“What plan?” Noreen asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Mary has a plan.” A smile flashed on her lips, wiped away with her hand, the same hand trapping a giggle that tasted of madness. “Mary, tell them,” she said from behind her palm.

Mary remained silent, pushing crumbs around the table with her fingertips.

“Leave her alone,” Joy said, craning her neck to see out of the back window, to the yard, checking if Ivan was still out there, not listening from the hall. “Don’t get her mixed up in anything.”

“Tell them, Mary,” Esther said. “Tell them your plan. Tell them about George.”

“George?” Noreen echoed. “That’s enough, now. Shut up before any of them hears.”

Esther got to her feet and leaned across the table, took Mary’s hands in hers. “Please, Mary, tell them. Tell them what you told me. How George is the weakest of them. How he’s soft for you and Joy.”

Joy grabbed Esther’s wrist with one hand, pulled at her fingers with the other, trying to free Mary from her grasp. But Esther held on.

“Tell them. For Christ’s sake, tell them.”

Mary looked up at her, shook her head.

“What’s all this, now?”

Esther released Mary’s hands at the sound of Ivan’s voice in the hall doorway and stepped back from the table. Noreen and Joy stood too, their chairs scraping against the stone floor. Last of all, Mary got to her feet. None of them looked at him.

“Well?” Ivan stepped into the room. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Noreen said, keeping her gaze downward. “We just had a wee disagreement, that’s all.”

Ivan clucked his disapproval. “We’ll have none of that auld nonsense. Not in this house. Come on, now, get all this mess cleaned up and get on.”

They got to work.

When the men had eaten their tea, beef and potatoes again, and the women had cleaned up, Noreen lifted the bowl of scraps to take downstairs. Esther went to follow her through the door to the stairs beyond, but Tam called her back.

“You can eat something later,” he said, still sat at the table. “You’re having a bath, remember. The child’ll help you get it ready.”

The other men left the kitchen, saying nothing. Only Esther, Mary and Tam remained.

He pointed to the tin bath in the back hall and said, “Go on.”

“I don’t want to,” Esther said.

“What’s that got to do with it?” Tam asked. “You’ll do as you’re told.”

It was Mary who went and got the bath while Esther stood in the centre of the kitchen, her arms folded around her middle, sobbing. Mary dragged it back into the room, the tin scraping on the stone. Tam winced at the noise.