Before she could object, Fosca left the room, disappearing into the kitchen.

Mariana fought an impulse to run, to get the hell out of there. She felt woozy and frustrated – and annoyed with herself. Nothing had been accomplished. She’d learned nothing new, nothing she didn’t know already. She should just go before he came back and she was forced to fight off his amorous advances, or worse.

As she deliberated what to do, her eyes wandered around the room. Her gaze came to rest on a small stack of books on the coffee table. She stared at the first book on the pile. She tilted her head to read the title.

The Collected Works of Euripides.

Mariana glanced over her shoulder towards the kitchen. No sign of him. She hurried over to the book.

She reached out and picked it up. A red leather bookmark was poking out from inside.

She opened it at the bookmarked page. It was inserted into the middle of a scene from Iphigenia in Aulis. The text was in English on one side of the page, and in the original Ancient Greek on the other.

Several lines had been underlined. Mariana recognised them immediately. They were the same lines on the postcard that had been sent to Veronica: ?δεσθε τ?ν ?λ?ου

κα? Φρυγ?ν ?λ?πτολιν

στε?χουσαν, ?π? κ?ρα στ?φη

βαλουμ?ναν χερν?βων τε παγ??, βωμ?ν γε δα?μονο? θε??

?αν?σιν α?ματορρ?τοι?

χρανο?σαν ε?φυ? τε σ?ματο? δ?ρην

σφαγε?σαν.

‘What are you looking at?’

Mariana jumped – his voice was right behind her. She slammed the book shut. She turned to face him with a forced smile. ‘Nothing, just looking.’

Fosca handed her a small cup of espresso. ‘Here.’

‘Thank you.’

He glanced at the book. ‘Euripides, as you may have gathered, is a favourite of mine. I think of him as an old friend.’

‘Do you?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s the only tragedian who speaks the truth.’

‘The truth? About what?’

‘Everything. Life. Death. The unbelievable cruelty of man. He tells it like it is.’

Fosca sipped some coffee, staring at her. And as she looked into his black eyes, Mariana no longer had any doubts. She was absolutely certain: She was looking into the eyes of a murderer.

Part Four

And so, when a man comes along and talks like one’s own father and acts like him, even adults … will submit to this man, will acclaim him, allow themselves to be manipulated by him, and put their trust in him, finally surrendering entirely to him without even being aware of their enslavement. One is not normally aware of something that is a continuation of one’s own childhood.

Alice Miller, For Your Own Good

The childhood shows the man,

As morning shows the day.

John Milton, Paradise Regained

1

Death, and what happens next, has always been a big interest of mine.

Ever since Rex, I suppose.

Rex was my earliest memory. A beautiful creature – a black-and-white sheepdog. The best kind of animal. He put up with me pulling his ears and trying to sit on him, and all the abuses a toddler is capable of, but still he wagged his tail when he saw me coming, greeting me with love. It was a lesson in forgiveness – not just once, but again and again.

He taught me more than forgiveness. He taught me about death.

When I was nearly twelve, Rex was getting old, and finding it hard to keep up with the sheep. My mother suggested retiring him, getting a younger dog to take his place.

I knew my father didn’t like Rex – sometimes I suspected he hated him. Or was it my mother he hated? She loved Rex – even more than I did. She loved him for his unconditional affection – and his lack of speech. He was her constant companion, working with her all day, and she cooked and cared for him with more devotion than she ever showed her husband, I remember my father saying, during a fight.

I remember what he said when my mother proposed getting another dog. We were in the kitchen. I was on the floor, stroking Rex. My mother was cooking at the stove. My father was pouring himself a whisky. Not his first.

I’m not paying to feed two dogs, he said. I’ll shoot this one first.

It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, for me to understand exactly what he meant. My mother shook her head.

No, she said. For once, she meant it. If you touch that dog, I will—

What? said my father. Are you threatening me?

I knew what was coming. You need real guts to take a bullet for someone. That’s what she did when she stood up for Rex that day.

