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stamp them out.
    When she was in her nightgown, she turned off the gas and got into bed. As soon as she closed her eyes, the flashbacks started.
    She was walking; she had to escape for an hour. The town was quiet, the summer visitors long gone. She wandered through streets hemmed in by tall grey-stone houses, their windows blank and unrevealing, like unseeing eyes. The sky was low, the air humid and tasting of sea salt. Her pulse pounded in her head so loudly that once or twice she thought it was footsteps following, and turned around to scan the empty pavement behind her.
    She was desperately trying to forget the self-loathing that consumed her mother’s soul. Mother couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sit still, or stop talking. Dorothy, woken night after night to read the Bible and tend to her, was nearly as exhausted as she was. If she didn’t manage to think about something else, something ordinary and pleasant, she would go mad herself.
    Think about … boating on the river in summer: sunlight on the trees, the sound of water slapping gently against bobbing sculls. For a moment, she managed to hold it in her mind’s eye; she could feel the sun on her skin, could hear the river, and even smell its dankness. But it was quickly replaced by the image of her mother’s pain-filled, accusing eyes.
    After about an hour of walking—she’d lost track of the exact time—she returned to their miserable, genteel lodging house. She hated the house, and its landlady. Appearances were everything, and not so much as a ripple could be allowed to disturb its refined facade.
    She climbed the stairs slowly and opened the door to their room. The grimy white lace curtains were drawn against the daylight; it was dim and hushed, and smelt faintly of dust. From above came the soft creak of a door swinging gently in the wind. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. With a sick knot of foreboding in the pit of her stomach, Dorothy realized she shouldn’t have left her alone. Not even for a minute; much less an entire hour.
    There was a stain spreading across the threadbare linoleum; sticky and rust colored. It was flowing toward Dorothy’s shoes. She tried to draw her legs back, but she found herself fixed to the spot.
    Then she saw her mother lying on the floor: her skin waxy grey, her eyes open and staring dully. She seemed to be looking right through Dorothy.
    A sound escaped from Dorothy’s open mouth; an animal-like expression of shock and pain. She took in the wide glistening gash at her mother’s throat, the soiled bread knife lying by her outstretched hand …
    *   *   *
    DOROTHY CAME DOWNSTAIRS the next morning to find Bertie sitting at the breakfast table, an untouched cup of tea in front of him. He did not return her smile.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked, uncertainly.
    “Such a weight of despair has fallen on me from nowhere,” he confided, “like a meteor from outer space.”
    “Can I do anything?”
    He shook his head. “Whenever I’m at home for too long, I get fed up and depressed. It’s what I call my fugitive impulse. The only thing that helps is getting away, going out into the world … I need a change of surroundings, new life.” He looked past Dorothy with unseeing eyes that were fixed on escape. Evidently, he had built this handsome and comfortable house for his pretty wife, only to feel trapped by his domesticity.
    As Dorothy helped herself to toast and coffee, he said “Last night, life seemed perfectly sweet. I don’t understand why I’ve fallen, suddenly, into a pit of sadness.”
    “Oh?”
    “I mean, nothing in my circumstances has changed. Yet I feel so … unsettled and estranged. My life seems nebulous and ephemeral; everything is sliding away from me as I try to grasp hold of it. I’m plagued by dark thoughts, which skitter all over the place in the most disturbing way and won’t be controlled.” He rested his head in his hands, as though its weight had become too much