It was a doorway, though if this was to imply that something as conventional as a door stood in this doorway that would be wrong, for all that stood there was a roughly hewn plank of rotting wood laid across the space and providing little by way of barrier or weatherproofing or privacy. It did at least keep out the stray dogs, but that was all that could be said for it.

Alice pushed the piece of wood to one side and slipped inside. The shack within consisted of a single windowless room with a dirt floor that some previous occupant had covered with layers of newspapers and straw and remnants of old matting. The only furniture was a table fashioned from four kerosene drums with a square of flattened tin on top and two wooden chairs, mismatching, and looking as though they had washed up as flotsam from the harbour. A wooden pallet on the floor against one wall on which soiled bedding was piled and a bucket in the furthest corner covered by a cloth from which a foul smell exuded made up the rest. Above, the ceiling bulged and creaked ominously and strange noises could be heard—another shack, with another family, had been built directly atop this one. How long the two dwellings would remain separate was a cause for speculation—one great downpour (a bit like this one, in fact), one violent gale or flash flood, and the shack above, along with the family and all their belongings, such as they might be, would come crashing down into the shack below.

There was no light inside other than the thin shaft that now crept in through the doorway and Alice reached out, feeling with her hands until her eyes adjusted—

A hand shot out and grabbed her by the hair and the blade of a knife flashed at her throat and Alice cried out, ‘It is me, Milli! It is Alice!’

There was a sharp intake of breath. The knife clattered to the floor.

‘As well that it is you, for I was ready to cut your throat! Hurry! Show me what you have brought me.’