Oh. But. The farmer certainly knew what to do with his hands. Nora brought herself back into the room, the back of her neck moist from his breath. She turned to him and finished it, and climbed the stairs to wash. He went outside to the river.

There was always guilt afterwards. Here in the bathroom, a cabinet in the corner for Anouk’s medications. Nora, sitting on the toilet, stretched out her leg and prised open the cabinet with her toe. White boxes and cups stacked neatly, endlessly. There would always be a need for this stuff until there wasn’t.

She finished, stood, watched Jody through the window. He had stripped down to the skin and was wading into the river. She lost sight of him behind trees but he soon reappeared and was now almost at Anouk’s island. Don’t get out, Nora pleaded, don’t go there. But he did, pulled his long body up on to the rock, shook water from his hair like a dog. He’ll go to the other side and piss into the river, Nora thought, disgusted.

That night, after dinner, Nora filled the bath with hot water and a few drops of lavender oil. She ran the tap and the shower too, to fill the bathroom with steam, and helped Anouk out of her clothes. Anouk’s body, nine years old nearly ten, was still, to Nora, an extension of her own. That’s my knee, she thought. Those fine white, perfect hairs that follow the curve of my daughter’s forehead, the thick blue vein that travels across the pale inside of the wrist, the downy stuff that licks the hairline, and the subtle dip in the chin, as if pressed by a thumb when she was still in the mould, that’s all me.

Nora dropped her own clothes on to the bathmat and stepped into the bath and reconciled her shoulder blades with the taps, settling in. Anouk got in too, winced with the heat and sat opposite, their legs entwined. She still showed no signs of puberty; the malnutrition she suffered from the CF stunted her development. Her bones and muscles were as evident under her skin as the borders on a map. She was growing though, and getting older, and room in the bath for the two of them was depleting. This nightly ritual would come to an end.

After the bath, wrapped tightly in towels fresh from the clothesline, Nora brushed Anouk’s hair and braided it in one long rope and squeezed it until water dripped from the end of the wick. They went downstairs in their pyjamas and Anouk flopped on to The Cheese. Outside, the sun fell behind the trees on the far bank of the river and the world was muted.

The river hardly moved at all. Two or three stars in a sky not yet black. Nora cupped Anouk’s back, and then Anouk stood at the window with a glass of water and handful of pills, wiped water from her chin with the sleeve of her pyjamas. This small gesture filled Nora with enough love to make her panic.