Miss Iliescu will be gathering our essays about summer at the beginning of the day and we’ll find out in a week who has won. I’m fairly certain it’ll be me again, but there’s always a possibility of doubt, and it’s this doubt that catches in my heart and makes it beat twice as fast. Papa won’t look at me this morning – he hasn’t looked at me since the day of the staining, although how he knows, I don’t know. Mama’s face is hard and the boys are chomping loudly, except for Luca, who hasn’t touched his porridge.

When the others have finished eating, Papa wipes his face with the back of his hand and speaks loudly into the air. ‘You won’t be going to school today.’

I look around to see who he’s talking to, presuming it’s to Sergiu, who doesn’t go anyway. ‘You’ll be staying at home with your mama to do the chores.’

The room is spinning beneath my feet. Although he hasn’t looked directly at me, I know this could only be addressed to the girl of the house.

‘What about my essay?’ I say, my voice sounding small, as if it’s coming from far away.

Victor laughs. ‘The only one with an ounce of a brain in the house. Too bad you were born a girl.’

Papa speaks low. ‘A woman now.’

The boys look back down at their empty bowls, Sergiu having polished off all of Luca’s, and start to push their chairs away from the table. As they leave, Luca turns to me and says, ‘I’ll give your essay to Miss Iliescu.’

I don’t trust myself to stand, so Mama takes the papers gently from my hand and gives them to Luca. ‘Good son,’ she says. ‘Now go.’

I look out at the sky, which is heavy and low to the ground, the thin sunlight diluted by the polluted haze. There are rumbles of thunder in the distance. ‘What’s going on, Mama?’ She seems distracted, then angry, like I’ve done something wrong. She offers me more bread with butter and apple jelly.

‘Need to make sure you’re not too scrawny.’

‘Too scrawny for what?’

‘No man likes a scrawny girl and with all your tree-climbing you are sinew and bone.’

I wonder why there is this talk of pleasing a man all of a sudden. ‘But Mama … ?’

‘Now, none of your cheek, young woman.’

I am only warming up for a question that I can’t put words to. The gap at the top of the well is closing in.

‘More bread?’ she asks.

The dog slinks around the kitchen with its tail between its legs and its ears flattened, whining, or ‘begging’ as Mama says. She grabs the brush from me and whacks the creature on its behind.

‘Don’t, Mama.’