Stephen patted her cheek uncomfortably. The air was musty, he longed to crack the windows wide open. He thought about all the times he’d walked into her room in the morning and found her and Jongy asleep, Jongy’s head on her shoulder, their arms wrapped around one another. There was nothing he could say or do. She was shut away in her misery.

He began to stroke her hair. Over the bones of her skull, the skin looked pale and dry. Her face had changed. It was pinched and shrunken, with violet shadows around the eyes. He could see a vein throbbing in her neck. The unthinkable was happening; Ginie was getting old. He cleared his throat.

‘I’ve spoken to the police. Told them everything we know. They took the bullet to see what they can do to identify it.’

Something like a sob ran through her, but she didn’t speak.

He had never seen her like this. The Ginie he knew was always excitable and bubbly, sometimes maddening, sometimes wise, unpredictable and oozing with charm. He did not recognise the subdued, broken woman in front of him. He’d had an extra lock and chain added to the front door and bars put on every window of the house. To look at his beautiful garden through bars took all pleasure from the sight – it was like living in a cage, but his nerves were on edge. He reproached himself bitterly for refusing to take the letters seriously. Someone out there meant them real harm.

Ever since he had found Ginie covered in soil, ants and vomit, shaking and crying so hard she couldn’t speak, he felt as if the two of them were in darkness, groping towards something terrifying and horrible; something he could not name, but which waited for them implacably; impossible to avoid.

The only person Ginie could bear to have near her was Mary, Eliot’s widow, who had an unobtrusive way of tending to her that Ginie found soothing. Mary did her hair and toilette with gentle hands and even managed to coax a few spoonfuls of soup into her at mealtimes. Mary was looking better than she had when she arrived at La Rochelle; her face was filling out, the lines around her eyes and mouth seemed less deep.

‘My Missus has a bad spirit eating her from inside,’ Mary observed one day, as she straightened Ginie’s bedcovers and plumped up her pillows. A stranded bee was flying about, knocking into the windows. It fell to the floor, buzzing angrily. Mary opened the door to the veranda and guided it out. They watched it fly away in great looping movements, drunk with relief.

‘The spirit has nothing to feed on,’ she added. ‘In time, he will get weak.’