She is convincing herself that she loves her child, but she is still not sure. The light is a finger gesturing towards her. If she leaves the house, she does not know what she will do other than beg something off the Prestons or the Toqvilles. Perhaps they will think I am dying, she thinks, or have been abused, because of my shaking, but I am just energetic with love for my family. I will come across little Conn, sooner or later. He will give me something. He would give me a mob of lambs if I asked it of him. He would even give me his life if I asked him to lay it down for me.

Conn’s visits, she reflects, are what she has missed most in the town’s imprisonment; his visits, and his flowers.

She pulls up her dress, opens the door and a flood of light engulfs her.

It is a long time before she can open her eyes, and when she does they are in a squint, her whole face looking like pinched skin. There is no one about, and a nauseous dizziness comes upon her. She is unused to light. All the houses have been closed up. Already, from so brief an exposure, her head is itchy, prickling with heat. This is a dead town, sealed and rotting. The dogs fled a month ago, or were cooked in communal fires. Her headache grows larger and a new kind of pain is coming upon her. She has felt it once before, but does not remember where. A horse neighs down the street, and she jumps with fright at it, and her foot comes into contact with something slippery. At her feet are a dishevelled bunch of rotting sweet peas, may blossoms and lupins, disarranged and entangled like hair in the mornings. Their vibrant purples and pinks have bled out, and now they are brown and grey, a weak mimic of the town in which they have been placed. The petals are dry and crumbling like spent ash, but the stalks are wet and decomposing, sticky amidst her hands. Everything goes flat and horrible in death, she thinks, as she gags at their rank smell, kicking them away. Conn must have left them for her at some point after the curfew, but near enough its beginning.

‘Is that long enough ago to kill flowers?’ she asks.

Conn, four years her junior, is truly a boy. He must be thirteen by now, she thinks, and he was born in the summer. He has spent his life wandering between Kilmainhamwood and Nobber, minding the bishop’s sheep. She has known him since before he could speak. He loves her, but he was too young, and she had always been promised to Tedbalt by her father.