Miss DeGroot rolled her eyes. 'Ignore him. He's in a mood because his latest painting doesn't need him any more.' She crossed the room, grasped Delphine's hand. 'And how are you today?' After the incident in the treehouse, Delphine had expected a flicker of embarrassment, perhaps a wink acknowledging their conspiratorial sisterhood.

Instead, Miss DeGroot squeezed. 'Good to see you,' she said. She marched back to Daddy. 'You have a surprise for your daughter.'

Daddy buried his painting hand in his trouser pocket. He dropped his gaze.

'Another time, perhaps.'

'Oh, come on! Don't be such a sourpuss! No time like the present and no present like time. We might all be dead tomorrow.'

Daddy sighed with his whole body. 'I made you something.'

Delphine felt a momentary weightlessness. She fought it back.

'Did you?'

Daddy nodded. He blew out the corner of his mouth, a strand of steely hair rising, dropping.

Miss DeGroot smiled one of her laidback, worldly smiles.

'Why don't I fetch it for you?' She pointed at Delphine. 'Close your eyes now.'

Delphine looked at Daddy. To her surprise, he smiled.

'Go on, Delphy.'

She closed one eye. 'Okay.' She closed the other.

'And keep them shut!' Miss DeGroot's voice, with its warm vowels and faint, borderless twang, moved to the back of the room. 'Peep and you'll ruin the magic.'

'I won't.'

'Cover your eyes so I know you're not cheating.'

Delphine pressed her fingers to her eyelids. Purple blotches swelled in the darkness.

'Marvellous!' Miss DeGroot sounded genuinely delighted. She began rummaging through a heap of heavy-sounding objects. Delphine smelt tobacco smoke. Either Miss DeGroot or Daddy had lit a cigarette.

There was a shhhhhh noise, then a clatter and lots of bangs.

'Whoop, there we go!' called Miss DeGroot. 'You've got so much trash. Aha!' She fell quiet. Delphine waited. Quick footsteps returned to Daddy. 'Now . . . very slowly take your hands from your eyes and hold them out in front of you don't peek, now! That's it. Bring them down and make a bowl. A little lower. There!' Delphine's cupped hands trembled. 'In your own time, Gideon.'

Something hard pressed into the moist flesh of her palm. She kept her hands as still as she could manage. She heard Daddy smack his lips. He stepped away.

Delphine waited for instruction.

'Well?' said Miss DeGroot.

'Can I look?'

'Feel it first.'

Carefully, Delphine tipped the object into her left palm and brought her right hand over the top. The thing was a little bigger than a bar of soap. One side felt rough, like a scab, the other smooth, like a tooth. It was light. Delphine frowned.

'Can I look now?'

'Don't you want to guess what it is?'

'I can't.'

'Have a go.'

She ran her fingertips along a network of interlocking grooves. 'Pine-cone?'

Miss DeGroot hooted with laughter. 'As a present? Give your daddy some credit.'

Delphine felt a jab of resentment. Before things got bad, Daddy used to bring her all sorts of treasures: conkers, little rusted keys, beautiful peculiar stones. Mother had fussed, insisting on washing them, but Delphine received each like a rare and fragile artefact plundered from the tomb of an ancient king. She laid them out, curated them, speculated on their origins, invented histories. A pine-cone, especially one this big, would make a fine gift. The best gift.

'Go on,' said Miss DeGroot, 'try again.'

'I don't know.'

'Stop thinking at it. Let your intuition do the heavy lifting. Perhaps you're an undiscovered latent.'

She exhaled heavily. 'Is it a hairbrush?'

'No!' This time, she heard Daddy chuckle too. 'You can do better than that!'

She closed her hands tight around the object. Tough notches dug into her skin. An image of Mr Kung patting Zeno flashed into her mind.

'Is it a tortoise?'

Silence.

Miss DeGroot said flatly: 'You peeked.'

Delphine opened her eyes. Sitting in her palms was a small tortoise, carved from bark.

'Oh!' She almost dropped it.

Miss DeGroot stood clutching Kung's book, a cigarette perched in her lips. Mazy tentacles of smoke wafted through her blond hair. Her expression softened.

'You really did guess, didn't you?'

