‘As I’ll ever be,’ Elspeth said.

She jumped as high as she could given the constraints of the hole in the floor and gripped her arms tight by her sides over the sheet-rope.

A soft crunch followed, the equivalent of biting into crisps when the packet has been left unsealed for a week. Still an identifiable crackle, but the sound was soft around the edges. Elspeth’s head flew upwards as her feet passed through the plasterboard. Xavier grabbed for the sheet, to add his own weight to the counterbalance of the chair. Meggy reached out as Elspeth tipped to one side, the plasterboard choosing that moment to break unevenly, the area beneath Elspeth’s right foot giving way before the left, leaving her lurching into the edge of the cavity as she plummeted.

Meggy got her hand between Elspeth’s head and the jagged edge of a broken floorboard, and howled as Elspeth’s head bounced off the back of her hand, forcing her palm into the splintered wood. Too late, Elspeth reached one arm upwards to try to grab on to the remaining floorboards to prevent the fall. One arm down, one arm in the air, the sheet pulled, noose-like, around her left breast and the outside of her upturned shoulder.

The armchair spun in place, knocking Xavier from his position and pushing him into Meggy, crushing her hand further into the ragged protrusions of ageing wood. The girl cried out. Xavier did his best to clutch the slippery sheet, but the knot wouldn’t hold. Elspeth slipped away into the room below, with barely time to scream.

‘Elspeth!’ Xavier shouted.

The last of the sheet had slipped silkily through his hands and landed in a spiral on top of her unmoving body like a gymnast’s ribbon.

‘Don’t let her be dead,’ Meggy was chanting. ‘Please, please, please, don’t let her be dead.’

‘She’s not dead,’ Xavier told her. ‘It’s not a big enough drop for that. We just need to give her a moment. She’s had a shock, and she may have bumped her head. Try to stay calm.’

‘You stay calm!’ Meggy shouted. ‘You only just got here. I can’t do this without her.’

‘Meggy, stop!’ Xavier commanded. ‘That won’t help us now.’

There was a low groan from the floor below. Xavier and Meggy shoved their heads as low into the hole as was safe.

‘Elspeth!’ Meggy shouted. ‘Wake up. You have to get up.’

Face down, her right arm above her head and across the back of her head at an alarming angle, Elspeth’s feet twitched, then her left leg jerked.