A worn sweater with frayed cuffs lay forgotten across the back of a chair. The milk cans were lined up. Hung on the wall nearby the milking machine with its sucking teat cups that were put on the udders. If the cows had to wait for too long they complained in chorus.

I felt tugging inside my own breasts. I imagined the anxiety of having to stand there, tethered and waiting for release from the backed up milk by a hungover farmer who vented his bad temper on the animals.

We had an understanding the animals and I. How often I had whispered into their silky ears that they should kick him to death. Just as they had whispered to me. There’s a hayfork with sharpened tips.

I saw john before he saw me.

He fumbled forward in the dusk. Stumbled on something and swore. I slipped out from the shadows. We were close in the narrow milking parlour and I picked up something about the scent of his body. When I sniffed all I got was his skin. Not dry shit smell of cowpats that had never been cleared out. He pulled me closer. Our anoraks rustled against each other. My hands found a way in under his jacket. Quickly searched his body. My fingertips took snaps to keep as memoryimages. His tense arms shoulder neck the uneven skin over his temples and my fingers twisted into his hair.

He lifted me up. My legs hooked around his hips. His harelipscarred mouth against mine and our tongues swirled in chaos. His eye glowed in the dark because outside the day had become night and the stars must be glowing too.

Everything was craggy and hard and rough even his tongue but from the bulk of his body tenderness flowed into mine turning me into a newborn calf with a ravenous muzzle. Did it hurt 33did he hold me too tightly could I draw breath. He wouldn’t let me go and I didn’t want to be freed. When the inescapable cold caught up with us we walked back to the house. The moon had risen. It followed us across the icy yard.

Where were you I asked later when we were lying in the pullout bed examining each other’s faces as if we had just been born.

In the hayloft he told me.

The place that burnt.

Yes. Then I heard sounds and found you. Or perhaps you found me.

I didn’t know you had a child.

No. How could you have he replied. What about you he asked and now I had a choice. I could say no and carry on as I was. Or I could say yes and let light fall on a part of me that didn’t exist.