Sabina spun on her.

“Did I say you could talk?”

“Leave her alone!”

Gemma.

Six years old, on her feet, both fists closed, her face red, shouting at an adult twice her size — and even as she shouted she was moving toward the sofa, toward the rabbit, because that was the actual emergency in her world.

“What did you just say to me?”

Sabina’s hand shot out and closed around the child’s wrist.

Two things happened simultaneously.