The woman is ranting, but the girl only hears it in waves of muffled white noise.

‘Again . . . I didn’t want any of this, you bring it upon yourself . . . do you know what happened? Do you . . . you aren’t mine, not mine . . . I don’t see why I should put up with you, everything was fine before . . .’

The girl closes her eyes but she can still see the wall in front of her, and its crevices, like the lines across the woman’s furrowed brow.

‘He hates you, you know . . . those things he does with you, don’t think they are acts of love . . . nothing like that . . . I know love when I see it and . . .’

Suddenly the ranting stops. The girl stirs. It’s cold – it’s never warm in the basement. Even in summer, the sun only shines directly through the little window for a few hours and what little warmth finds its way into the room is soon absorbed into the bare walls. In the winter, the window leaks and the rain trickles down the brickwork, flowing through the grooves, and collecting in a puddle at the foot of the wall. If it rains all day, the pool is so big it spills over into the sunken recess in the floor. The girl is waiting for the day when the water fills so high that the recess is like a lake into which she can dive.

The white noise has stopped. The girl risks opening one eye. Maybe the woman has gone. Maybe this time she might be left to sleep. She is left alone for long periods of time, her meals thrown down the stairs from the house above like a dog’s. But she doesn’t mind – it’s better than when the woman rants at her, sometimes hits her. And that’s better than when she has to get dressed for him. That’s the worst.

The girl’s relief is short-lived. The woman is still there, but closer suddenly. In her ear. This time the words form clearer in the girl’s head – not fully formed but almost complete.

‘She brought you here, that bitch of a mother of yours, you know. You were a child, ugly and fat. I didn’t want you but he saw something in it for him – a profit, of sorts . . . then she killed herself, your mother. That’s how little she thought of you – delivered you here into his hands then hanged herself on a tree a week later . . . poor wretch, how pathetic . . .’

The girl remembers nothing, but senses the woman isn’t lying. Why would she lie? Why would they compound her misery with deceit when everything they do is already so wicked?