When I reach the water Annie is already returning, with her legs wet, feet speckled with sand and a heap of clams and seaweed gathered in the dripping petticoat she’s clutched into a makeshift sack. She is nervous of water, especially the sea. We’ve seen it dip and raise itself into waves higher than houses, heard it roar like a maddened beast, seen it frozen into the sharpest teeth. Every few months it will rise and take its fill of village men. My father one of many. Even under its deceptively gentle surface today, I know there lies a great and fickle power.

Her fears have lessened, though, since Daniel took us to the beck and she is happy now to search the shore as I have shown her. Sometimes I feel she grows right before my eyes, becoming more herself with each passing day. She drops her offerings in a heap at my feet and flops down next to me. The food will be covered in sand now and need rinsing at the well as we return. On any other day I would grumble at her for this; today I barely notice.

She watches the gulls screeching and scrapping. ‘I wish I was one of them,’ she says. ‘Then I could just dip my head in the water and find whatever food I want, and I could fly right high and see the whole of everything.’

‘You don’t want to be a bird, they don’t have souls.’ Though at least if they are born without one it’s not there to be stolen, as mine was. ‘You’ve done well, little cub. And you’ve been into the water too, brave lass.’ I gather her into my arms, squeeze hard, laugh as her salt-stiffened hair taffles in my mouth.

She wriggles in my grasp. ‘You’re hurting, why are you squashing me?’

‘Because you’re such a good lass,’ I say, releasing her but taking her face in my hands.

She leans back, frowning and eyeing me as though I’ve danced a jig on the table. ‘Is this – are you my other sister?’ she asks.

I laugh. ‘What other sister?’

‘That looks like Sarah but isn’t.’

I ruffle her matted hair and resist the urge to hug her again. ‘Of course not, nay, it’s just me, as I always am.’