‘After Mamma has finished teaching me how to cook.’ Maria pulled out a handful of grass and threw it on herself. ‘After I leave home and all of you.’ Her voice rose and she threw more grass. ‘After I am wed.’ Maria lifted her head then and glared at Luna, who wanted to cry too at the sight of so much fear and anguish on her sister’s childish face. ‘What then?’ Maria cried.

‘Well, I expect you will have children, my love, many sons to make your husband proud and they will love you and, in time, they will care for you.’ Luna tried to keep her voice calm. How could she possibly know what the future held for Maria? The enormity of her sister’s question struck her.

Maria had stopped digging but now was pinching at the skin of her arm. Luna was used to seeing her sister hurt herself like this. She wished she could feel the pain instead of Maria but all she could do was lay her hand over Maria’s arm.

‘I saw a basket of eggs as we passed the kitchen. Shall we take some and pattern them tomorrow?’ She didn’t move, and after a few minutes, felt Maria soften beneath her hold. A teardrop splashed on her nightdress and she knew that the melancholia had broken.

The sisters sat. A cat mewled in the alley and Luna listened to another hiss in reply. Maria was crying. How could a child comprehend her future, Luna thought with bitterness, but it would be so, as it was for all girls. At least, nearly all.

After a while, Maria’s sobbing eased and Luna moved closer but didn’t reach out to her sister, not yet. She waited, gazing around the shadowy garden. The dark shape of a cat tripped daintily along the lip of the back wall and over the gate, its tail pointed skyward and swaying. The new bolt on the garden gate was shiny, even in the dark.

‘Leave it to Papa; he’ll take care of everything. He always does,’ Maria said.

‘Yes, he always does.’ Luna repeated Maria’s words, hoping it would make her believe the sentiment a little more. She took her sister’s hand and held it tightly as they turned back to the house and their shared bedchamber.

*