She heard again a scurrying of rats startled by her presence.

She plunged into this second, larger room and thrust out both hands into the blackness making for the door, feeling for a handle or a knob or a latch, finally just grabbing the wood and pulling and pushing, and eventually it dislodged enough to swing open and a shaft of daylight pierced the room behind her. She turned about, fearful of what she might see, but this room was empty, a floor covered with loose boards, some scraps of matting strewn with rat droppings, a crudely constructed and empty fireplace and bare, stone walls.

But Alice had seen something in the corner of the room that stilled her heart.

It must be a piece of rubbish. Yes, surely that was it. But she knew it was not. She walked over, not quite touching the floor, not touching anything, separate from the world around her. She stopped two feet away.

It was an arm. A tiny newborn’s limb, bloodied and dead and showing the gnaw marks of the rats that had taken it.

She spun away, stumbling and blinded, and when she had reached a wall against which she might throw out a shaking hand, she vomited. When she had retched herself hoarse and the rats had begun to circle, she stood up, shouting at them and kicking until they scurried away once more.

She went back to the dead thing, her hand clamped firmly to her mouth. But this was just a single arm when there were two babies here, at least. Milli’s and the other girl’s. Where was the rest of this poor infant, and where was the other baby?

In the far corner of the room a floorboard had been dislodged. She went over and crouched down, pulling at the boards and finding beneath them a hollowed-out place and two bundles, one bloodied and butchered, and she cried as with a shaking finger she pulled the torn rags away and saw the remains of the thing that a day or so earlier the terrified girl had handed over, in her innocence, to a murderer. She flung the rags back over the horrid thing to cover it. She turned to the second bundle, but now her fingers shook so much she could not grip the cloth that covered it. Steeling herself, she poked it and it did not stir.

It did not stir.

She took hold of the cloth and pulled it, finding inside the bundle a baby, a tiny, unspoiled baby boy, quite still.

She let out a sob and scooped up the dead thing.

And when she felt the tiniest beat of a tiny heart, still fighting despite all that the world had done to stop it, she gasped and could not see for the tears that ran down her face and fell onto the baby’s forehead.

A baptism, almost.

When she was able, she got to her feet and fled.