She followed me up the stairs, still wearing her good shoes. The door at the top was open, and we went out into the kitchen. Daddy Ivan sat at the table, writing numbers in his big book, counting money, sorting it into piles. I lifted the shovel, brush and tin bucket from beside the wood stove, which still wasn’t lit because it hadn’t been cleaned out yet. Mummy Joy was washing clothes in the sink. Mummy Noreen was cleaning the floor.

We start at the top, says I, in the bedrooms.

There were three rooms upstairs, one for each of the Daddies. We went to Daddy Ivan’s first. I lifted the fireguard away from the hearth and knelt down. Like this, says I, sweeping the ashes out from under the grate and onto the shovel, and pouring them into the bucket.

Says she, I know how to clean out a fireplace. Where are the others?

The Daddies? says I. They’ll be out in the fields or in the cowsheds, doing their work.

So there’s only him, says she, the older one.

I was finished cleaning Daddy Ivan’s hearth, so I went to the next room, Daddy George’s. Esther followed me, and this time she lifted the fireguard away, got down on her knees and did the sweeping out. We didn’t talk any more, but I could see she was thinking, thinking, thinking.

When we’d done all the fireplaces upstairs, Esther carried the bucketful of ashes down to the kitchen, and I showed her where to empty it out in the yard. She stood there for a minute and looked around her. The only way out was through the gate at the far side, the one that led to the fields. She stared at it, her hands making fists at her sides.

They’ll catch you, says I.

Maybe, says she, maybe not.

They’ll hurt you.

Not if I hurt them first.

Come on, says I, we have the stove to do.

I thought for a second she wouldn’t follow me back inside, that she’d try to run, but she came ahead. She cleared out the stove, brushing the ashes into the bucket, while I folded old sheets of newspaper into criss-cross shapes, just like Mummy Noreen had showed me how to do. When the stove was emptied, I filled it with wood and newspaper, and then I put a match to the paper. I tended it a while, just to be sure the wood was lit, then I closed the door, opened the vent wide to help it take. I turned my head and saw Esther over by the sink.

I saw what she was looking at: the knives laid out on the draining board. Big ones and wee ones, all of them like razors. Her hand moved to the biggest of them, with its long blade and thick handle made of wood.