I look at Luca and try to smile at him, but Papa glares at him in such a way that he cannot look at me, or smile back. He stands stiff and tall, puffing out his chest, the way he does when Sergiu tells him to strip and get into the barrel that he and Victor would roll down the hill. Luca only cried once. It was going to happen anyway.

The man swallows the wine in one gulp.

‘What strange weather,’ Papa says. ‘A storm has been threatening all day.’ He looks out the window at the low dusty-yellow sky, and then down at the glass in his hand, blowing on it absentmindedly, as if he’s about to drink from a cup of hot tea. The man makes no attempt to join in the conversation. I move from the fire towards Mama. I want her to wrap me in her arms and pull me close. She moves away. She is busy cleaning. I stand beside her and try to get a sense of this man who is to be my husband. He has a brown mark on his cheek, a sign from God that he is touched. He thinks he’s better than us – I can see it from the way he coldly scans the room, my papa and Luca, and the fact that he has not once looked at Mama or me.

He speaks, and his voice rumbles like the thunder that has been bursting to sound all day. ‘Thursday?’

‘Yes,’ Papa says. ‘She is to your liking then?’

Mama clatters the dishes in the sink, Luca puffs out his chest even further, I pinch the skin on my forearm. The man nods.

‘Where are you taking her?’ Luca asks.

‘Now, none of your cheek, son,’ Papa says.

The man puts his empty glass down on the table and leaves. He does not thank Mama, he does not speak to me. What is it about me that makes him want to claim me as his wife? We have not even exchanged a glance. He does not know the colour of my eyes.

He is not so old, or fat, not like Katerina’s husband. He is tall and has good shoulders.

Mama says to Papa, ‘No, I will not allow it.’

‘Who asked you, woman?’ Papa says, and then he goes to her and puts his arms around her. This is the first time I have seen him do this. She slumps against him. ‘He has money. He will look after her, and us. She will have better opportunities than we could ever give her.’

I walk to the door and inhale deeply, feeling as if all the factory smoke is clogging my lungs, filling them with burning ash.

‘It will be ok,’ Papa says to my back. ‘He will buy you nice things and bring you to nice places. I have made sure he is a good man.’