I couldn’t just leave the tape in the machine for them to find. There were Mrs Harmer’s dark nipples filling the screen. I needed to get Elizabeth out of the room, on to the landing. I needed to stay beside her. If only there had been two of me! If only I’d had my own Scarlet, sprung from my brain! But the Harmers were in the hall by now, throwing off their coats. They were calling for their daughter, they were climbing the stairs, it was almost the worst of all possible worlds. The clock chimed ten and kept going. Elizabeth wailed for her mother, then stopped to retch, but nothing came up. A line of spit slid from her lip to the floor.

‘Elizabeth?’ Mrs Harmer called faintly. ‘Are you all right?’

Of course she wasn’t. She’d drunk the tea Dominic had made. I’d poisoned her and she was going to die.

‘You silly girl,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’

MUSTER’S PUPPETS PRESENTS …

Claire was coming over with her boyfriend – her partner – and Joan was baking mince pies in preparation, though she couldn’t remember whether Claire liked mince pies. It was difficult to keep everything straight with four children who changed their preferences every week, so she’d put strawberry jam in some of them instead, because who doesn’t like jam?

They’d had nothing for six months, then Claire phoned the landline, out of the blue, and asked if they’d be at home tomorrow, so she could come round. The week before Christmas. They’d steeled themselves not to hear from her at all, which was exactly what had happened two Christmases ago, the voicemails unresponded-to, the texts unanswered: a bewildering, unnatural silence that had settled over Joan’s head like one of those hoods you put on falcons, and lasted far into the new year, and was never explained.

Henry came in. ‘That’s the light working now. Not that she’s going to notice.’

‘It isn’t for her,’ Joan said. ‘It’s for us.’