‘Not all night, just late. You were asleep when I came in. You all were.’

The blush on my face betrays my lie, the smirk on John’s shows his disbelief.

‘Go tell your pretty tales to Mam, then. She’ll believe you, no doubt.’

He runs off in the direction of the village, and I fret so about what he might be doing there that I forget to wash the clams.

‘What happened to these?’ Mam asks, wrinkling her nose as she picks them over. She holds the stone up to the light, takes the coin, nods.

‘We meant to rinse them,’ I say.

‘Meant to. No use.’ She scoops them up, drops them into a bowl and hands it to Annie, wiping her sandy hands down her petticoat. ‘Wash these at the well. Don’t come back until they’re clean.’

I hold my hands out before Mam’s words have fixed themselves in me. Annie’s eyes open out like full moons. ‘Just me?’ she asks. ‘By my own?’

‘Aye, you’re old enough now. Be gone, lass, make yourself useful.’

Annie takes the bowl as though she’s been handed a casket of gold and skips out of the house into the fading light. Mam and I stand, listening to the rattling of the clams and Annie’s singing drifting, the table between us, each leaning against a wall. She throws me a look that makes me wary of the conversation to come, suspicious of her reason for sending Annie away, then runs to the door and pulls it open.

‘Back,’ she shouts. ‘Back here.’

The rattle returns.

‘Only go to the well if the green’s empty. If there are villagers there, even ones you’ve seen here, leave and come home. Talk to no one. Understand?’

Mam steps in, closing the door. She presses a hand to her forehead. ‘She’s still innocent of their hate. I’d not have a stone thrown or a taunt spoke and steal that from her.’

I think of the ill will we’ve found in the village since the new magistrate is come, the venomous accusations this morning. The farmhand. But I cannot reply, for Mam is making me fearful. There’s a brittleness to her movements and the way she avoids my eye. I wait, swallow down my disquiet. She is building up to something.

Taking the clay figure from by the fire, she turns and strokes it, lifts and peers at it. ‘Dry,’ she says. ‘What should be done with it now, dust think?’

‘I think we should leave be.’

‘The netter should go unpunished?’

I run my hand over the table, brushing crumbs to the floor. ‘He’s lost some teeth, had his eye blackened.’

She places the figure on the table, looks at me until I’m forced to turn away from the crumbs and meet her gaze. ‘You think you’ve another path now, happen?’