There is nothing she can do to explain things to her son. She can hear him asking Terry where she is, but even if he knew, he is too young and too slight to help her. Terry tells him she is out. ‘Frolicking’, he says. She used to go frolicking, leaving Dominic alone. Dominic will remember this. She wants to let him know that she hasn’t abandoned him again, that she’s there, here, right here. But if she has any hope of surviving this, if there is any hope of Dominic escaping unscathed, she knows she must stay silent, appear to submit. Soundlessly, she prays for Dominic to stop asking, to yield too, to not choose today, this moment, to take a reckless stand. It has, with preteen hormones, been building in him, and she can hear Terry goading – ordering him around, clipping his ear, calling him a runt, and stupid like his mother. Say nothing, she prays. Bide time. I’m coming. She hears Jasmine banging on the bedroom door behind which she is sitting. She hears Dominic asking her what’s got into her, what she wants, soothing her, pushing down the handle of the door; and then a sharp thud, and Terry grabbing her, shouting at her, marshalling her away. A few minutes later there is the sound of Jasmine’s bedroom door closing. She hears Dominic singing to her – a gospel-turned lullaby she is stunned to discover he remembers from Lewa. But this time Dominic is unable to soothe Jasmine, or unable to persist with it, or riled somehow by it, and suddenly she hears the slamming of the front door, and Dominic’s feet fast on the stairs. Then, for hours, there are the rising and cresting waves of Jasmine’s increasingly breathless sobs. When finally they cease, there is only the television. On, and on, and on.

Until suddenly, Terry opens the door to the room, walks straight over to Simone, lifts the scarf from her face, and unties the cords.

It is morning. Somehow she has slept.

“I’m sorry,” he cries into her lap. “I had to do it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Simone places her stiff hands onto his head and strokes his hair.

“It’s okay,” she hushes, soothing, reassuring. “It’s okay.”

It could have gone either way. But it is okay. She is alive.

Her children are alive too. Having slept, thus missing hours of potential doom, the confirmation of this hits Simone with a relief that rushes so fast out of her body she has to hold onto the doorframe to steady herself. When she peered first into Dominic’s room, his vacant bed had sent her spiralling into thoughts of disaster – accident, injury, death. But a moment later she found him – only his knuckles stained red, as though he had punched a wall, or a window, or, she prayed not, a person. Still sleeping, he is curled now into Jasmine’s cot, his head in her neck, holding the girl close. Holding her as Simone rarely held him. She will make it up to her son. Silently, she promises him this.