In the morning I woke late, the sun high in the sky, the pillow beside me still dented where Roy’s head had lain. I put some of my things in my suitcase, repacked my trunk and dressed in my travelling clothes.

Downstairs breakfast was finished, the dishes were in the drainer and Mrs Jackson was in the cellar, going through the shelves of canned stores—the pickled beans and canned tomatoes, the peaches in yellow juice, the beans like small pale seeds hovering in liquid.

‘You sick?’ she asked when she saw me at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I’m leaving,’ I said. ‘I’d like a ride to the station.’

She put down the jar in her hands. ‘Whatever for?’

‘It isn’t going to work out—me being here. I’m not happy, and I don’t think Roy and I’ll last.’

‘Is it about children?’ Her face was half lit from the high cellar window and for the first time I saw how she must dye her hair; the strands of grey were coming back in at the roots. It was odd, this vanity, on a woman so austere. I couldn’t imagine her in the bathroom with a jar of black dye. Who did she get to help with the places in the back she couldn’t see?

‘More than that. Even if we could, I think it would be too hard.’

She sighed heavily and came to sit on the bottom step, smoothing her skirt over her knees and shins. I sat as well, keeping a decent space of six inches between us.

‘You told Roy?’

I shook my head.

‘Best you don’t. He’ll just try and talk you out of it. Tell you reasons why you’re not to leave.’

‘You sure?’ I was relieved she didn’t want me to tell him, but I felt guilt too. I pushed it down past my belly.

‘You can write him a letter later, explaining. You’ll go back to Australia?’

I nodded.

She stared at the shelves of jars, which glowed in the stream of sunlight from that high window.

‘Sounds right. I told him it wouldn’t work.’

‘You told Roy?’

‘Roy and Ronald. But they said it would. Ronald said it’d be good for me to have some help in the kitchen. Been doing it all myself for too long. But—no offence, child—you’re different than us. It takes more time to teach you than to just get done with things the way I’m used to doing.’

‘I tried,’ I said.

‘I do realise.’ She leaned her head on her flat palm. Maybe for the first time I saw something soft in her face, a flash of vulnerability. But it was gone as quickly as it came.