Dorran came out of his room with one hand pressed flat against his sleeve.
Nell was sitting on the fourth step from the top. She had been there since the lamps went low. She did not move when he passed her.
He did not see her until he was almost past the head of the stairs.
He stopped. He looked down at her, and then past her, at the light in the kitchen doorway below.
“Sorry,” Dorran whispered. “Nell. Sorry.”
Nell said nothing. She counted one breath, and then two.
Dorran went on along the upper passage. His bare feet made no sound on the boards. He stopped outside the last door on the left, and he took his hand out of his sleeve.
Nell could see what he held. It was the end of a loaf, brown and hard along the crust. A square of paper was folded around it.
