I put my hand to the tumbled mass of black hair and the green and gilt ribbons and I gathered her up to me. Her shoulders were still warm and sweaty, but her head lolled back, her neck was broken. The top of her head was a mess of blood, but it was not pumping out. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the wall behind her, they were rolled back in her head so the whites showed. Her face was frozen in a grimace of terror, the scream still caught in her throat.

I laid her down, gently back down on the ground and pulled the short skirt down over her bare legs. She was lying all twisted, her head and shoulders one way, her legs and hips the other, so her back was broken as well as her neck. There was a dribble of blood at the corner of her gaping mouth but that was all. She looked like a precious china doll smashed by a feckless child.

She was dead, of course. She was the deadest thing I had ever seen. Dandy, my beloved, scheming, brilliant sister, was far far away – if she was anywhere at all.

I looked up. Jack was struggling to undo his belt, I guessed his hands were shaking so much that he could not hold the buckle. He looked down at me from the catcher frame and he met my gaze. His mouth was half open as if he was appalled at what he had done. As if he could not believe what he had done. I nodded slowly to him, my eyes blank. It was unbelievable, but none the less he had done it.

I stood up.

The crowd all around me had fallen back. I saw their bright faces and their mouths moving but I could not hear anything.

Rea was beside me. I turned to him and my voice was steady.

‘You’ll see she’s buried aright,’ I said. ‘In the manner of our people.’

He nodded, his face yellow with shock.

‘Her clothes burned, her plate smashed, her goods buried with her,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Not the wagon,’ I said. ‘The wagon is Robert’s. But all the things she wore, and her bedding, and her blankets.’

He nodded.

‘And her comb,’ I said. ‘Her ribbons. Her little pillow.’

I turned away from the crumpled body, and Rea standing beside it.

I went two steps and Robert held out his arms to me. I ignored him as if I had never loved him, nor anyone in all my life. I turned back to Rea.

‘No one but you may touch her,’ I said. But then I was uncertain. ‘Is that right Rea? Is that the way of our people? I don’t know how it is done.’

Rea’s lips were trembling. ‘It shall be done in our way,’ he said.