It was dark because the blind was drawn and for a moment Carina could see nothing. Then she perceived that lying in a bed there was a woman.

“So they have sent someone. I thought they would.”

The voice was very low and breathless and had too a peculiar accent that Carina could not place.

“Are – are you Lady Lynche?”

Carina found it almost difficult to say the words, it seemed so improbable.

The woman in the bed stirred herself a little.

“Raise the blind,” she commanded, still in that low breathless voice, “and give me something to drink and then I’ll be able to talk to you.”

Carina did as she was told. The blind went up with a slap, faster and noisier than she intended. Now light percolated into the room through the dirty panes of glass and despite a tree growing outside in the small garden with its branches almost touching the window.

She turned back towards the woman in the bed, only to hear again the request,

“Something to drink! There’s brandy in the bottle.”

There was a bottle of brandy on the washstand beside a white basin and cracked ewer, a soap dish that had lost its lid and a tooth glass that needed washing.

Distastefully, Carina tipped a little of the brandy into the glass and looked round for some water to add to it.

“No water!” the voice called from the bed.

She carried the glass across the room. A thin hand, with the wrist bones standing out vividly from a yellow arm, took it from her. She heard the glass rattle against the woman’s teeth as she drank and, looking down, realised why the accent of the low breathless voice had sounded strange.

The woman was not English. She was Eastern.

There was no mistaking the long slit-like dark eyes or the jet-black hair drawn back from the rounded yellow fore-head.

‘She must have been beautiful once,’ Carina thought involuntarily and then realised that the woman was very ill and yet the undiluted alcohol seemed to give her momentarily more life.

She held out the empty glass, which Carina took from her, and raised herself a little on her pillows.

“Have they told you what I want you to do?” she asked.

“Mrs. Macey said something about taking your child on a journey,” Carina replied.

“Yes, yes, you must take him, for I am too ill,” the woman on the bed answered.

Carina looked round the room as if she expected to see the child hidden somewhere amidst the pile of untidy clothing that seemed to have been thrown everywhere, on the chairs, at the end of the bed, over the towel rail.

She saw there was a big round-top trunk against one wall and guessed that someone must have attempted to unpack it and then found in this small dingy room without a wardrobe that there was nowhere to put all the things it contained.