The feelings he had known and called love were not real. Were not even his own. He knew nothing of it.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Sarah’s room was as she left it. Blankets pulled neatly over the bed, clothes folded in a corner. Beneath them, he knew, the ring. Hidden, until the day they escaped and she could wear it freely. Never now to be.

Deceived into giving it, he was free to take it back.

Still the scent of her suspended in the air.

Within a Curse’s Reach

Bett has brought food, wrapped in a cloth just as I used to on Sundays. Bread, butter, cheese, collops, salad leaves and a pail of milk.

‘Eat,’ she says, taking my shoulders and guiding me to the table. She glances at Annie, standing in the doorway, one foot tucked behind her knee. ‘And you,’ Bett says.

Annie looks at me. ‘Aye,’ I say, and she sidles to me, settles on a stool and nibbles on a piece of bread.

Bett looks at Mam, curled in John’s bed, stroking his blanket and whispering. Says nothing.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘About what happened, Sarah, so sorry I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to go to the magistrate but Nathaniel said it would be worse for you.’

‘Nathaniel’s right.’

She sighs, pleats her apron. ‘You could leave, you’re a dairymaid, go to the next mop and find a new place.’

‘What of Annie and Mam? I cannot go to a mop with them. If three women such as we arrived in any village, you know what everyone would think.’

Bett hangs her head, nods.

‘There’s nowhere to go, the three of us, that will not end the same way as here.’

Bett puffs out an angry breath. ‘It cannot be so. I will not have it. There must be something to be done, something I can do.’

I think, briefly, of the small pile of belongings I left at the farm and dare not go back to retrieve. My clothes. Bracelet. The ring Daniel gave me. ‘Thank you for the food,’ I say.

‘Something more than food.’

The words come out, unbidden, each ripping a piece of me away as I speak it. ‘You can take Annie.’

They both start. Bett stares at Annie, Annie stares at me, stops chewing, though her mouth bulges with food.

Bett gives a thin laugh. ‘I – no, you’ve lost all—’

Annie spits her mouthful on to the table, clenches her fists, glares at Bett and growls.

‘Take her, keep her safe. You yearn to mother, and she is in need.’ I wipe her mouth with my hand, frowning. ‘And she is usually much more appealing than this,’ I say.

‘No, she – they all know her anyway, it would not work.’ Her eyes burn bright as she looks at Annie. She pictures being her mother, I know.