She turned and scrambled up the bank, slipping, sliding back, before finding her feet again. When she’d struggled to the top, her hands and knees wet with mud and grass stains, she dared one glance back down at the river. She saw only golden light on slow water, the heron wading in the shallows.

Get away, she thought. Back to the house? She didn’t know, was only sure that she needed to be gone from here. She pushed through the hedge, stumbled onto the lane.

Sara heard the hiss of tyres, the whine of brakes. She saw only an impression of the car, a wall of colour, and held her hands out as if they could stop it.

Damien’s BMW halted, its grille inches from her knees, and her legs betrayed her. She fell forward, her hands on the car’s bonnet, hot on her skin. Through the windscreen, she saw her husband stare back at her, eyes wide, lips moving. She heard his voice, muted, but the anger cut through. He threw off his seat belt and opened the door, climbed out, already shouting.

“. . . the fuck’s going on? What are you doing out here? I could’ve killed you.”

She tried to speak but there wasn’t enough air. All she could do was open her mouth and watch as he walked around the car to her. He seized her arm and dragged her to the passenger door, opened it, and bundled her inside.

His questions continued as he climbed into the driver’s seat and set off towards the house. She had no answers, only the image of ribbons reaching out across the water to her, inviting her into their tangles and swirls of scarlet.

14: Esther

14: Esther

Esther spent hours in thought, sometimes drifting on sluggish tides of sleep, but more often awake. She wondered about the two women, their ratty hair and dirty faces and fingers. Their missing teeth. The smell of them, their low and stale odours mingling with the damp and rot of the cellar. Sweat and urine, excrement and worse. Their dull and thready clothes. She watched them that first morning as they lit the lamps with thin and grubby fingers, made their toilet, went about their ablutions. All of it had the banality of routine and the urgency of ritual. The men summoning them from above, like heathen gods, taking the women up into the light.

How did they come to be here? How long ago? She wondered if their stories were like hers, grasping for a handful of kindness, and being dragged into this. And the strange little girl, so small, so watchful. Even after she had left her side, Esther still felt the girl’s eyes on her back, seeking. A girl who had never known any place but this.