The memories lingered in the dusty recesses of her mind like a recurring bad dream. Emma had thought she’d left them all behind when she walked away from the small town ten years ago. But the news of her stepfather’s passing brought it all flooding back. The memories of that oppressive, suffocating household, where the air was thick with secrets and the weight of expectations hung over her like the twisted metal of the old 12ft ladder propped against the worn brick wall of their home.

As Emma stood at the graveside, her mind began to unravel the threads of the past. She thought of the countless nights she’d spent trapped in the cramped attic where she’d hidden to escape the verbal lashes of her stepfather’s anger. Of the day she’d discovered the ladder, discarded by the town’s handyman, its steel rungs gleaming in the dim light of the stairs. Of the way it seemed to stretch up to the heavens, an invitation to escape the drudgery and bleakness of her life.

Her eyes drifted over the rows of mourners gathered around her, their faces a blur as she struggled to make sense of it all. Why had she stayed so long? Why had she let the world shrink to the confines of that isolated world? The questions swirled in her mind like the scavenging birds that swooped into the cemetery on account of the nearby mortuary.