Her face is expressionless, voice gentle. I do not think she mocks me, but I’m not sure. I cannot reply.

‘He made promises, did he? Prattled a tale of a better life?’

I say nothing but I know she can read the answer on my face. Her talk is perilous and I feel my fragile happiness under siege.

‘I do believe he cares for you,’ she says. The hope I want to take from her words is stolen by the pity in her eyes. ‘For a lad like him to come here, to warn us of the villagers and return, just to see you. You’re right to think it means something. The feelings are real. The promises are not.’

‘But if the feelings are real, why can’t the rest be? He wants to be with me. We will find a way.’ I realise in this moment that I believe it with every part of me. When two people feel as we do, so purely and without any doubt, they can make it possible. We will make it possible.

‘Oh, lass,’ she says, stepping around the table, making to stroke my hair and then hesitating, hand wavering in the air. ‘I wish I could tell you it were so.’

She brings her arms around her own waist, and I wonder when she was last held by flesh not of her own. She knew love once. So long ago she can’t remember how it feels.

I take her hands, rub them so the truth of my feelings can be pressed into her. ‘It is so, Mam. It was for you and Father. It is for me.’

‘Your father was not the only son of a farmer. And I was not—’

My grip on her tightens. I do not mean to hurt her. ‘Not what? What am I?’

Whatever I am, that affords me less chance of happiness than she had, she was my maker. I manage to stop myself saying it, for even now I know that whatever she has made me it was not of her own choosing.

‘You are poor, lass. We have nowt to offer on your behalf. God knows, I wish it wasn’t so.’

‘God knows I’ve as much right to happiness as any.’

‘God knows you were chosen by another and it is to him you must turn if you want to live.’

I drop her hands as though her flesh burns me as her words do and press my fists into my eyes. She’ll not have the satisfaction of my tears. The flickering in my eye and snarling through my bones brings a feeling of such uncontrollable wildness that it scares me. I fear what I’ll become when it takes me over. Already, it has caused me to pain Mam in every way possible. And this I chose, just as Daniel prepared to offer me another life. A peaceful life.