Noreen’s face darkened. “We didn’t choose this. No more than you did. You wait, give it a few weeks, you’ll be as filthy as we are.”

Esther realised she had found the hard nub of pride that remained in this woman. Good, she thought, glad of anything at all she could grasp to. That meant she hadn’t been broken. Not yet.

“Who are the men upstairs?” she asked.

“My Daddies,” the little girl, Mary, said.

Esther looked at her now, once again shocked at how small she was, how dark her eyes. “They can’t all be your father.”

“We don’t talk about that,” Noreen said. “We don’t want her to know too much. To get attached to anyone in particular.”

Joy cast her eyes down, hugging her own elbows. Esther noticed, and understood.

“How did you get here?”

“Probably same as you,” Noreen said. “I was desperate. I needed a place to go, and I took what I was offered. I didn’t know what was happening till it was too late.”

“George told me they needed a housekeeper,” Joy said. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“Have you tried to get out?” Esther asked.

“What do you think?” Noreen said, her voice sharp. “Course we have. I don’t know how many times. And I don’t know how many times I’ve been dragged back by my hair, or worse. There’s been others here. Others that tried to get away. They died. We’re the lucky ones.”

“Died?”

“Aye. They died. But we’re alive.”

Esther felt her anger ebb, dampened by the fear.

“There has to be a way,” she said. “There’s more of us than them.”

“And they’re stronger than us.”

“There’s knives upstairs, I used one yesterday. We just need to get one and—”

“They have guns,” Noreen said. “A knife’s no good against a gun.”

“We have to try,” Esther said. “What else can we do?”

“We can live,” Noreen said, leaning forward, her voice rising. “We can bloody well stay alive, and maybe we’ll outlive them. That’s what we can do. Just get by, just try to get through the day without making them angry. And they’re always angry. All we can do is survive, one day after another. Stay quiet, keep our heads down. You try to do anything else, and they’ll kill you. They’ll kill us. They’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again. We’re no better to them than the cattle in the fields. We’re less than that to them. You’re right, we live like animals, because that’s what we are to them. The best we can do is cook for them, clean for them, and please them when they want pleasing.”