My father went crazy, of course. A crash of glass told me I was too late – I should have run for cover, like Rex, who had leapt out of my arms and was halfway out the door. I had no option but to sit there on the floor, trapped, as my father threw over the table, missing me by inches. My mother retaliated by throwing plates at him.

He charged through the broken dishes towards her. His fists were up. She was backed up against the counter. She was trapped. And then …

She held up a knife. A large knife – used for cutting up the lambs. She held it up, pointing it at my father’s chest. At his heart.

I’ll kill you, dammit, she said. I mean it.

There was silence for a moment.

I realised it was entirely possible she might stab him. To my disappointment, she didn’t.

My father didn’t say another word. He just turned and walked out. The kitchen door slammed after him.

My mother didn’t move for a second. Then she started to cry. It’s horrible watching your mother cry. You feel so impotent, so powerless.

I’ll kill him for you, I said.

But that just made her cry harder.

And then … we heard a gunshot.

And then another.

I don’t remember leaving the house – or stumbling into the yard. All I remember is seeing Rex’s limp, bleeding body on the ground, and my father marching off, holding his rifle.

I watched the life drain out of Rex. His eyes became glassy and unseeing. His tongue went blue. His limbs slowly turned stiff. I couldn’t stop staring at him. I had a sense – even then, at that young age – that the sight of this dead animal had stained my life forever.

The soft, wet fur. The broken body. The blood. I shut my eyes, but I could still see it.

The blood.

And later on, when my mother and I carried Rex to the pit and threw him in, down into the depths, to rot with the other unwanted carcasses, I knew that part of me went down with him. The good part.

I tried to summon up some tears for him, but I couldn’t cry. That poor animal never did me any harm – he showed me only love, only kindness.

And yet I couldn’t cry for him.

Instead, I was learning how to hate.

A cold, hard kernel of hatred was forming in my heart, like a diamond in a dark piece of coal.

I swore I would never forgive my father. And one day, I’d have my revenge. But until then, until I grew up, I was trapped.

So I retreated into my imagination. In my fantasies, my father suffered.

And so did I.

In the bathroom, with the door locked, or in the hayloft, or at the back of the barn, unobserved, I would escape – from this body … from this mind.

I would act out cruel, horribly violent death scenes: agonised poisonings, brutal stabbings – butchery and disembowelment. I would be drawn and quartered, tortured to death. I would bleed.

I would stand on my bed and prepare to be sacrificed by pagan priests. They’d grab hold of me and hurl me from the cliff, down, down into the sea, into the depths – where the sea-monsters were circling, waiting to devour me.

I’d shut my eyes and jump off the bed.

And I would be torn to shreds.

2

Mariana left Professor Fosca’s rooms feeling unsteady on her feet.

This wasn’t from the wine and the champagne – even though she had drunk more than she should. It was the shock of what she had just seen – the Greek quotation underlined in his book. It was strange, she thought, how moments of extreme clarity often had the same texture as drunkenness.

She couldn’t keep this to herself. She had to talk to someone. But who?

She paused in the courtyard to think this over. No point in going to find Zoe – not now, not after their last conversation; Zoe simply wouldn’t take her seriously. She needed a sympathetic ear. She thought of Clarissa, but she wasn’t sure Clarissa would want to believe her.

So that left only one person.

She pulled out her phone and rang Fred. He said he was more than happy to talk to her, and suggested they meet at Gardies in about ten minutes.

The Gardenia, known and beloved by generations of students as Gardies, was a Greek diner in the heart of Cambridge, serving late-night fast food. Mariana walked there, along the curved, pedestrianised alley, smelling Gardies before she saw it – greeted by the smell of chips sizzling in hot oil and frying fish.

Gardies was a tiny place – barely a handful of customers could fit inside at once – so people would congregate outside, eating in the alley. Fred was waiting outside the entrance, under the green awning and the sign reading, Have a break the Greek way.