She cradles the doll in her palm, holds it against her cheek, presses it to her nose. I put my arms around her and she looks at me for the first time, shakes her head.

She grabs my hand. ‘Should you choose a life with another, that life will be shattered and the one you love will suffer most cruel. Keep true to the one that’s chose you.’

I ease my hand from her grip. This warning has fallen from her lips so often that I can’t remember a time when I ever thought a life of love and happiness with another would be mine. It does not stop me dreaming of it, though. I lick my lip, glance past her shoulder.

‘Who is this?’

The man is almost upon us before we see him, his feet scattering pebbles as he walks up the path to where we sit by the house. Black cloth billowing, soft hat held to his head in defiance of the wind that beats in from the sea. We wait, still crouched against the wall, watching him.

He could have remained hidden, walking through the woods that run up our hill at the edge of what once was the hamlet from the river below. But night is enough cover, and he has chosen the quicker route of the path. Picking his way through the tumbling silhouettes of the handful of dwellings surrounding ours, once homes to those long ago taken by plague, many still furnished with fallen and broken chairs or shattered plates, now slowly succumbing to the invasion of root and branch. Annie scours them, untroubled by the spirits of those still bound there, returning with pieces plucked from the leavings. Some of those doors still attached show the remains of the cross they were marked with, though most have fallen and rot into the ground with their owners.

The moon is bright, sky speckled with stars that gleam like flecks of ice, lighting the trail of dark splashes of lamb’s blood up the path. I notice them for the first time, distracted as I was by Mam. We need rain to wash away our guilt, but there’ll be none tonight.

Mam wipes her face and stands. ‘Inside,’ she says, and I’m happy to obey. He is a regular visitor, not one I fear, with a changeable countenance but never angry. Tonight he’s slowed by melancholy so that I give him a smile, since it’s all I have to offer. He returns it and hands me two radishes, still grainy with mud.

‘Thank you.’

‘Next time I will bring you bread.’ His voice strains to shed the weight of his misery.

‘You are in need of a potion,’ Mam says as I turn away.

His voice lowers and I linger in the doorway to hear. ‘If only I could resist, a man of my position should be stronger. But I fear without it I—’