The sin eater comes next, hefting her belly into the front room where the coffin sits, boards fresh and blunt from the saw, the nails placed but not sunk. She smells of wild onions already begun to sprout despite a full month until May Day. I feel ashamed at my small truckle bed in the corner, our house not fine enough for me to have a room of my own. The sin eater gruffs for a seat, and Bessie, our neighbour, brings her a stool. It disappears so completely under her skirts, I imagine her great buttocks swallowing it whole. A burp of laughter escapes my lips, and I clap my hands across my mouth.

Bessie takes me to the window. ‘You’re not to look,’ she whispers in my ear. She pushes on, hearing my intake of breath readying for words, knowing I’m my mother’s own little gabby goose. ‘The sin eater walks among us. Unseen. Unheard,’ she says.

‘But I can see her—’ I hiss.

‘Unseen. Unheard,’ she silences.

I’ve heard sin eaters have branded tongues, but this one hasn’t opened her mouth.

Bessie speaks again. ‘Sins of our flesh become sins of hers through the Eating, praise be. Your mother will fly right up to the heavens, May. Not a sin left to weigh her down.’

I go back and take my place next to my da. His face looks like sheets dropped off at the door for washing, hung with wrinkles that won’t shake out.

‘I’ll wash your face,’ I whisper. ‘I’ll hang it on the line.’

Da gives me the look he always does when I say something that doesn’t seem right. His face widens open as if I’ve just told him good news. ‘What are we ever going to do with you?’

Grapes, red and bursting. A loaf shaped like a bobbin. Crow’s meat. They stick in my mind like porridge in the gullet.

NOW

1. ROAST PIGEON

THE BREAD’S STILL warm under my shawl, my heart echoing through its crust. I run, quick as I can, along the ditch beside the road.

A wide brown nostril swings into my face breathing hot horse breath.

‘Get on!’ calls the cart man, coming from a side lane, urging the mare into the mess of the main thoroughfare. She shuttles her head from side to side, the bit buckling against her yellow teeth. My way’s blocked.

Too visible, I scold, even as I climb out from the ditch onto the flat of the road. I fold my prize into the hollow between my breasts and dart past the baulking horse and a hay wagon.