“You didn’t have any choice,” Amara says. “It’s not your fault.”

“Do you know what he told me this morning?” Amara doesn’t reply. She had suspected Dido’s despair might have been prompted by their pimp’s cruelty. “He asked me if I thought my mother was dead. I said I thought she must be. Then he said I shouldn’t worry. If she was as beautiful as me, the pirates wouldn’t have killed her; some man was probably fucking her as a whore somewhere, right at the same time as he was fucking me.” Dido starts crying again. “He doesn’t leave you anything; he has to destroy everything.”

Amara stares at the smoke billowing from one of the clay lamps in the corner of the cell. A savage, grinning little Priapus, one of the models she bought from Rusticus. It has almost burnt out. If she were Victoria, she would tell Dido not to pay attention, to ignore Felix. “I wish I could kill him for you,” she says, her voice flat. “I’ve imagined it enough times. But I know what happens to slaves who murder their masters.” In the flickering glow, the whites of Dido’s eyes shine. Amara shrugs. “Better than killing yourself, if you have to end it all.” She cannot read the expression on her friend’s face. “So you see, you’re not such a bad person, are you? I know you’ve never thought of hurting anyone. Not even Felix.”

“Perhaps I should have.”

“No.” Amara takes her hand. “You are one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. It’s why I love you so much.”

“More than the potter’s slave?” Dido wipes her face with her free hand. “I know that’s who you went to see the other day.”

The smoking lamp stutters out. Next door, they can hear Beronice’s customer shouting, presumably with pleasure. The busiest hours of the night are approaching. Amara glances at the curtain. Every second alone is time they have stolen. “I didn’t go to see Menander. Though I wanted to.”

“Where then?”

“I went to see Felix at the Palaestra.”

Dido looks more shocked than when Amara confessed her longing to murder him. “But why?”

“For money. Because I’m trying to act as his agent, arranging loans for desperate women. They’re not quite as desperate as me, but still, I’m not proud of it.” She shifts herself up further onto the bed, crossing her legs. “Either we choose to stay alive, or we give up. And if it’s living we choose, then we do whatever it takes.”

“I’m not as strong as you.”