I extended my hand, palm-down. He turned it over, raised the knife and pressed the sticky handle into my palm. He closed my fingers over it to form a grip. Then he lifted the knife, and my hand, so that the tip of the blade rested against his throat, exactly where his collarbones met.

‘Now. If you believe anything the Indian said, if you believe your poor addled father, you should push the knife home. Run it through me and have it stick in the bone, because if such things are true, I do not deserve to live.’

He lowered the hand that held mine. I alone held the knife now, poised so the tip trembled under my own confused power. It bounced; a prick of blood appeared. He did not flinch.

‘I am Holofernes, if you want me to be. Silver and curses, as always. Take my head when you are done.’

I could not comprehend that he would surrender all that physical power to me. When I had clenched myself around him in his cabin, I had persuaded myself of exactly that illusion: that I was mighty, that I controlled him. Now I did; yet still I did not trust the offer of his exposed throat.

‘If you truly believe I murdered a man last night, do it.’

I held the blade there, wishing with all of my soul that I had the capacity to do what he asked. ‘I cannot know exactly about these other things. But I know you poisoned my father.’ I jabbed with the knife tip: blood ran more freely now.

He only sighed. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps I gave him what he wanted. Maybe I gave him succour when the world had denied him any. You give an addict the thing they crave, and maybe you delay by an hour or a day the point at which suffering will overwhelm them. Maybe you deliver a measure of peace.’

‘You did it so you could fuck me in the cabin next door.’

Somewhere around his eyes I saw amusement. ‘We are all of us slowly poisoning ourselves. Your father chose alcohol. The native woman is eaten by hate. Argyle…I cannot tell, but something assails him. And you, sadly, are corroded by cynicism. It eats your insides but you continue to sip at it. We all hunger for our own extinction, Eliza.’

He had made no move towards the knife, slack in my hand, so heavy now that my arm ached.

‘I am tired,’ he murmured. ‘It’s been too much, too long now.’

I wanted so badly to drive the blade home. That, or to throw it away. To end it, either way, but still I stared. At the knife. At his throat.

‘Push it in.’

The darkness was advancing. In the gloom he seemed apart from the world.

‘No.’

‘You can end this.’

‘No.’