Edith watched them and smiled and for the first time didn’t mind being stared at. Let them look, she thought, as she turned to walk down the street and with every step she had the sensation that she was becoming taller. She put the violin under her chin and played, a Pied Piper bringing her voice back to the village. The frail and the young who hadn’t attended church peered from their windows.

The cabinet maker peeped out from behind his shutters and saw a crowd following this wild creature. Fearing the worst, he hid under the stairs. It had proved a place of safety in the avalanche; perhaps it would serve again with a demon.

Only when Edith reached her house and opened the gate did she feel herself return to her normal size. With an uncharacteristic gesture, she bowed to the crowd before closing the gate behind her. And a lost memory came rushing back to greet her: the day her grandmother died, she’d blocked her ears to all that her grandmother had tried to tell her. She’d refused to listen and had run off to see Lena. When she returned, washing was still hanging in the yard and a sizeable earthenware dish was broken on the kitchen floor. Her grandmother was lying dead at the foot of the stairs.

Edith looked round the yard now. It was a wreck, and a goat was nonchalantly munching the tops of some straggly turnips. Only the walnut tree stood proud in its fresh, spring-washed leaves. Five bedraggled hens emerged from the henhouse. Too thin for eggs, too thin for the pan. How could her father have let everything fall into ruin?

The house was in an even worse state, smelling of stale wine and piss, though her bedroom was untouched. From the middle of the kitchen, she called to the cabinet maker.

‘Where are you?’

It was strange, even to her, to hear her own voice in the house again.

A pathetic whimpering came from under the stairs and she opened the cupboard. He was thin like the hens, his eyes sunk into their sockets.

‘I’m not a well man,’ he said. ‘Are you a demon? Have you come to take me to hell? It was an accident – I didn’t touch her – she lost her footing.’

For a moment Edith couldn’t think what the old fool was blabbering about. He crawled out of the cupboard. Still on his knees, he said, ‘Just give me another chance.’

She hadn’t imagined that her appearance would have such a dramatic effect. Demetrius had been right.

The cabinet maker seemed to be in a mood to talk and Edith decided to say nothing.