She kneels, using towels so that she doesn’t get covered in his blood, and drips the brown liquid from the bottle into his mouth. She squeezes his nostrils shut to make him swallow. When he’s had the whole lot, she stops.

Constance wonders if it’s going to be enough. She wonders if he’s going to die. She hopes he does, and then she hopes he doesn’t, because Ruby will be the one left behind. She’ll be the one they try to blame.

Either way it’s too late now. His breathing slows, becomes steady, until she almost can’t tell whether he’s breathing or not. It’s better for Ruby if he’s dead. It’s better for all of them.

Constance chews her thumb and stares at the man, bent and broken-looking in the empty tub, a towel bunched at his feet.

Later, when she’s dressed and ready, Constance returns to the bathroom and turns on the bath taps. She takes a pair of scissors and cuts off his clothes, to make it look like an accident, as if he was alone, that he has slipped and fallen badly. He groans when she shifts his body to get the clothes out from under and she jumps back, afraid he will rise up and attack her, the way he has so many times before. His eyes don’t open. He settles, grows still, but the fear doesn’t leave her. She pulls his head forward, hits him again with the conch shell, in the same place as before. This time, the blow lands with a squelch. Constance doesn’t notice the small piece of the shell’s lip that breaks off and lands on the tiles. She bundles up the cut clothes; she’ll drop them in a litter bin somewhere in the city.

She locks the bathroom from the outside, using a teaspoon wedged in the groove of the bolt to turn it. She wraps her coat across her body, picks up Leonie in one arm and swings the changing bag over a shoulder. Time to go. Tonight she’ll return to her old life, but even as she feels the joy and anticipation of that, she is brokenhearted. Because it means letting go of everything she has in this life, including her baby girl.

CHAPTER

39

NOW

Ruby

Monday, December 24

THE COLD CLAMPED itself around Ruby’s head and made the inside of her ears hurt. She zipped up Leonie’s jacket and pulled the hood over the child’s head. Then she tried to fasten her own coat, letting go of Leonie for a second. Almost in the same moment, her arm shot out to grab the child again as she got ready to run off. Ruby hauled her up to eye level.

“Baby girl? Please don’t do that. You scared me so much.”