When she was small, before Kenneth began to grow roses, her mother had a vegetable patch in the rear section of the garden. Connie had helped her look after it, bending to heave out carrots and potatoes. It had amazed her that vegetables could grow in the dark, cold ground. It was a place for dead things, wasn’t it, like in the churchyard where bodies rotted and worms feasted? She had woken in the night, gasping with fear, her dreams full of bodies caught under that weight of earth, like the story she had found in the bookshop about the old man stuck beneath the floorboards, his tell-tale heart beating louder and louder.

How cold must her mother be in the ground? Connie wanted to cover the grave with a blanket or lie on top of the stone as if her warmth might permeate the earth. She would do anything to have one more day, one more hour, a single moment with her mother. For the chance to touch her face, her hands, to smell her perfume and hear her voice.

Suddenly, hands grabbed her waist and pinned her to the sink. Victor had come in so softly she hadn’t heard him.

She brushed away her tears. Turned grief into anger. ‘Get off me,’ she said, pushing hard against him.

He held her fast, nuzzled his nose into her neck.

‘Get off me,’ she hissed again, shoving at his hands. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow and whipped round. ‘What do you want?’

‘Come on, Connie,’ he said, ‘are you so innocent you have to ask?’

She resisted the urge to slap him.

‘Everything all right?’ called her father from the other room.

They stared at each other, Victor smirking, Connie’s eyes blazing.

‘Fine,’ she called out quickly, and to Victor in a lower voice, ‘I’ll tell him.’

‘No, you won’t.’

She hated his cockiness especially because he was right. Her fingers itched to grab the chopping board or the rolling pin to bring down on his head.

‘You could do worse.’

‘I could do better.’

He laughed as she marched past him out into the passage and into her bedroom. Closing the door behind her, she pushed a chair against the handle and sat on the stool at the dressing table. She was trembling with rage more than fear. What right did he have to touch her? She considered her face in the mirror. She looked terrible – features blurred, face puffy. She felt her stomach but it was still flat. Maybe Doctor Franklin was right. She clung once again to the thought. She needed a tonic. Girls missed their periods for all kinds of reasons.

But they weren’t sick most mornings.