‘Do you remember,’ Mam says, ‘when he fell from one of the Taylors’ apple trees? Clean white his face went, and his ankle turned black, but he still ran all the way home. Loved apples so much, he didn’t drop a single one. And when he was younger and his father still alive, he couldn’t reach to climb the gate to the lamb field. He’d wriggle underneath and I’d scold for the stains on his breeches. I’ll have that day.’

Her breath shudders.

‘I’ll have those days. Oh, I will live those days, any of those days, over and again. I’ll take any, with him thieving and cursing, lazing in his bed, I will take any day but this, not this, I don’t want this, I cannot live this day.’

Her pain fills the house. I close my eyes against it, stop my ears to it. I don’t have room for my own grief. The village will turn upon us now, and I don’t know how to protect Annie. If we run our troubles will follow, for there’s no place that will see a bedraggled group of desperate women and not cry witch.

I hold her in my arms, little lass. Wild creature that grips tree bark with her toes to climb all the faster, watches and learns about any small animal she can find. Clenches her fists and growls in anger. Brings flowers as a gift and wishes to grow into a man.

I pull her close to me. Shall never let go.

The finding of Annie comes to me now, as if I lived it yesterday. A cold, clear memory as sharp as a knife edge.

In the years when the men came. I lay in the same place I lie now, watched as Mam winced and groaned and clutched her swollen belly. She bent down, brushed hair from my cheek.

‘Don’t fret, lass,’ she said. ‘I swallowed a stone, is all. I must bury it in the woods. Stay here and watch your brother. I’ll be back while morning.’

It was not the first stone she had swallowed and buried.

I waited through the night, peering through the lashes of half-closed eyes when she crept back in at dawn. Footprint of blood on the floor as she passed me.

‘Get back to sleep,’ she said, and crawled to her bed.

I went to look for the stone.

The sound was thin, a desperate bleating, wrapped like a ribbon through the trees, leading me to the place I found her. Scrawny little babe, kicking her tiny feet and reaching her tiny arms from under the tree where she lay.

I could not leave her.

‘Look, Mammy,’ I called when I brought her home. ‘Look what I found growing in the woods.’

Mam wrapped her in a cloth and held her to her breast. Smiled and wept. Cradled her and whispered of love.