loosening of something hard and knotted up inside her. It was something that had been twisting itself tight ever since she had seen Ethan die, so tight it had kept the rest of her together like an overstretched ball of rubber bands, liable to snap at any time.