‘It was my mother’s neckerchief,’ he says, voice soft so that I can barely hear. ‘We have no use for it.’

The evening darkens and flames spit into the night. All through the village people will be blowing out candles and settling to bed. No one shall disturb this peace.

‘You must miss her,’ I say.

He stares into the fire, light and shadow flickering over his face, and I know he sees there a life in which his mother lived. ‘I didn’t know her,’ he says.

Not an answer, really, but I don’t pursue it. ‘She died when you were young?’

‘She died having me.’

It’s a wonder his father hasn’t found another wife; he’s a wealthy man, there must have been plenty to choose from.

‘I remember my father.’ I’m surprised to find myself mention him. He reacts as though I speak of nothing more significant than the weather.

‘What was he like?’

‘He was so tall. Or at least, he seemed tall but I was small at the time, so perhaps not.’

Daniel drops a branch on to the fire. I feel the flare on my face.

‘He smelled of the sea. His boots were always wet and stained by the salt, he used to leave them by the door. I think I remember his boots better than his face.’

‘He was a fisherman?’

I nod. ‘We lived with the others by the shore. I hardly remember now.’

‘I didn’t know.’

The air at my back is cool, heat from the fire near-scorches my face. I shrug. ‘He went out one day and didn’t come back. And Mam, well she did what she could.’ The memory smothers me as though I am there once again, the men and the noises they made, the coins left on the table. Mam squatting in the sea, washing and washing, face like a closed fist. The sweaty hand on my bare skin.

At first I didn’t understand. She told me different stories of what it was – a special potion that made them leap like mad dogs and call out, or dance untamed until they dropped to the ground. Always, it was something that children must never see. Only later, when she warned me of men and what they want, of the results, did I realise.

I tell him nothing of this.

His gentle touch on my arm makes me start, and I realise I’ve been sitting with my eyes closed, fighting the memories, the cloth bundled tight in my arms. These I will never share, not with anyone. I pull myself away from the past, to the riverbank and the warmth and to him.

‘Why don’t you put the neckerchief on?’ he asks.