With gritted teeth, Aylin Ramnes pumps out a dollop of hand soap, rubs it around her finger and starts pulling on the big diamond ring she has worn every day for almost six years, even though the big rock always gets in the way. The engagement ring that has always been just a little bit too small for her finger, but that she has had resized. It doesn’t budge, just digs into her finger as she starts to panic and more and more memories flash before her: Bo’s frustration when he struggled to put it on her finger, his wounded pride when she suggested an adjustment or possibly even a simpler ring, that first glimpse of his rage. How she had desperately bent over backwards to appease him. How she’d assured him she loved the ring, she loved him and finally, deliberately ignoring her inner alarm bell, that she had been mistaken. No, the ring was perfect the way it was, a perfect fit. He was right, she was just being silly.

She tugs so hard at it that, for a split second, she’s worried her finger is going to come off – and when the ring finally falls into the sink with a dull clatter, she jumps. In that moment, as she instinctively puts her hand to her mouth and the pain in her finger is followed by the one in her lip, something stirs inside her. Something strange and hard that has been simmering for two days; an unfamiliar feeling that drives away all the others. Not courage, not grief, not even rage. She figures it must be hate.

She quickly picks up the ring and shoves it into her back pocket. Then she turns off the lights before closing the door behind her. Seventeen minutes.

She already needs to pee again.

*

The door to the storage area doesn’t stick for once and the bag is still where she left it, hidden behind the big tarpaulin, under the grey faux-wicker garden table, wedged behind the storage chest and the rolled-up canvas of the giant umbrella. A safe place in the middle of winter. She wonders at how light it feels when she lifts it up to put it in the boot of her car and wonders if she hasn’t packed enough; she must have forgotten something important.

Twenty-seven minutes.

Tyra is watching TV on the sofa. She obediently goes out to the car and climbs into her seat when Aylin cheerfully announces that they’re going for a drive. She doesn’t ask where they’re going, but Aylin keeps talking anyway.

‘It’s going to be a fun surprise, but we have to hurry or we won’t make it.’