And again, this blackened and dreadful mother swings the poker. And again. And again. And again. Her facial expression and her eyes do not alter. Red suds fly from the poker and decorate the white ceiling.

Outside in the dreamy sun-drenched garden, Izzy continues to cartwheel, turning a circle across the lawn. As if functioning as her audience, the birds cry out joyously.

Each thwack from inside the vicarage, as Izzy’s mother smashes apart her father’s head as if it is a melon, can be heard outside. But the moist smacks are mostly obscured by the ecstatic chorus of the birds. Bewitched and enraptured by the miracle of her new gymnastic prowess, Izzy ignores the distant noise of butchery. But if the little girl had cast her eyes towards the living room, on the other side of those French doors she would have seen her mother and Flo obscured by shadows. Yet, despite the gloom, her mother would have appeared darker and thinner than she ever could be normally. From within the gloom, her mother’s eyes and teeth would have shone back at her too, gleaming yellow-white as she HAMMERS the old iron poker DOWN onto Daddy’s head, again and again and again and again. Until all that her mother is striking is the very floor of Nerthus House.

When the violent moment has passed and her work is done, and she has made sure that she has been thorough and she can barely raise her arms, Jess staggers out of the diminishing, shrinking shadow that was so recently upon this room. Gasping with exhaustion, her posture wilting to a slouch, she casts aside the dripping poker and turns her stricken face, blood-flecked with gruesome graffiti, to the garden.

‘Mummy, look what I can do!’

Flo is returned to her carriage as if she’d never left it. But she too is spent. Old and depleted and near extinguished by her own exertions. Her head has fallen across her chest, her arms and legs hang lifelessly.

Jess sways to her client and drops. She kneels before the chair like a supplicant before a throne. With one hand, she raises Flo’s aged head. And she finds that Flo’s eyes are sparkling with love. The old woman looks at Jess in the same way she first regarded Izzy. A knowing smile plays about the sunken mouth.

‘You . . .’ Jess says, but doesn’t know how to finish the thought. She points instead at the window and in the direction of the grove and those distant columns of trees crowning the garden. ‘That . . . thing. Up there. In the sticks. Your husband. You did that.’

Flo responds with silence but maintains her knowing smile. Serene now, the old woman appears to have arrived at a curious peace.

Jess wipes at her own tears that dribble into the blood shining upon her mouth and chin. ‘All of it. You. From when I showed up. Was you.’