But he wouldn’t. Would anybody? Mum? Keira? They’d been talking about giving Joel to Them only last night. Might as well drop her child in a crocodile tank. No. He mightn’t freeze, but leaving him here’d be far crueller. Better to take the risk.

Jess had a mobile phone – an ancient Nokia, heavy as a half-brick – with an alarm function; she’d stowed it beneath her pillow, directly under her head, so she’d hear it but (hopefully) no-one else would. In the event, she’d been lying awake for over an hour before it began to bleep.

She shut it off immediately. Joel grizzled in his cot; Jess went over and shushed him, then parted the curtains and peeped through the window boards. She saw thin grey light, brightened to a glare by the thick snow in the yard: daybreak, if only just.

Movement from downstairs. Jess stayed at the window, peering out into the yard, listening too for footsteps on the stairs and eyeing the barricaded door.

The back door slammed, and Mum moved across the snow. She passed out of sight, but Jess kept watching and after a few minutes Liz came back, stick in one hand, a trussed lamb kicking under her other arm. So for now, at least, she’d decided against Keira’ s plan.

Liz walked off, towards Thursdale. Once she was out of sight, Jess moved.

She’d dressed during the night. Sweater, trousers: plenty of layers. Under the bed were her coat, boots, a woollen bobble-hat, a bag of baby things and a backpack.

A last look at Joel in his crib. Then she moved the chest of drawers and tiptoed onto the landing, to the room at the end.

It wasn’t locked. There was a lock, but Mum never used it. Everyone understood: that was Mum’s office, and you didn’t go in.

But now, Jess did.

Inside, on an old kitchen table, stood an old desktop computer, the ledgers where Mum kept the accounts, a few scuffed and battered books, and the Family Bible.

It was a huge thing, dauntingly so; Jess almost changed her mind, at the thought of lugging it all the way to Barsall. But she thought of Paul and Mum and Keira, how she hated them all; and then, most of all, of Joel.

If Joel grew up here, who’d teach her little sweet boy to be a man? At best, Frank. At worst, Paul. Even Jess knew all men weren’t like those in her family; Joel certainly wasn’t. Not yet. But if he grew up here, they’d poison him.

It had probably been the sharpest insight of her young life; funnily enough, it had led her to consider, at last, that maybe she deserved better too.