I pull her into my arms and cradle her. ‘Nowt.’ Let out my breath at last. Every day I begin by reassuring her. Every day I begin with foreboding.

She springs from our mat through the doorway to John’s empty one and back, clapping her grimy hands. ‘He doesn’t want me.’ She smiles, wipes her nose and licks off the slime trail it leaves.

I laugh and pull the clothes on over her head before she skips away into the other room to stand in the spilled ashes from the fire and take what warmth she may.

Mam has risen from bed, blanket pulled around her as she stands in the doorway.

‘No visit?’ she asks, words sliding through the gaps in her teeth.

I shake my head.

‘He’ll come. None of your tricks can stop him.’ She glances at her familiar, a hare, harmless to us but a willing carrier of curses, she says. It appears only to her, but we know its presence by her whispered words of love and plans of ruin. ‘We know it, do we not, Dew-Springer?’ I stare, trying to see its footprints in the ash or glimpse it shifting around her feet. Nothing.

Squeezing past John’s mat and the table to reach the fire, she waves Annie away, and pokes the lifeless ashes, dust rising and coating the mould on the wall. The blanket falls from her shoulders, showing the ridge of her backbone, and her own mark.

‘Firewood,’ she says.

‘I’ll go to the shore, fetch some driftwood. Perhaps find some clams.’

‘Help me wipe her first?’

I dip a rag into the bucket and Mam catches Annie before she can run. She cries out and struggles as I scrub her dirty face and hands, but hasn’t the strength to escape. We gave her the last of the bread two days ago.

‘Dolts,’ she shouts, fists clenched and teeth bared. Mam and I try to control our laughter at her angry face, damp hair sprouting out. ‘Gormless.’

The door bangs against the wall and we stare at John as he stands with legs apart, hands behind his back and elbows out, trying to bulk his thin frame.

‘You’ll never guess what I got,’ he says.

‘A bird,’ Annie says. ‘A spadger, a little brown one?’

John rolls his eyes. ‘Why would I bring a bird, squirrel?’

‘Be more use than you,’ I say.

Annie wipes her nose on her sleeve and shrugs. ‘No matter, there’s spadgers in the woods. I’ll get my own.’

‘No, guess properly. Guess what I got.’

‘A clout is what you’ll get if you don’t tell us,’ Mam says.

A toothless threat. She has never raised a hand to us. Only once I’ve seen her driven to violence. A swift and deep fury, rising to protect her own.