‘So, who is Anna exactly?’

‘Daniel’s girlfriend, apparently.’ Evelyne laughed, shook her head. ‘I can’t quite get my head around that.’

‘You didn’t know he had a girlfriend?’

‘No. But it’s not even that…’ She kept her gaze on the road. ‘Anna lived with us, at the farm. When I left four years ago she was only twelve, just a child. Still is, really. Only now she’s sixteen and pregnant by my brother.’

‘Why did she live with you? She’s a distant relative or something?’

Evelyne raised her eyebrows. ‘No, no. That would be even weirder. She was placed with us.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s from a poor family. Her father walked out and her mum couldn’t take care of her, I seem to remember. So Anna was placed with us by the authorities. They paid us to have her.’

Sylvia looked at Evelyne, but she kept her eyes ahead. ‘A foster placement?’

Evelyne shrugged, then laughed. ‘Another pair of hands for Dad to push around, more like.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, she had work to do, like the rest of us. Milking cows, raking hay, mucking out, that kind of stuff. Daniel and I did that too, but I know Anna had it harder than us. Dad was a bit of a taskmaster.’

‘How old was she?’ Sylvia asked, aware this was becoming something of an interview, but she just couldn’t quite understand it.

‘When she arrived? About eight or nine I think.’

‘Didn’t she go to school?’

Evelyne nodded. ‘Initially, but soon after she got to high school my father said there was too much work so she’d have to stay home. I mean, Dad would rather I’d stayed home from school too – he never saw the value of education for girls,’ she said, rolling her eyes and lowering the tone of her voice in what Sylvia took to be a caricature of her father, ‘but I was never going to let that happen. I even threatened to call the authorities on him,’ she laughs. ‘But Anna, well, I guess she couldn’t fight him on it like I did, and no one ever came to check up on her, so she just stayed home. I’d come back after school and she’d look like she was about to fall asleep on her feet. Poor kid. She always looked so damned miserable.’

‘She never saw her own family?’

Evelyne shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She never went anywhere, so I guess not. I know she has a sister, but I think she was placed with some other family.’