Delphine lifted the tortoise up to her eyes. It was carved from a hunk of black poplar, the thick grey bark forming the shell, the light smooth wood beneath compromising the tortoise's head, legs and belly. It was covered in a thin coat of matt varnish. It was quite, quite lovely.

She looked at Daddy. 'Is he really for me?'

Daddy smiled. He looked almost bashful.

'Who else would it be for?'

Delphine stared numbly.

'Can I give him a name?'

Daddy nodded. She looked at the tortoise. Her mind was blank.

Daddy crushed her to his chest. She smelt linseed oil and the woody fug of sweat. The air went out of her and she focused on the hard, light tortoise balanced in her hand.

His grip relaxed. Delphine stepped away. Sometime during the hug, Miss DeGroot had made her silent exit.

Delphine tested her balance. She felt like an empty tube of paint.

'Daddy. Who's Arthur?'

He took his hand away. 'You know who Arthur was, darling. He was Lord Alderberen's son.'

Delphine watched his eyes. She felt the taboo between them like a physical thing, thickening. She pushed at it.

'Did you fight with him?' She licked her lips. 'Beside him, I mean?'

'Yes,' said Daddy. 'I was his batman.'

'What's a batman?'

'It means I helped him with things.'

'Like a servant?'

Daddy paused. 'Like a friend.'

Delphine looked across at the canvas Miss DeGroot had been admiring. It was a mass of jagged black lines and dirty swirls. She could make out something like a scarab's mandibles.

'Did he die?'

'Yes.'

She waited for more, but apparently it wasn't that kind of story. Daddy looked at his shoes. The studio was mausoleum quiet. Daddy walked to the pile beside the wall and dug out his tobacco tin. He rolled a cigarette, lit it.

He said: 'You were good, on the beach.' She met his eye. He nodded. 'You were good.'

'You didn't see him. Not at the beginning. He was just . . . standing there. Like someone queuing at the pictures.'

Daddy squinted against coils of smoke.

'The balance of his mind was upset. The Kwan-Dong army burned his house down. They burned his whole town down to the foundations. Killed his family too. He had a daughter about your age. We were his last hope.'

'Daddy, I think . . . ' She looked away, remembering Mr Garforth's glare, the lacerating cold of the wind as she had left the cottage.

'Go on.'

She eyed Daddy's expression like someone preparing to jump a ravine. She thought of Kung's notes, of the conversation she had heard all those months ago, of Propp, prodding at Peter Stokeham's tomb. Miss DeGroot might be right perhaps the whole country wasn't in danger but those things had still happened. She hadn't imagined them.

'I know you don't think so, but . . . I think the Society is bad somehow. Maybe not all the time. Maybe they don't all mean to be, but . . . I've been gathering proof. Something dark is coming.'

Daddy took a long pull on the stub of his cigarette. She waited for him to shout, or laugh.

'I know exactly what you mean,' he said. 'Sometimes I feel the same way.' He thumped a fist against his stomach. 'Down here. The dread. Like you've been kicked by a horse.'

'Yes!'

'It's a trick.'

'What?'

'Delphy.' Daddy tossed his cigarette butt to the floor. 'Fear stops you from burning brightly. When I went in the sea . . . it all got washed away. I can think better. I can see better.' He beamed. 'I'm almost clean. Soon, you and me and Mummy, we can leave. Just a little longer and . . . we can go home.' His eyes sparked at the word. 'Won't that be nice?'

Delphine thought for a moment. 'I'd like that.'

'And we will live happily ever after.'

'But Daddy, I '

'And if you ran away . . . ' He clutched her shoulder. 'If you abandoned me . . . you would spoil all that. Do you understand?'

Delphine thought of the dank tunnels that ran under the estate, Mr Kung's vomiting water on the beach and Propp's singing before a sucking, flooded grave. She looked into Daddy's furious blue eyes. She thought of her bedroom.

She nodded.

'So you won't make a fuss?' said Daddy. 'You'll work hard and listen to Mr Propp?'

'Yes, Daddy.'

CHAPTER 15.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING.

July 1935 She had been tracking the mother and children for almost half an hour.

Delphine lay in the amaranth bed with her shotgun. Heavy fuchsia tassels hung either side of her head.

The bitch stoat shuffled in the long, dry grass, a sleeve of caramel. Behind it, half a dozen kits hopped, gnashed and boxed clumsily.