She curls up next to me and I pull the blanket over us both. Her arms hot around my neck, breath sour with the food. The stink of the lamb’s head hangs in the air.

I’ve no memory of the night he came, marked my skin and drank from me. Choosing me for a purpose I have yet to discover. The dark red patch on my side has been there for as long as I remember. Mam didn’t tell me what it meant until I was twelve and before this I had thought nothing of the stain I carried, finding no more significance in it than my blue eyes or unruly hair. She ignored my tears, as the possible lives I had dreamed for myself shrank to one. They remain for Annie, though.

She sucks her thumb and winds my hair around her fingers. All I can hear is John’s knife scraping against his toenails, his chewing as he lifts the shavings to his mouth. Of course he does not carry the mark, and I used to envy such freedom to choose a skill and carve his own path. But now I look to the lives John may have and see nothing but this one he already lives.

‘People will pay for the blood.’

I start as Mam’s voice cuts across the room. Annie’s eyes open, the steady sucking on her thumb stops.

‘Shh,’ I say to them both.

‘Good for curses. A death mark in blood, that’ll satisfy. Then they may pay for the cure too.’

‘You’ve woken Annie.’ Irritation makes me bold, so that my words surprise even myself. Mam does not respond.

‘And the eyes,’ she says. ‘Everyone wants an eye kept on their enemies. You’ve fed us for a week with this, John. Next time fetch a bigger one.’

I sit up and the hair Annie clutches in her sticky fingers is pulled from my head. ‘There’ll be no next time.’

‘Then what should we live on?’ The quietness of Mam’s voice suggests as much anger as if it were raised.

‘We can manage.’

‘And what form of managing do you think I should take up next, if your brother’s not to help me? What choices are left me since your father’s gone?’

Annie wriggles and whimpers. It’s the same every time. Mam’s thoughts of my father begin sweet as nectar and end bitter as wormwood.

She turns her back but speaks clearly enough. ‘You’re a woman now. There are ways other than begging that you can be of use.’