‘No sign—’ starts Eren, appearing at her side, but she hushes him with a gesture, and points. Again the dancers part, and again her friend and her sister-in-law materialise, marked apart by their connectedness. It is clear they are in no mania, no grip of divine abandon. They look as they are, two women wildly spinning, locked in each other’s embrace.

There is a commotion at the entrance. Men crowd into the already airless vault of the guild, brandishing long hooks. The Twenty-One’s strong men. And there at their head, inevitable as a nightmare, is copper-haired Plater, the hook swinging from one rough hand. A fist grasps inside Lisbet’s throat, and squeezes. If he sees Ida . . .

Lisbet ducks her head, and throws herself towards the stage. There is no gilded allure over the room now, only the reek of shit and sweat from exhausted women, and her sister-in-law and best friend mad or stupid or both, making a mockery of the whole sorry sight. Eren is too slow to follow Lisbet, who hears his cry as though she is underwater. She pushes ahead of the wave of men, and mounts the wooden steps. They creak and sway with the motion of the dancers, as though she has stepped from safe harbour onto the deck of a ship.

Finding her footing, she stumbles on, into the centre of the dancers. Here, the sounds around them are diminished, and a sort of breathing hush composes itself into a rhythm, as though she is back inside her mother, listening to a heartbeat that may as well be a god’s for all she knows or cares. How her baby must feel at this moment, no need of knowledge beyond her own body. It is comforting in a way, and dazzling, and as she brushes past the women, she understands suddenly that this is no mania. There is something soaring, hopeful: an abandonment. Perhaps it is transcendence.

A cry rises from the steps, and through the pulsing bodies Lisbet sees the men mount the stage, hooks already jabbing and prodding. Plater is stooped, his full force behind a jab, and as he bends Lisbet sees a boy at his hip, the hook higher than his head. It is Daniel, the Lehmanns’ boy, and his face wears a light so bright it terrifies her.

She forces herself forward, until she stands beside Nethe and Ida. The women are so intent on one another they have not noticed the men, or the increasing shouts, or even Lisbet herself until she takes hold of Nethe’s shoulder and yanks hard.

Nethe breaks free, and blinks at Lisbet as though she has woken her from a dream. Her face is flushed and slick, her eyes heavy-lidded, and through the cloth of her dress Lisbet feels her shoulder move into taut rigidity, her breath breaking from pants to gasps.

Lisbet, she mouths, and beside her Ida, regaining her balance from the broken spin of Nethe’s embrace, matches her astonishment, her growing alarm. Lisbet feels a righteous anger break apart inside her, and she shakes Ida.