I don’t wait for an answer, but start moving away from him, anxious to warn her, to protect her in the only way I know how. At least if I interrupt her dance with Kit, I can make sure there isn’t an ugly scene. But his tone is hard and commanding, and it jerks me back like a lasso.

‘No.’

I falter, not confident enough to challenge his unmistakeable authority. Then Dr Richard Carter pushes his way through the doors and strides into the disco.

34

The darkness was so dense it had texture.

Sara put her hands out in front of her and felt her way through the detritus of the garden shed – lawnmower, a set of ladders and a broom with rough bristles.

Fifteen minutes ago, the exterior lights of Hilltop House had spilled through the glass window and illuminated the guts of the squat wooden structure. The girl had used that shaft of deliverance to navigate her way to the centre of the shed, as far as possible from dusty corners filled with broken-up husks of earwigs and woodlice.

But then, without warning, the lights had gone out, plunging the shed into blackness.

Sara bit down on a scream, holding it inside her mouth like a secret. This was a road she had travelled before. As soon as her father had secured the padlock on the shed door, her mother must have walked down the garden and switched off the outside lights.

She pictured Dr Carter standing alone on the lawn, amongst the sleeping daffodils and tulips, a still, triumphant figure revelling in his acts of cruelty. She wondered what Mrs Carter was doing now. For the first time, she considered the possibility that her mother was as much in Dr Carter’s thrall as his daughters were – and despised her for her weakness. The scraps of love she occasionally tossed them were no longer enough. Sara stuffed a hand into her mouth. However scared she felt, she would not give her father the satisfaction of articulating that fear.

She inhaled and exhaled until the impulse to cry out had passed.

When she had gathered herself, Sara’s fingers closed around the metal frame of a garden chair. She worked at it, trying to open it, bent at the waist. As she straightened up, her head brushed something thick and matted. She touched her fingers to her crown, whimpering, and then her hands were batting at her face and hair and head. She pulled free a clump of web and dead insects, pawing at her blonde strands until she was certain there was nothing left, and flung it across the shed, tears spilling down her cheeks.

Sara fumbled her way into the chair and drew her knees up to her chin, trying to make herself as small as possible, using the heel of her hand to wipe away her sadness.

She closed her eyes.

The shed was not quite silent.