The shadowy, shapeless figure that spoke these words rustled as though it wore a great many clothes and moved sluggishly as though hampered by some great burden. The hands snatched and twitched and could not settle. The faint glow from the doorway now afforded a glimpse of a great mass of matted hair framing a skull on which the skin was stretched taut and where the ghost of a face Alice had once known better than her own appeared fleetingly. She saw eyes that could not rest any more than the hands could rest. Whether or not this longed-for figure, her sister, would have cut her throat Alice did not know; whether Milli being nine months heavy with a child was a condition which made murder more likely or less likely she could not say. A longing had filled her head all that day and all the previous day and the day before that. It was a longing that had been dulled for the five years of Milli’s absence, but now that Milli was returned it struck her mute. It had sent her, a dozen times that day, to the door of her mistress’s room with a plea to be released early from her duties, with a plea—though she hardly dared formulate the words in her head—for help in whatever form it might be in her mistress’s power to give. But each time she had failed, had left without knocking.

Yet here she was, and she had got away, if only for an hour or two.

‘Here, Milli, see what I have got!’ And with a flourish, Alice pulled from her coat pocket a linen cloth from which spilled a half-loaf of bread, two cooked potatoes and a lump of cheese. Her face burned hotly and she sat down, a little breathless. If she could not release the words of longing that filled her heart, if she could not hear those longed-for same words on her sister’s lips, she could at least bring her this feast.

Two hands snatched up the food and crammed it into the almost-toothless mouth and Alice stole a glance at the sister returned to her after five years, at those restless and dimmed eyes that seemed to deny all that had once been their life together and at the same time demanded all that her younger sister could give. If there had been self-pity in those eyes at one time, or loathing, it was long gone. All that remained of Milli was those hands snatching at the scraps of leftover food.

How had she sunk so low?