Mary interrupts. ‘Mrs Meake! The fastest way out?’

Annie motions up the handful of steps to the back door and Mary unlocks it with Edward’s keys. They struggle to pull it open, though, for the door is stiff with the cold, swollen by the recent heavy rains. Mary batters her fists against it.

‘Richard! Help us! Help us!’

Behind them, Edward stands in the hallway, dazed as if in a dream. He closes his eyes a moment. This is not real, he tells himself. None of this is real. He is powerless, impotent, unable to move as all his dreams crumble into nothing around him, dissolving into thin air.

Annie joins Mary, trying to pull the door open. Natalya stands behind them, exhausted, leaning against the wall holding onto the dog’s collar, her other hand held tight by Etta, but Etta’s attention is elsewhere. She is not quite done with their captor yet.

Etta thinks for a moment, anger welling within. She gives Natalya’s hand one last squeeze before letting go. She turns, walks back towards Edward as he stands, broken, a puppet of a man in the hallway.

‘You were chosen by no one,’ Etta says to him, clearly and fiercely, keeping her distance. ‘You are no “messenger of God”! You have not been guided by anyone or anything other than your own greed and ambition.’

He stands by the narrow table, defeated. There will be no glory for him now. No fame and fortune. All is lost.

She plucks a feather from her wing, holds it up to the nearest flickering gas light and watches as the flame takes hold.

‘You are merely a man,’ she says, holding up the fiery feather. She gathers her energy, feels the fury in her belly and she blows it towards him, a fearsome blast that comes from the hills, the skies, from the wild within her.

It is at that same moment that Richard manages to kick the door open and a draught of cold, sooty London air gusts in. As Richard helps Annie and Natalya out into the yard, Etta’s lit feather flies down the corridor towards Edward, alights on his narrow oak console table and, in an instant, sets the beeswax polish aflame. The small blaze travels swiftly over the wooden cladding that runs below the dado rail, taking seconds to spread as it stretches itself down the hallway, licking and spitting as it goes.

Etta watches for a moment, the elemental nature of the flames lighting something within her own self. And then she too is gone, the last Edward will ever see of his beloved angel.

Outside, it is freezing cold as Mary helps Etta up the steps and into the yard. Etta gasps as she takes her first breath of outdoor air for some many days.

‘Are you hurt?’ Mary asks and Etta shakes her head, overwhelmed for a moment. This is freedom, she thinks, breathing deeply in: air and sky and earth.