Ruth was drawing behind her screen when Rachaela came in.

Rachaela took off her coat, and washed her hands, and began to arrange Ruth’s tea automatically.

‘How did it go today at school?’ Rachaela asked.

A pause, perhaps of astonishment.

‘It was all right.’

‘What about yesterday?’

‘That was all right too.’

Rachaela thought of her mother, so many lectures over the table. Meals should not be interrogations.

She turned the steaks slowly.

Tonight they would eat together. Steak for both; mashed potatoes, tomatoes and peas for Ruth; lettuce and avocado for Rachaela.

When the food was ready she called Ruth to the table. They ate in silence, the drawing dividing them, to which, between mouthfuls, Ruth added a stroke or two. Upside-down, the drawing looked ominous, some bleak landscape under a cloudy sky, some beast coming from a lair.

‘What would you like now, pie or ice-cream?’

‘Both, please.’

Ruth was always polite. She was also a greedy child. Even when Emma had gone her appetite had not slackened, She stayed wand-slim, yet, in past weeks, Rachaela had begun to note the points of little breasts. She was only nine. Everything would need buying again, including a tiny bra. Would Ruth be embarrassed? Rachaela never saw her in the bath.

When the meal was finished, Rachaela washed up and made coffee, and Ruth retired behind her screen.

‘Do you have any homework tonight?’

Again the perhaps-astonished pause.

‘No.’

‘Will you come out, Ruth, for a minute, I want to talk to you about something.’

What would Emma have done? Emma, with all her experience, might not have cared. ‘It’s a phase they all go through. Don’t you remember it in yourself? Don’t draw attention to it. She’ll work it out.’

Ruth emerged, with her drawing. She sat down again at the table and worked on steadily.

Rachaela said, ‘Tell me about Terry Porter.’

Silence.

Eventually Ruth said, ‘I don’t like him.’

‘Why not?’

‘He shouts things at me.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘That I didn’t have a dad. That I came out of an egg.’

‘Of course you had a father. He doesn’t live with us, that’s all. Emma told you about that.’

Emma’s name was ignored.

How nastily inventive of Terry Porter to say Ruth came from an egg. Perhaps he had heard mention of the reproductive cycle.

‘So you were glad,’ said Rachaela, ‘when Terry Porter cut himself.’ Ruth said nothing. ‘Why did you make the cut worse? To scare him?’ Ruth drew on. The landscape, like all deserts, had a familiar look. ‘Please say something, Ruth.’

Ruth said, ‘It bled.’

‘Is that what interested you?’

‘It was very red.’

‘You’ve seen blood before,’ said Rachaela. Had she? She must have done, she had been born in it.

‘It was very red blood.’

Was there relish in the statement? Was there, more to the point, thirst and incipient sexuality?