‘Rapture,’ Connie said. ‘Is that how you feel?’

‘It is,’ he sighed, and his breath was maggoty meat in her mouth and nose. ‘Is that how you feel, too?’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘We don’t have much time to talk, but I have a theory about why you and I seem so perfectly matched for one another. Would you like to hear it?’

‘Yes, my love,’ he said dreamily.

Earth thumped down, and Connie prayed the girl would do as she’d been told and keep up the noise and disturbance while Connie told her tale.

‘I was in a hospital once, too. For a long time. I didn’t belong there, either. No one could understand me, and so they decided I needed treatment. I was strapped into a bed. There was no privacy, no kindness. They made me take my clothes off when they decided I should wash, watched me as if I were nothing more than an animal, decided what I would eat and when. Told me when I should sleep and when I should wake up. Gave me pills without telling me what I was swallowing, and checked my mouth as if I were a disobedient child.’

‘You too?’ Fergus asked breathily. He pushed his forehead forward to press against hers as if their very brains could meld into one another.

‘Me too,’ she said.

More mud thumped onto the box, muffled now, the upper layers going on. Muddy water was seeping in through the sides of the box. Connie wondered what would get them first, the lack of oxygen or drowning.

‘But that wasn’t the worst of it,’ Connie continued. ‘The human suffering was … beyond anything I could have imagined. We were just kids, and we were locked up, competing for any little kindnesses we could get. Desperate for love. Willing to do almost anything to be treated kindly – the sane ones among us, anyway.’

‘Doesn’t matter now,’ he said. ‘No one can hurt us any more. We’ll have each other forever.’

‘What about the others? The ones before me?’ Connie asked. ‘The body beneath your floorboards. The bones. Their families.’

There was silence.

‘That wasn’t really me,’ he said eventually.

She shifted her body the inch needed to release the buckle of her belt, making it easier to breathe.

‘I understand that,’ Connie said.

There was no noise from above them now. Either Meggy had stopped following instructions, or the mud was so compact above them that no more noise could get through. Either way, death was a calculable number of heartbeats away. The air was thinner, the water higher.

‘When I was locked up, there were people like you. People who did bad things because they heard voices, because they felt compelled to act. Those people scared me the most. They can’t be reasoned with.’

‘I bet you were kind, though,’ he said.