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only light was from the stars, the occasional firework, and whatever faint illumination reached them from the windows of the house higher up on the first and second floor. Emily stumbled and scratched her leg on some holly leaves and cursed, and Joe took her hand, matter-of-factly, so she wouldn’t fall into the next bush.
    She strained her eyes looking into the darkness. Was there someone else here? Up ahead of them, she heard the rustling sound of movement in the bushes. Or maybe it was the wind, or water in a stream. She thought she saw the glint of something silver – a knife? Or a bit of tinsel on a tree? She wanted to say to Joe that being in the dark was like being deep underwater, not being able to hear or turn round quickly enough to see the predator behind you. But then she scratched her leg again and she hissed because it hurt, and then Joe stopped so she stopped right behind him and listened to him breathing, and she didn’t say anything about being underwater or what she thought she had seen.
    He opened a door at the side of the house and led her into a corridor that smelled of damp stone. It was completely dark. The blackness in here trumped the blackness outside, which at least had layers and shapes in it. Joe edged forward, and Emily could tell from the way his left arm was moving that he was feeling for something in front of him – a doorway or a light. She put her hand lightly on his back and edged forward with him. ‘Shh,’ he said, though she hadn’t said a word.
    He must have reached what he’d been looking for because he stopped. A little bit of light appeared in front of them and she could see that he had pulled at the edge of a very thick, heavy curtain until there was enough of a gap for him to peep round.
    ‘Ach,’ he said, very quietly. ‘No, we’re too late.’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘The knife throwing.’
    ‘We’ve missed it?’
    ‘No, they’re just about to start.’
    ‘Well, can I see?’
    ‘I suppose so. OK.’
    She crouched, and he stood next to her, and they peeped through the gap in the velvet curtain like Victorian children on Christmas Eve. The sensation of standing next to him, spying on events in the grand hall, was both illicit and innocent. But just standing next to him in the darkness would have been very pleasant anyway.
    The two sisters came in, to the sound of applause. ‘Ah,’ said Joe. And when Emily asked him, he bent down and whispered to tell her that this one was Zizi, this one was Zsa-Zsa. Apparently they were very well-known, apparently they were from a famous knife-throwing family in Hungary, so Joe said, though Emily had never heard of them.
    They were in their blue-grey spangly costumes and finally Emily realised what the colour reminded her of – sharks. They were blindfolded with big, silky pale green scarves tied around their eyes. They looked vulnerable, bringing to mind the painting of Hope by George Frederick Watts that had hung in Emily’s Nana’s living room until she died, and they stood facing each other with their backs against opposite walls, in a slightly recessed area of the hall that provided a natural stage. They were very close to where Emily and Joe were standing – a little too close, perhaps, if one didn’t have faith in their aim – but they were a decent way away from their audience. Emily wondered if she should be worried that Joe had sounded so disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to get them into the grand hall and over to the other side, and safety, before the act began.
    The two sisters began to throw their ornate-handled knives simultaneously. The knives crossed mid-flight and stuck into the walls behind them, no more than two hands’ width from where each sister stood. There was a pause, and then they threw again. And again, delineating an unflattering larger version of their own shapes around themselves. It was really rather exciting, and there were gasps from the audience.
    The two sisters looked identical. They