‘No, go on,’ her brother said.

Bea gripped the banister. The woman’s voice sounded unnatural. It wasn’t in the room.

‘Alex …’ it said, through the speaker of a computer, ‘… just turning up … have to say anything.’

Somebody else said something, a man this time, Bea couldn’t hear the words.

‘A day at a time,’ said the woman.

‘Yup,’ said Alex.

She heard the miniature slam of the laptop closing, and his chair creaking as he stood up. She ran to her room, shut the door and got back into bed.

‘Dan?’

He didn’t answer.

She sat against the headboard, looking out through the window at the small, bright moon which seemed to travel as the clouds crossed it. Both her parents were there, just there, right there, in bed, across the hall. How could she not think of it?

The first time she had been seven years old, and it had been winter. Even now, in adulthood, she found something frightening in the short dark days.

That day had been wet, and her fingers red with cold as she dropped her satchel by the coats. Her nanny, Kathryn, was parking the car, and Bea had forgotten to wipe her feet because the Christmas tree had arrived. It stood, unobserved by anyone but her, towering blackly in the hall, fresh from the forest. She remembered staring up at it, and the thrill, then looking down and seeing her shoes were covered with mushy leaves from outside, and that she had made wet prints on the polished marble. She kicked them off and crossed the hallway in her socks.

The kitchen stairs had a glass balustrade. As she went down, she could see the wet grey garden through the windows, and the sofa, and the two of them on the sofa, lying back. She had known immediately. Or maybe she had altered the memory to fit what she knew later. But she remembered clearly that seeing them, she felt fear, and a sense of wrongness so strong it felt alive. She remembered exactly how it was both nothing and everything, the way a nightmare is. Just a normal room, an empty field; terror, long before the axe comes, or the chase. Liv had been on the sofa, and Alex, in his school uniform, was lying back against her breast, and she was holding one of his hands and sucking his fingers. His plate and cup were beside them on the table. She must have been sucking crumbs off him. Then she saw Bea. Bea remembered they had both looked shocked, but she didn’t remember what happened immediately afterwards. Kathryn must have come in. There wasn’t a scene and it hadn’t been dramatic. There was nothing else to remember, except Alex, coming up the stairs past her, to go to his room, and that as he went by she felt his distress like a sickness passing from his body to hers. She had tried to forget it, but she never could.