By the time she arrived, she’d forgotten her injured tongue and tried to say her mother’s name, but only a hoarse rasp came out.

‘Do not try to talk,’ her father said from the shadows behind her. ‘Your mother knows you are incapable.’

Beatrice wondered how she was supposed to say goodbye when she could not speak and might never do so again. It made her heart ache to think that speech could be a power forever consigned to her past. She had so many questions about the world – and if she couldn’t ask them, then how would she ever learn its many secrets? Yet, in spite of the circumstances, she longed to see her mother. It had been so long since she’d been permitted to visit. And even if she could not talk, at least she would be able to feel the warmth of her mother’s hand and the reassuring squeeze of her fingers. She could bury her face in her shoulder and breathe in the scent of her Otto of Roses perfume.

Her hand trembled with yearning as she reached out to draw back the drape. It slid aside on clanging rings – only to reveal an imposter in her mother’s place. The skeletal woman with waxy skin propped up against the pillows was not Beatrice’s lovely mama. The sinew stood out in her neck, and the bones showed through her skin, and her eyes were chasms that led somewhere dreadful.

Beatrice jerked back and looked to her father for an explanation as to who this stranger might be, but he was staring at the floor rather than at her. Her hand squeezed so tightly around the key in her pocket that it was in danger of piercing her skin.

‘It’s all right, Beatrice,’ the woman said.

Beatrice flinched. It was her mother’s voice, and yet how could it be coming from this wraith, this absolute nightmare of a person?

‘Come here, Beatrice.’ The imposter reached out her claw.

The truth was too dreadful to accept and Beatrice took a step back, shaking her head.

‘Oh, please, darling.’ Her mother’s face crumpled, like a paper doll abandoned in the rain. ‘Please …’

Beatrice turned on her heel and fled the room. She ducked her father’s outstretched hand but couldn’t avoid her mother’s cry of grief. It only spurred her on faster. She ran along the corridor, down the staircase, through another hallway and out into the freedom of the garden. She ran and ran, and kept on running until she reached her favourite oak tree and climbed up high into its branches where she wouldn’t be found, even if anyone came looking for her.