A sudden devastating deterioration from which there is no recovery.

Orial wandered through the neglected Asylum gardens. Weeds choked the borders; the path led past a sundial, half-smothered in bindweed. She parted the clinging stems, revealing the slate dial beneath.

The faint shadow of the broken finger flickered across the dial… backwards?

Overhead, clouds scudded on fitful gusts of wind, obliterating the faint sun.

This was where Iridial had spent her last moments. This was where, distracted beyond endurance, she had turned towards the river, seeking oblivion.

The rusting iron gates that led out into the river marsh should have been locked… but the links of the chain securing them had snapped. Orial pushed open one of the gates and went out to stand on the bleak banks of the Avenne beneath the fast-scudding clouds. Here the lonely marsh seemed to stretch on forever into the distant hills. No birds, no stir of life, only the wind: just sky… and rippled water.

Banks of dry reeds whispered, moving to the wind’s incessant whine. She closed her eyes a moment, listening.

‘Or–i–al…’

‘Who’s there?’ she cried aloud.

The green riverwater shivered. Where the stooping willows trailed their yellow tresses in the river, Orial caught a tremor of movement.

She squeezed her eyes shut – and half-opened them again.

Fingers part the rippling riverwater. Hair, green as riverweed, drifting on the current. A woman is floating in the cold waters of the Avenne, her naked body tinged with the chill grey of the river’s sediment.

Drowned…

Orial’s fingers cage her eyes, she dare not look, she dare not – for if she looks, who will she see?

Dead Iridial… or her own body floating past?

Jerame Magelonne hung up his white coat, washed and dried his hands and set out along the Sanatorium corridor for the parlour.

It was time for tea. Even if the pendule clock had not struck the hour, he would have known for Cook had been making girdle cakes: he had smelt them sizzling on the range. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation; his mother had made girdle cakes for him when he came in from school and that warm, comforting smell of eggs, flour and buttermilk always made him remember his own childhood with happiness.

Orial stood in the parlour, staring out the window.

‘Girdle cakes, eh?’ he said, lifting the cover off the dish and looking with pleasure at the round, crisp pancakes, helping himself to several.

‘Tuck in, Orial!’

She did not move.

‘Mmm. They’re very good.’

She turned around. Her face was taut, her fists clenched at her sides. And when she spoke, the words were wrenched out of her in a tortured whisper.

‘Why? Why did you never tell me?’

He shook his head, not understanding precisely what he had not told her, yet dreading to hear.

‘That she drowned.’