STRIKE TWO. AND I’m in again. All it takes is a well-placed blow, and the piñata begins to weaken and split. The mother is the weak link; and with Yanne on my side, Annie follows as sweetly as summer follows spring.

That lovely child. So young, so bright. I could do great things with such a child – if only her mother were out of the way. But one thing at a time, eh? The mistake now would be to push my advantage too far. The child is still cautious, and may still withdraw if I press too hard. And so I’ll wait, and work on Yanne, and to tell the truth I’m enjoying it. A single mother, with a business to run and a young child constantly underfoot – trust me to become indispensable, to become her confidante, her friend. She needs me; Rosette, with her endless curiosity and her knack for getting into all the wrong places, will give me all the excuse I need.

Rosette intrigues me more and more. So small for her age, with that pointed face and widely spaced eyes, she might almost be a kind of cat, scuttling about the floor on her hands and knees (a technique she prefers to walking upright), poking her fingers into holes in the wainscoting, repeatedly opening and closing the kitchen door, or making long and complicated arrangements of small objects on the floor. She must be watched at all times, for although she is usually quite good, she seems to have no sense of danger, and when she becomes upset or frustrated, may sometimes indulge in violent (though often soundless) tantrums, swaying wildly from side to side, sometimes to the point of striking her head against the floor.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked Annie.

She looked at me warily, as if calculating whether it was safe to tell. ‘No one really knows,’ she said. ‘A doctor saw her once, you know, when she was just a little baby. He said it might be something called cri-du-chat, but he wasn’t sure, and we never went back.’

‘Cri-du-chat?’ It sounds like a mediaeval affliction, something brought on by the cry of a cat.

‘She made this noise. Just like a cat. I used to call her the Cat Baby.’ She laughed, and quickly looked away, almost guiltily, as if just talking about it might be somehow dangerous. ‘She’s all right really,’ said Annie. ‘She’s just different, that’s all.’

Different. That word again. Like Accident, it seems to hold a special resonance for Annie, something more than its everyday meaning. Certainly, she is accident-prone. But I sense that this means something other than pouring paint-water into her wellingtons, or putting toast slices into the video player, or poking her fingers into the cheese to make holes for invisible mice.