Nosizwe followed me out, the child clinging to her. Back we went through the brightly-lit room. I grabbed a second scalpel as we passed the scrubbed wooden table. Ethel had said she’d distract the guard, but if she’d had any trouble I wanted to be prepared. We passed through the room with the exhibition stage, and out into the anteroom until we were at the foot of the stairs. All the time Nosizwe had trained her gaze on the floor but now she stopped.

‘We’re nearly there,’ I encouraged her, but she refused to move forwards, her eyes staring past me. I turned and there stood Vincent at the top of the steps that led back into the house.

We locked eyes, but instead of speaking to him, I turned back to her.

‘Come, Nosizwe, he won’t hurt you,’ I said. I tugged on her arm.

‘He won’t hurt you,’ I said again, a warning for him as much as encouragement for her. She trailed me up the stairs. I kept my eyes on Vincent, but he said nothing and he didn’t stop us. When we reached the doorway into the kitchen, I pushed Nosizwe out ahead of me. Vincent hadn’t followed us; he remained where he stood, transfixed.

‘You have been down there?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘Help me, Vincent. Help me free them.’

He mumbled something that I couldn’t make out. I didn’t want to leave Nosizwe on her own for too long, but I needed to look him in the eye to understand how much he had known. To think, until recently I’d been here in this house with him, and such horror downstairs the whole time. Had there been a showing in the Odditorium while I was living here?

‘I can’t go down there.’

‘You knew all along?’

He shuddered. ‘I can’t go down there.’

He might not have known, but only because he chose not to see it. He’d had enough warnings about Crillick but he’d ignored them. Now when it came to it, he was too much of a coward to confront what was happening, or even to do anything to help. All his noble intentions. It meant nothing if he was willing to avert his eyes from what he knew to be wrong. I curled my lip in disgust, but his gaze was fixed on the stairwell and he didn’t even notice.