‘We’ll collect our things,’ says Eren, ‘unless we will disturb the miller?’

She shakes her head. What will she do, with him gone?

‘You will be safe,’ says Eren. ‘The miller will stay with you.’

‘And you?’ asks Lisbet. She rakes her eyes hungrily over his jaw, his nose, his lips, trying to hold his features in her mind, as though she hopes to draw him. ‘Where will you go?’

She wants him to say, nowhere. She wants him to say, I won’t go.

‘You mustn’t worry, Frau Wiler.’

‘Lisbet.’

‘Lisbet.’

His voice has a new clarity to it, clear as cool water. She waits outside while he and Frederich collect their things. She doesn’t want to watch the evidence of them leaving.

Frederich is done quickly and emerges to embrace her briefly. ‘Be well, Frau Wiler. I hope all is remedied soon.’

He pulls his pipe from his pocket, steps further off to tamp it full. Eren is slower. He comes out with the bundle he arrived with. His shoulders are hunched, and she feels certain he does not want to go any more than she wants him to. They are both of them weary. They could lie down in the shade of the skeps and let the bees lull them to sleep, she thinks. She could rise without waking him and collect the comb, go to him with honey on her lips—

‘Thank you for your kindness, Frau Wiler. I wish Fräulein Wiler and Frau Plater a full and fast recovery, that they come to themselves again soon.’

He bends to Ulf, to Fluh, and they come, butting their noses against his hand.

This may be the last time, she thinks, the last time she sees him, speaks with him.

‘Take care of yourself,’ he says. ‘Keep to your yard. You know the forest is not safe.’

‘I will go where I like.’ Anger now, hot as sun on her neck. He is not her husband, her master. If he leaves her now, he is not even her friend. Eren looks at her then, his black eyebrow arched to a perfect degree. She wants to trace it with her fingertip, to draw a line from it to his earlobe, to his pulse working the thin skin beneath his beard. She wants to look, and look, and look so well she could know him forever, for this last look to be enough to keep him with her all her days. She turns away.

‘Goodbye, Frau Wiler.’

Lisbet goes inside and closes the door before he can turn his back: plunging herself into the airless room, she drags breath into her body in great, heaving gasps. So, she tells herself, it is done. He is gone. It is done.

She goes to the dirty sheets on her and Henne’s bed and sleeps heavily, as though crushed under the boulder she made of herself to weight Ida. When she wakes it is in complete confusion, her tongue furred. It is dark and she does not know if it is the middle of the night or before dawn or in between.