Melanie doesn't look entirely appeased - what an awful thing for him to suggest after everything they've been through already! - but she does shift more of her focus to the book. She has to turn the pages with a bit more care than usual, but she remembers it well, and it doesn't take her too long for her to find one of the nice, descriptive passages about the garden starting to wake up in the springtime.

Focusing proves to be a bit trickier. There are moments where she thinks things are changing, that she's making a difference: a brief whiff of fresh, growing things, a snatch of improbable birdsong. But the nightmare has a good hold on her, and there's nothing she can do about the distressingly solid look of her dilapidated little cell.

She frowns down at the page in frustration, then lifts her head to give Daniel a pensive look. "I think I could do it if my eyes were shut," she says, absently running her palm over the page. She chews her lip a moment, feeling unaccountably shy, then asks, "Could you read it to me?"