The sun came through the lace curtains in the dining room at two o’clock in the afternoon, a fly buzzing around the bone of the roast while Dad and Jack had the chequerboard out. I washed and dried the dishes while Mum sat with her knitting; she was making a blanket for a baby born to a family at church. I looked at her fingers grasping the knitting needles and tried to picture them holding a brush. Holding my father’s hand. Her wedding ring no longer fitted, and she kept it in a red cedar box in her chest of drawers. Later we would turn on the wireless and I would get out my schoolwork. Dad would go to the pub in town. He would come home for milking before dinner: cold lamb sandwiches with lettuce from the garden. My mouth waters now at the thought: white bread Mum baked herself. Salt, pepper, butter. And curling slivers of cold leftover lamb, sliced so thin the light shone through.

•

I was eating one of Mum’s lamb sandwiches at a school picnic when Ellis brought me a glass of lemon cordial. When it began to rain he pulled me under the branches of a nearby tree while the other students ran towards the schoolhouse. The foliage was dense and gave off an astringent-smelling heat from the dampness; the very ground steamed. He touched his finger to a raindrop suspended from the tip of my nose.

‘It’s raining,’ I said, or something similarly stupid.

‘I’ve always wanted to kiss you.’

‘You did. When we were little, playing hide-and-seek.’

‘Has anyone since?’

I shook my head. I felt like a fairy wren who has hit the window and lies stunned but still alive in the grass.

His breath was warm and his mouth seemed to take over my own. How was I meant to breathe? It was suffocating, too wet and soft and slobbery. I pulled away, gasping for breath. It wasn’t what I had wanted after all. I ran through the sheets of rain towards the school, hearing him call after me, ‘Sarah, wait! Sarah!’

That evening my mum came into my bedroom, which used to be the pantry off the kitchen, where I slept away from my brothers’ smells and snores.

‘Your brother said Ellis has been paying you some attention,’ she said, sitting on the edge of my bed while I hung my dress from the nail in the wall beside my hat and jacket.

I nodded, keeping my face turned away.

‘It would be wise to give it time. You’re still young. Just keep yourself in check. Some things can’t be undone.’

I fussed with the belt of my dress, my face burning. ‘I don’t even know if I fancy him.’

Mum reached for my hand, pulled me down to sit beside her. ‘What he wants is worth nothing once you have given it.’