She looks down, hunched awkwardly, as though she has a cramp in her stomach. ‘I just wanted to take care of you,’ she says, still looking away from him. ‘It is not only you who have been lonely before this curfew. It is me, too. I find you pleasant and innocent, and you make me feel as though I still had some future left to me; just you being about the place affects me this way. Perhaps when this curfew ends you will let me mother you a little bit more, and then once the sickness ends – because everything does – you will let me continue in this fashion. I would hate for you to go back to the plains, spending the vital years of your life alone. You belong with others and I can teach you of how a man is to be manly and responsible, and I would ease your path into some other trade. It would be a great joy to me to help you along the path of your life. And I would demand nothing of you, but your presence. You are too young for any other talk, so it is not that that is my meaning. In brief, I would be your protector; I want to take care of you.’

Conn’s chest grows excited. The depth of her passion seems so profound to him that it shocks him into a sudden cowardice.

‘I will tell the others you are my lodger so it will not excite scandal,’ Gertrude says, her voice growing hurried, ‘but your only payment would be conversation with me, every now and again; not even every day. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything. I promise. I would take care of you. I would.’

She looks into his face, and he tries to hold her gaze, but cannot. I am changed, he thinks, and I did not recognise it because there was too much flux around me.

A few months ago, he would have cried with joy at Gertrude’s offer; he would have worked like a carthorse to make her comfortable, happy and proud of him. It has been so long since I had a mother, and now an uncommonly good woman wishes to make herself my mother. It is a blessing, he knows; but he feels like she is setting a trap for him.

‘Well?’ she says. ‘You may at least answer me.’

Conn is confused, unsure of what to say. I don’t know myself any more, he thinks, but he is no longer the lonely child he once was, the one who she sees when she looks at him.