‘Is she alive?’ asked the cabinet maker, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

‘Yes,’ said Vanda. ‘Misha saved her. Bring some water. And some brandy.’

‘There’s no brandy,’ said the cabinet maker. ‘With Edith’s permission, the demon brings me one bottle every night as long as I’m good.’

‘Take the old man to our house,’ said Vanda to Misha, ‘and bring back the brandy.’

When they’d gone, she said, ‘I thank the Lord you’re alive. Whatever did you say to him? No, it doesn’t matter. I should have come sooner, but my husband…’ Edith took Vanda’s hand and squeezed it. ‘You haven’t lost your voice again?’

Edith coughed then said, ‘No. It’s a little croaky, that’s all.’

Vanda brushed her hair from her face. Edith slept and dreamed of Demetrius.

The butcher had left Una in the middle of the street, telling her to go home. In his house, he closed the door and pulled the parlour shutters to so that the room was dark. He poured himself a drink. He shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake, but the girl had enraged him. How dare she look at him as if he were dirt. How dare she not apologise. ‘Sorry. Sorry, I humiliated you.’ Just one sorry would have sufficed.

‘It was a mistake, Mother,’ he said. ‘A mistake. And worse still, Una saw it.’

In the gloom of the room, his mother was sitting in her favourite chair.

‘You should have had your moment with Edith alone,’ she said.

‘Go away.’

‘You would be nothing without me.’

He threw his glass at the apparition.

Sorina opened the door. ‘Did you call for me, Grandpa?’

‘Yes,’ said the butcher. ‘Go and fetch my mother’s shawl.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Knowledge Forgotten

By the time the sun set that day Misha had moved into the cabinet maker’s house. Vanda had insisted. It was for Edith’s safety, she said, and no matter how much Edith protested, Vanda was adamant.

Edith had a feeling that Misha might have another motive. Her old bedroom in the attic looked directly onto Lena’s mother’s house. When they were young, and Lena’s father still alive, he’d put up a pulley system from Lena’s window to hers so they could pass messages to each other. She’d forgotten about it until she was showing Misha where he was to sleep.

‘It’s dusty,’ she said, looking around the small room. The gaps between the floorboards were so wide that you could see the kitchen below and hear every word spoken there. She wondered if her father had sat on the bed and listened to her grandmother telling her that the two of them were going to leave the village. There it was, glinting in the deep pool of her memory – knowledge forgotten.

‘Edith?’ said Misha.

‘Sorry,’ said Edith, ‘I was remembering something.’