She wrestles the door open and squints into the rain. The girl is nowhere to be seen, but it’s too much to hope she’s gone.

“Who’s there?” Diana calls. “Who is it? Who’s there?”

5

The woman tightened her grip on her walking stick, and her knuckles gleamed like inlaid pearls. She was sheltering under the porch with the double doors ajar at her back, and I suppose I must have been quite a sight, materialising round the side of the house without warning, my hair hanging over my face in wet ropes. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

“Oh . . .” I said, raking my hand through my hair, unsure if she could hear me over the pelting of the rain. “Hello.”

She was small and frail, but there was something grand about her too. Everything about her—from her blood-red shoes and coffee-coloured blouse to her ebony walking stick and ruby ring—looked expensive and well made, if a little faded and uncomfortable. The same could be said for her face and hands. Her dyed hair had been scraped back in a ballerina’s bun, and her scalp was visible between the thin, reddish strands.

“Go away,” she said, and when I took another step forward her face contorted. “Go away. Go away!”

“It’s all right,” I smiled awkwardly and made as if to touch her arm. It was the most tentative of gestures, but she crumpled as if I’d punched her. I had to seize her by the elbows to keep her from falling, and my wet fingers made dark, spreading marks on her silk sleeves.

“It’s all right!”

I shouldn’t have shouted, but I was frightened by her fear. I think she might have fainted for a second, but I managed to keep her on her feet, and when she came round she seemed calmer. Perhaps she was simply ill; perhaps that explained everything. She was certainly fragile—alarmingly so—a tissue-paper cut-out of a human being. When she leaned on me and held on to my arm, I felt as if my slightest movement might make her crease, or tear, or whirl off on the wind.

“Please go away,” she whispered, her fingers convulsing like a cat’s claws. A spasm shuddered through her body and echoed in my own bones, and there wasn’t much I could do except stand there and let her lean on me till it passed. She didn’t make a sound, unless you count the quick, whistling breaths she drew through her nose.

“Tell me what to do,” I said. “Is there someone I can call?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

I placed a nervous hand around her waist and turned her so that she was facing the house.

“At least let me help you inside.”

She shook her head slowly, sadly, from side to side. I thought she was going to put up a fight, but she gave in with a featherweight shrug and not another word.