His voice rang like a bell, echoing off the stones and making the old woman wince. Our eyes locked as she began to retreat backward up the stairs, one hand gripping the bannister, the other gesturing wildly. What would you call it, that gesture of hers? Waving? Scouring? Slashing? Not so much begging me to keep quiet as wiping the air clean of the possibility of sound.

The darkness absorbed her, step by silent step. I didn’t dare call after her, or ask her to explain, but I followed her as far as the third or fourth stair and craned my neck to see where she went.

The girl, Freya, clatters down the stairs, eager for daylight and fresh air; eager for wholesome company.

Diana stops outside her bedroom door, listening to the receding footsteps, and is struck by a vision of what she was once, and what she is now. She—Diana—has become the whispering voice of the house. No, more than that, she has become its mind and soul. This was not an eventuality she foresaw when she married Mr. Byrne. She only ever meant to be the owner of an elegant estate.

The stairs have taken it out of her; it’s hard to climb without Cory’s arm to lean on. She drops into bed with a rustle of silk and bone, and her body makes next to no imprint on the sheets.

Diana used to run wildly downstairs, shaking the place with her energy. Over the years she slowed down and stopped, because Mr. Byrne didn’t like it. By the time he died it was too late: she’d lost the knack of carelessness.

When was the last time she ran inside the house? There was that summer evening a lifetime ago, when she was upstairs and pandemonium erupted in the garden. That might have been the last time. She’d heard it through the open window: her husband shouting violent things, impossible to make out, and Cory—little Cory with his three-year-old, tin-whistle voice—screaming “Daddy!”and “Stop!” and “Please!”

Diana had run—no, she had flown—down the stairs, feet beating like wings in time with her heart, the house dissolving around her as she passed. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d hurt Cory, but it might—by the sound of it—be the worst. The front door was wide open and as Diana descended the final flight she could see them on the other side of the lawn: her son upside down in the monster’s arms, his little shirt rucked up around his armpits, his back bared, his hair dangling in the grass.

She tried to shout, but her voice had gone as weak as her knees. There was a vase on the hall table—a big, ugly, priceless thing—and she seized it on her way to the door.

“I’m a grizzly bear,” Mr. Byrne roared, faraway, “and you’re a slippery fish!”