There I am, shivering under the feather quilt, folded towels between my legs, dreaming of sea water, dreaming of blood. Clementina easing my knees apart to carry away the wet and replace it with new. Me clamping down on that, to seal and keep safe. Magnus pulling back curtains, letting in the light, and my arms fending it off, away, because only in the dark can you blot out the shape of a barely human thing tossing in the shallows, seabed grazing skinless face. Afraid of the pressure inside growing, wanting it out, get this thing out. Needing to hold on, hold it in, but knowing the pressure is too much and I canna stay here forever. The waves push forward, pull back, and as I rise from the bed, wet, sticky, something slips from me with a pop, like a slippery plum.

Clementina!

And she holds me up as it slides down my thigh, a great rush of red following.

Well, quinie, that’s that. Gentle, final.

But when she’d settled me back on the pillows and peeled back the folds of towel to examine the clotted matter, Clementina frowned and puffed a whistle of air.

What? Keeping my eyes on her face.

Canna say, quinie, canna say for sure. But … I don’t know …

And she took it away.

Dr Hamilton came to the house and never did send a bill. People can be surprising, lambsie. Lots of things surprise me even now.

But nothing more than when Dr Hamilton pronounced me pregnant still. The clot I had passed was not a foetus, no. Exactly what it was, I don’t think he could say.

And as the months went by, he kept shaking his head because I kept bleeding, on and off, but I kept growing, too. The something in me would not die, though I was no less fearful for its stubborn resolve to stay.

When Steven stretched his small hands across my belly and wanted to know what was in there, Clementina swallowed a barking laugh.

What to tell him? What could a two-year-old understand?

A baby, Jessie declared confidently. There’s a baby in there, in Unty Meggie’s tummy.

How did it get there?

Clementina and I waited to hear what twelve-year-old Miss Jessie had learned in the playground at South Fremantle Primary.

Fairies, acourse! Don’t you know anything?

Back home, they’d say …

But I stopped Clementina before she could turn my mind to Roanhaven and any opinion it might have about this strange, fragile presence that continued to fill me with dread and fear—but with awe, aye, awe as well.