She was wrong. Specks of blood bloomed through the off-white strips of the old sheets she had reused. For twenty minutes, Grace had sawed back and forth, pulling, tugging, wrenching on the cloth. Her mother must have heard the bedstead banging. Even Bonnie was whining at the door. But Susan was in a stupor, wearing a glazed expression that tied Grace’s stomach up in knots.

Grace’s throat was scratchy from screaming, but the more she did, the more her mother withdrew. Hope flared in the form of a rat-tat-tat-tat knocking on the front door. Bonnie’s enthusiastic barking filled the corridor as she announced the arrival of the man they both knew. Lloyd often took Bonnie for long, rambling walks in the woodlands, admonishing her when she chased the deer.

The slap, slap, slap of Susan’s slippered feet grew louder as she rushed towards Grace’s bedroom. The door slammed open with force, bouncing as the doorknob bit into the wall. The muscles in her mother’s face were set in grim determination as she marched in, scissors in hand.

Had she lost her mind? Grace’s thoughts grew panicked as Susan raised the scissors in the air. In three snips, one hand was freed, and then the other.

‘Say a word to Lloyd about this and you’ll never see him again. You hear me?’ Tutting, she took in her daughter’s sore wrists. ‘Look what you’ve done.’

‘Please, Mummy,’ Grace begged. ‘I’ll be good. I’ll say it was itchy. That I scratched it myself.’

Her mother paused to think this over, her face twitchy and pale. Another knock on the front door. Another sharp bark of impatience.

‘I don’t want to do this, you know, but you have to take your medication. It’s for your own good.’ It was an overused phrase, said to make herself feel better. It certainly didn’t help Grace.

‘Your daddy will be home in a couple of days.’

She squeezed her daughter’s hand. Nodding, Grace offered her compliance.

‘Good girl,’ Susan whispered before turning towards the door.

Grace rubbed her wrists as her mother shoved the ties into her pockets.

‘Coming!’ Susan shouted, high-pitched and crackly as she rushed to the front door. The rigmarole of screeching and grinding began as stiff metal bolt after bolt was drawn across.

I wish there was something we could do.

The words echoed in Grace’s memory as she recalled the birthday party, which seemed so long ago now.

It must be so awful for her, barely seeing the light of day.

These were snatches of conversations she had heard from Nighbrook’s villagers as she’d crept down the corridor to use the loo.

And then there’s Martin, always away on business, they had said. That woman is a saint.