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—You said yourself you wanted me out of this house.

Hannah grabbed a coat and pushed past him to the door. He watched her march down the path in the moonlight, an unfamiliar hitch in her step as she went, as if she was hobbled by some private grief, and he almost called out to her before he heard Esther moving above him. She was on the landing when he turned toward the stairs. —Hello Cannon Fodder, she said.

—What do you care? Abel said.

She turned away toward her room and he climbed the stairs after her. She had a fire lit and she waved him in to lie beside her. He stared up at the stained ceiling, trying to comprehend what he’d agreed to. It had happened so quickly it felt like an accident now, a fall from a rooftop. Regret funneling through him at the thought of leaving Esther behind and he shook his head, fighting off tears. —This was all a mistake, he said.

—You don’t have to go, Abel.

—Mr. Coaker is after telling everyone I’m joining up, he said. He moved to get out of bed but Esther pulled him back, lifting herself over him. She rocked slightly side to side and then steadied herself, Abel already hard beneath her. —Come on, she said, grinding into him.

—You’re drunk.

—What do you care? she said.

It felt like a fight coming out of their clothes, as if they were each trying to keep something hidden while stripping the other bare. He turned her on her back and lifted his knee to pry her legs open but Esther wouldn’t have it, twisting away to push her naked ass into him, reaching behind to guide his cock inside when he seemed at a loss. He fell across her after he came and held on until she turned underneath him, reaching up to pat his cheek. —A sin to waste that gear of yours, she said.

—I’m not wasting it.

—Go put some wood on the fire, she said and he stepped across the room, his legs rubbery beneath him. When he climbed back into bed Esther pointed up at the dimly lit ceiling. —There’s France, she said.

—Where?

—Next to England there.

—There’s nothing up there but a water stain.

—You can’t see Italy? she said. —The one that looks like a boot?

—You can make anything out of anything, can’t you.

Esther laughed. —I wouldn’t be back here if that was true, she said.

He leaned up on an elbow to look at her. —What happened to you over there, Esther?

—Nothing, she said and she shook her head. —Everything, she said. He watched her steadily.

—All right, she said.

She was in London the first time it came over her. Fifteen hundred people in the theater and she stood in the wings listening to their murmur beyond the stage lights. All week the papers reporting how her voice had faltered in her last three performances on the continent. Her German understudy sleeping with the orchestra’s conductor, the two of them leading a campaign to push the Northern Pearl off the marquee. She hadn’t slept in days.

She walked on stage to polite applause but there was a whiff of blood about her and the audience could almost taste it. She felt like she was singing under water, she said, her own voice muffled in her ears, a sound as syrupy and thick as molasses. And she could sense something unfamiliar approaching in the middle of the first aria, a black tunnel that opened beneath her feet and she fell from the world in mid-note. She was in the wings when she came to herself, the bitch of an understudy already on stage. She could see faces gathered over her but couldn’t move or speak for the longest time.

—Like Lizzie, Abel said.

—Just like Lizzie, yes. Esther rolled over him and out of bed, standing naked at the fireplace. An angry-looking scar on her abdomen. —Happened almost every time I went on stage after that. I spent every cent I had on doctors.

—What did they say?

—A kind of sleeping sickness. They think it travels through families. Not a thing they could do for me.

—I thought you made all that stuff up, he said. —All those stories.

—I can’t help what you think, Abel.

He held a hand out to her. —Come back to bed, he said.

When Hannah left Selina’s