She stiffens, straightens. Wipes hair from her face and turns towards us. ‘Perhaps just a mite.’

Sitting at the table, she pulls a small piece of bread from the loaf and places it in her mouth. In amongst the ashes behind her lies a patch that’s discoloured. Burned and crumbled clay. I look around for the likeness of the netter, find nothing.

‘Where’s John?’ I ask.

‘In the village,’ Annie says.

‘Fetching water,’ Mam adds quickly, though the pail sits in the corner behind her.

‘Nay,’ Annie says, frowning. ‘In the village you said, sorting things out, is what you said.’

I understand immediately what this means. Once again Mam’s fury at one that has hurt her own sends her spinning, embracing a path of revenge that threatens those she means to protect.

Annie turns to me, oblivious to the glare Mam gives her. ‘I’ve to heft the water now I’m big, but only I’ve to wait for night, Mam says it’s not safe in the daytime.’

One winter I pulled icicles from the roof and ate them until my belly stung and my mouth was numb. I’ve the same feeling now, looking at Mam’s fevered eyes, thinking of what John is about in the village this moment, of Annie’s spindly arms heaving the pail of water. Of the talk I hear from women washing their laundry in the beck with me, of witchcraft and evil acts they fear. Of how Magistrate Wright even questioned fisherman Shaw and his wife about Papism.

‘Today I shall do it,’ I say, walking past Mam to fetch the bucket.

I feel Mam’s gaze on me all the way to the well, as though she’s attached one of her seeing eyes to my back.

Still, I pause to gather the flowers I need, with their white blooms and mouse-like scent. The farmhand shall not go unpunished.

At the farmhouse I lie sleepless in my bed, as Gabriel’s words spin through me, as I remember Annie’s newly-cleaned face. As the dog purrs at my back, inviting me to embrace it. I am a Haworth and always shall be, no matter my clothes nor where I lay my head. Family, not visitor. I wish for a moment that Gabriel had known me earlier, that he could understand the girl he so admires now is the same one he despised and ridiculed before. My desire for his suffering outweighs even my fear of discovery, and the dog drives me on.

Silently, I rise and take the flowers, creep to the kitchen. The house creaks around me. No one stirs.