‘It’s May,’ Lee says when I come in the door. Her hand fiddles with the knot holding up her apron. She does it when she’s nervous.

Through the leather bottom of my shoe, my right toes find the warp just inside the door. It’s where a leak in the roof dripped rain until the board itself rose up.

‘Well, she knows the way, doesn’t she,’ Tom says in his quick way. His hand goes out in habit to pat against my shoulder as he always did, but his fingers lift just before they touch me.

Bessie’s in her bed, tucked up in the old blue-and-brown quilt Lee and I played fairies under. Her smell is strong here, the clean, old-body smell of hay with a little bit of must on the edge. Her right hand shakes without stop and one side of her face seems slack, like it’s gone to sleep without the rest of her. But her hair is braided as it always was, combed smooth with a little grease. And there’s her jaw, too broad to ever be pretty. It’s all so familiar that a little knot like a plum stone lodges in my heart, and all of a sudden I want to cry.

‘Clouds coming, are they?’ Bessie says out of the side of her mouth. It’s what she always said when Lee or Tom or I had a tumble or a trip. She’d say it right in that little breath before the wailing started. When she says it now, the stone in my heart rolls over, and I want to crawl up inside the quilt against her warm, familiar body, and never leave. The tears stream out of my eyes.

‘Now, it’s me meant to be crying, I should think.’ Her words are slurred, but I hear them. And my tears won’t stop; I know that. Whatever seeing her has opened up has a long way to go before it’s emptied. I come to the edge of the bed and sit. Bessie looks at me, squinting in hard judgement with her right eye. ‘You’ve put some size on you,’ she assays. ‘So you’re managing.’

I shake my head through the tears. I’m not managing. I’m not.

But Bessie just looks back harder. ‘You are, with your mother’s blood in you.’

No, not her. Never a Daffrey. I am an Owens.

Bessie sighs back on the bed. ‘I had hoped to last a little longer. At least long enough to witness the Queen’s revels. It’ll be the talk of the age. My da fought the Normans in the last war. Oh, but I would have liked to spit on a Norman.’ One corner of Bessie’s mouth pinches into a smile. Her eyes flick over to me. ‘Well, let’s get on with it.’