Ma lets them come in, dribs and drabs of them, until the parlour is full and hot and close. They’ve brought sherry and fruit baskets and slabs of cheese, so we can’t really turn them away. They take off their boots at the door, and by and by the doorway is so piled with boots that I don’t know how each will manage to find her own pair at the end of the night.

At first their questions are easy to answer.

‘Are you glad to be home?’ they ask. ‘Did you miss your ma’s cooking?’

Then, as they tip back their drinks and their eyes begin to glaze, the questions turn into an interrogation.

‘We only want to know, we are only asking – she doesn’t have to answer if she doesn’t want to.’ But their questions are no different from anyone else’s. How did the babe die? Do I miss the babe? What was the jail like? What was the Iron Room like? Is it true you get a good last meal?

What happens next, after we die? Have I been delivered, have I been spared, have I been resurrected?

Can we see the rope-bruise? Oh, it is not as bad as we feared. Oh, you can hardly see it, not really – not in this light.

Can we touch it?

I do not want to embarrass Ma. I do not want to embarrass Ma, but their words and faces and fingers probe at me until the only thing I can do is close my eyes; and when that doesn’t work and doesn’t drown them out, I put my fingers in my ears; and when that doesn’t work, I stand up. Plates clatter to the floor and a hush falls over the room.

‘She has had a terrible time,’ says Joan. ‘And you are all making it worse.’ I have never heard her so stern.

‘Then we shall change the subject,’ they cry, and the subject is changed. And I sit back down and they all go back to talking about the weather and the price of wool, and the best time to slaughter their household pigs.

Under the table, Joan reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

I squeeze it back, grateful to her.

Afterwards, when I get embarrassed thinking about my outburst and wonder why it happened, I realize that it is because I do not want to tell tall tales any more and, truthfully, I was never dead, was I?

I was out for the count. Unconscious. Similar to a fainting fit, I suppose. The noose constricted my breathing for a while, and Dr McTavish pronounced me dead, though he knew full well I wasn’t.

There is nothing special about me at all.