He must get her out of the house. This is all Charlie knows. He must get Eleanor out of the house and do so quickly, while Julius is distracted and his dog focussed on another task. The window opens easily enough in the room that was his prison, but beneath lies an eight-foot drop onto a ground bumpy with flower pots that he cannot risk, not with the girl clinging to him, fighting for breath against the grip of the harness and her fear. Snow enters the room before he can shut the window again, carried on a gust, along with the cold of the air.

He turns, walks quietly, his whole body stiff from lying still all day, out into the hallway and the room across. The light shining up from underneath is brighter here, and Charlie makes sure his feet do not stray from the dark squares of two rugs. Renfrew’s bedroom is spartan, holds a cot, a wardrobe, a washbasin, and little else. The living room is close under their feet. The sounds that issue from there have moved into a realm beyond speech. They mingle with the blood pounding in his ears. Charlie tiptoes and times his steps to his heartbeat; to the moans of a man in pain and the low growl of a dog. A snowflake has caught in Eleanor’s eyelash, melts as Charlie’s breath fans across her face.

The window is veiled in frost, disclosing nothing, but when he lifts it, carefully, quietly, it opens up over the flat roof of a shed cushioned with a foot of snow. He slides the child out first, dives after her. They swim to the edge of the roof, spilling snow. The cold is intense on his face, the roof’s edge draped in ice: it drops them onto a mound of snow at its back. From there they reach the back fence and a row of trees. Two steps bring them around the corner of the house, where a window stands brightly lit, the curtain open. Through the frost-thickened pane little can be seen other than a bit of wall across, the movement of a shadow at its utmost edge; the glow of the fire split into four tidy rectangles by the window’s wooden cross. Then it is as though someone has dumped ink into a water tank: the dark swirl of a viscous cloud takes possession of the room, drowning out the light and covering the pane until it appears to be dripping with darkness. The sound that accompanies the cloud serves to drown Eleanor’s shriek: a single protracted note so shrill it sounds as though it has been cut from Renfrew’s lungs.

Before Eleanor can shriek again, Charlie has picked her up and fights his way through trees.

ф