She allows her thoughts to reach further, into another world where it was Eren she met that night at the dance, his lute set at the heart centre of himself, Eren’s fingers in hers, Eren’s breath on her neck, Eren’s baby inside her, Eren’s promise of another possible life. And it would be different, truly. Not without its hardships, but it would be a new kind of existence, marginal. A bee outside the hive. She thinks, watching him, that maybe the priests are wrong: the opposite of order is not chaos. Maybe it is freedom.

‘There,’ he says, sitting back on his heels, the fire reaching to his shoulders. ‘I’ll fetch more water. Will you be all right?’

She nods, grateful he makes no more mention of her returning to the farm. Perhaps he needs this as much as she, this escape. It is as though they are together balanced on a precipice, delaying the moment of falling. She feels safe even alone, even when Ulf traitorously follows at Eren’s heels to the river. She rises in the effortful way she always must after too long sat, and takes the steps to the platform.

It is swept largely clean by Eren, the candles Nethe stole from Sophey stacked, and his things are arranged as neatly as they had been in the bedroom at the house. His lute is laid crosswise across his pillow, like a sleeping lover. She thinks of him watching his father, the attention he must have paid to his fingers, the same devotion she had when she watched him play. What must it be like, to be a man and learn such a skill? In a woman’s hands it would be witchcraft, to have such a power.

‘Lisbet?’

She relishes the worry in his tone as she leans over the railing in mimicry of her first sighting of him, and waves. ‘Up here.’

Eren lifts up his hands. He is carrying the kettle hung over one arm, and has rolled up his sleeves, showing his knotted forearms. His hands are full of mushrooms. Beside him Ulf carries yet another stick, evidently as proud of his efforts as Eren is of his own.

‘I’ll come and prepare them,’ she begins, but he shakes his head, kneeling.

‘Stay, it will take time to cook.’

She lowers herself so she can sit with her legs over the edge of the platform to watch him work, feeling like a girl despite her enormous belly, her swollen joints, the mild fear of falling. He cleans the mushrooms with his knife, peeling away the dirtied outer layers and slicing them one at a time into the kettle, already set over the fire to boil. He twists the garlic and places that inside too, then replaces the lid and brushes down his hands. She senses he is performing for her, as she did for him in the kitchen of the farm, taking extra care over each action. When it is done he rises and without looking at her, circles the trunk. She hears the creak of the stairs, the sink of the wooden planks as he lowers himself beside her, leaning forwards to rest his bare forearms on the painted railing.